The Ogre of Athens

O Drakos
The Ogre of Athens
Directed by Nikos Koundouros
Produced by Athens Film Company
Written by Iakovos Kambanellis
Starring Dinos Iliopoulos
Margarita Papageorgiou
Giannis Argyris
Music by Manos Hadjidakis
Cinematography Costas Theodorides
Edited by Giorgos Tsaoulis
Release date
  • 5 March 1956 (1956-03-05)
Running time
 103 minutes
Country Greece
Language Greek

O Drakos (Greek: Ο Δράκος; English: The Ogre of Athens or The Dragon or The fiend of Athens) is a Greek black-and-white film, produced in 1956, directed by Nikos Koundouros. It won the award for best movie 1955–1959 in the first Thessaloniki Film Festival. It also took part in the Venice Film Festival.

At the 2006 International Thessaloniki Film Festival, the film was announced as among the 10 all-time best Greek films by the PHUCC (Pan-Hellenic Union of Cinema Critics).[1][2]

Plot

A pathetic and frightened, peaceful man because of his similar face with a famous and wanted criminal, "the dragon", gives up his normal but misery life in order to become at last a famous person. He becomes the leader of a criminal group (that they think him as "the dragon") in a great and ambitious operation. He also falls in love with a young and beautiful singer of the bar that is the center of this criminal group; but unfortunatelly she cannot understand the tragic emotional situation of this man. But after a while he is identified not to be "the dragon" by the members of this group and one of them in his anger, murders him.

Cast

Trivia

The movie is mentioned (and plays an important role) in Jonathan Franzen's novel Freedom, with the title The Fiend of Athens.[3]

References

  1. ↑ cinemainfo.gr, by Giannis Frangoulis (translated by Konstantinos Vassilaros), "47th THESSALONICA FILM FESTIVAL - FOG CASING OVER THE WORLD OF CINEMA", accessed 01-14-2009
  2. ↑ filmfestival.gr, " The ten best best film of the Greek Film Critics Association", accessed 01-14-2009
  3. ↑ Franzen, Jonathan, Freedom (A Novel), New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, pp. 96–8.


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