It's not as if they were repatriated to a stable, nurturing Greece. Ferris punctuates Marika's life in and around the backstreet dives, clubs, slums and drug dens of Piraeus with newsreel footage of genocidal upheaval, political clashes, repressive crackdowns, Nazi occupation and civil war. Lots of uniformed figures on horseback swing lots of clubs, sometimes pull lots of triggers. Conventional morality goes by the board in this sub-group of the marginalized and dispossessed. Sexual and emotional eruptions and other traffickings contrast ironically with the decorous suits, coats, ties and hats (worn indoors) of the musicians seated on wooden chairs.
Sex is more often survival mechanism than expression of passion, the matter-of-fact acceptance of its place more devastating than any editorializing could be. Marika's musician father turns a blind eye to his wife's sexual submission to the club owner, but takes out his smoldering rage by beating the young Marika with his leather belt. Emotions often boil over into violence, in this embattled, male-dominated community of the disenfranchised. Yet there's heart to be found in it. Little Marika is befriended by a young musician next door, a violinist. His is the kindest heart in the film, and no apology is made for the fact that he deals drugs on the side. Hashish is the opiate of choice. Hearts are bruised and broken. And the pain fuels the music.
The historical footage imparts gravitas as well as context, in a sort of flash-card history lesson way, but it's Leonardou's force-of-nature performance that holds together what would otherwise be an unwieldy film in search of coherence. Its narrative spine is supplied by her thousand-yard stare beyond whatever indignity is heaped on her -- and there are plenty. She does more than interpret; she co-scripted with Ferris, which may account for her against-the-grain way of conveying intensity and blind endurance with one deadpan stare after another, straight into the camera. Her Marika is tough and, mercifully sparing us from an exercise in iconography, flawed. In this film that somewhat alters the facts of Marika's life, she's not only temperamental, but selfish, headstrong, often her own worst enemy.
She's a tigress in a man's world, staying strong in the face of betrayal after betrayal. She never does get together with the violinist who loves her most - Michalis Mariatis - who's shuffled from prison into the army. By war's end, she has moved in with -- and up with -- Nikos Kalogeropoulos's worldly entrepreneurial musician, who moves her to Athens, and later to Chicago, then to recording dates. In no way a long-term romantic prospect, he nevertheless sticks with her and keeps his professional, if not his personal, promises. The men don't come off too badly, not even the seedy charmer who impregnates her when she's a teen and later meets up with her in Chicago, where his predatory ways find a natural home on Maxwell Street.
Still, if Leonardou isn't quite bigger than this sprawling film, she towers over its individual parts, right up to her stagy end in the aftermath of a street carnival. It's a tossup whether she ends burned out or hollowed out. Still, she triumphs magnificently for a while in a man's world where the deck is stacked steeply against her, where the men in this repressively patriarchal society dance only with other men, even in the seediest of dives. The film ends with male instrumentalists belting out the music on bouzoukis, violins, ouds, reeds and lutes, almost literally dancing on her grave! Still, of Marika's sovereignty Leonardou leaves no doubt.
For its DVD release, Facets has restored Rembetiko to something like its original 150-minute length, apologizing for what it calls the variable condition of some source material. With its rembetiko songs by Stavros Xarhakos hitting the mark, Rembetiko is perhaps even more enjoyable to listen to than to watch. We're not surprised to learn that the film played a role in the rembetiko revival in Greece, which in turn has been incorporated into the world music repertoire, much along the lines of the American blues revival. Fittingly, this music about survival, including Marika's recordings, thus survives.
For more information about Rembetiko, visit Facets Multimedia. To order Rembetiko, go to TCM Shopping.
by Jay Carr
