All pieces of art are subject to political scrutiny because all artists, and people, exist in a political world. When the idea that ‘all art is political’ comes up, it is often misconstrued to mean that all art is about the literal politic process. When discussing art and politics it is important to consider the way that the socio-political context of someone’s surroundings shapes their world view. Everyone acts in accordance with the worldview they have whether it is intentional or not. This is not a controversial viewpoint in other realms, but you will often hear the phrase to ‘separate the art from the artist’ when a musician or filmmaker is considered a reprehensible human being. All art is inherently tied to its creator, and its creator to their worldview. However, it is important to distinguish that this particular lens should not be used as an indication of quality. I am sure we have all seen a film or read a book that reflects our political views but does so with poor execution. It is essential that those politics are then backed up with an effective use of the medium. Regardless, when someone makes a profound but general statement about humanity in their work it is lauded, but political statements are often labeled as a biased manifesto that lack subtlety.
Since we have now established that all art is inherently political even if it is unintentional, how do we view art that is intentionally political?
Greek Filmmaker Costa-Gavras has made a legendary career in making films that fight conservative power structures through mirroring real life political events as the plots of his stories. In the prime of his career and popularity, during the 1960s and 1970s, he received international acclaim for the ways he combined his leftist politics with the traditional structure of thriller films. He has made countless classics that are rip roaringly entertaining and
thought-provoking. This paper will focus on the methods employed in his 1969 Oscar Winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Z. There is a misconception that socially-conscience
films are often boring because they focus on politics instead of telling a good story. Nothing disproves this idea more than the films of Costa-Gavras, who continuously proved throughout his career that you can use traditionally entertaining conventions to explore deeper themes and reveal the brutality of political regimes. His films, and similar politically-charged ones from the time, exhibit that movements for social change extend beyond the realities of every-day life and into the world of art.
Costa-Gavras’ Background and the Filmmaking Climate
Before diving right in, it is important to set the context for his own life and the filmmaking climate when he began working. Born in Greece, Konstantinos Gavras was only eight years old when the Axis powers invaded his home country. His father joined the leftist resistance movement to fight against the invaders. When they were ousted towards the end of the year, the Greek Civil War began and the same leftists who fought the Nazis were quickly being killed, exiled, or sent to work camps. Costa-Gavras has credited his experiences in Greece as a young man seeing the authoritarian rule of the right-wing government as the primary influence on his politics.
Anti-Communist repression and imperialism were central parts of his youth and shaped the way he viewed the world. Seeing that the very people his father helped be whisked away by the political regime had a strong psychological effect on him. It had a material effect on him as well.
New government legislation decreed that a person needed a ‘certificate of civic standing’ to be able to get a job, get a driver’s license, or attend university. Since his family was active in the left-wing resistance movement, Costa-Gavras was unable to attend university in Greece and was denied a visa to enter the US . He ended up in France where his love of cinema began and he attended the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies.
He became involved in the film industry there and learned French, the primary language of many of his films. This period was capped off when he had the opportunity to be an assistant director to Rene Clair, a notable filmmaker during this period of growing international attention in the European arthouse film scene.
The 1960s were an exciting time to be a filmmaker in Europe. The films coming out of France, Italy, and Sweden were among the most popular movies in the world and directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, and Ingmar Bergman were some of the most recognizable names in cinema. These directors saw filmmaking as a serious art-form and one where the director was the author who had a unique artistic vision on every part of the process. Their popularity abroad was largely due to the dying studio system in the United States which was still churning out high-budget epics and musicals that were losing steam in the box office. People craved a new perspective, and a new style. The films that were most influential to Costa-Gavras at the time were those of the French New Wave which completely deconstructed the rules of contemporary western cinema and set the groundwork for independent movements across the world. Above all else, the movement and its most notable films, Breathless and The Four-Hundred Blows, valued telling the stories of everyday people in real locations instead of sets while using innovative techniques like jump-cuts and hand-held camera work. The goal was to break the rules of what a movie was supposed to be, and many of its conventions are staples of independent filmmaking across the world today. Working in the French film scene at the time, Costa-Gavras saw the rise of this movement and was inspired by it.
One downside, from Gavras’ point of view, the European film movement at the time was so obsessed with innovating styles and techniques of how to take advantage of the visual medium of film, that they neglected the importance of plot. Obviously, plot is not
necessary in more abstract pieces, but Costa-Gavras saw a window for him to break onto the scene where he could combine the elements of the more experimental but mood-driven films from Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Godard, and add elements of more traditional plot structure from American cinema. With this in mind and a clear goal set, he began making his own films.
Z and the Conscientious Third Party
In 1969, Costa-Gavras’ third and most significant film entitled Z, was released to the world. It was an adaptation of a novel by Vassilis Vassilikos. The film and book were slightly fictionalized accounts about the recent assassination of the leftist Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis by right-wingers who were allegedly paid to do so by the Military Dictatorship that ruled Greece at the time. Z is constantly zipping along at an electric pace as a group of left-wing politicians attempt to have their leader, played by Yves Montand, give a rousing speech to their supporters. At every step of the way they are faced with impediments that the government has imposed to try to prevent their rally from happening. Montand’s character, who is modeled after Lambrakis, eventually does give the speech as a protest commences outside from people who object to the politics of Montand and his followers. As he tries to leave the event, he is seemingly accidentally struck by a speeding car. He later dies in the hospital.
The rest of the film follows a magistrate played by Jean-Louis Trintignant who is tasked with investigating exactly what happened. His investigation begins with the assumption that this was simply a bad accident, but it soon becomes clear that those involved with the ‘accident’ were actually employed by the heads of state to make an assassination seem like a mistake. He is presented early on as rather friendly with the military officials we have already grown to hate, but the character’s everlasting fight to discover the truth puts us on his side throughout. We
learn new information as he does, and Trintignant voice becomes the audience’s vessel. The impartial third-party to observe the events is a common trope of Gavras’ films. Since we are seeing information unravel through the eyes of the magistrate, we will likely form a similar opinion to him. This is a clever way that Gavras inserts his own political leanings into the audience’s mind. We see the corrupt fascist government take every step needed to suppress a voice of opposition, something inherently democratic, and the audience sympathizes with the left-wing group because they are in a position of weakness and exploitation. Someone with similar political inclinations to Gavras will likely see his position from the get-go, but this impartial magistrate allows someone without political inclinations to watch the film and still take a side.
The audience becomes enthralled with the aspect of discovery. This is a
conspiracy-thriller film at its heart, so the most important elements are solving the mystery at its core. Structurally, Gavras has us meet a variety of characters throughout who either heard about what happened or were involved. One notable example is the character who the main suspect, Yago, confessed his crime to before he committed it. A simple truck driver named Nick, on his way to confess what he knows after reading about it in the newspaper he is attacked by cronies sent by the police. This is another example of how Gavras shows that the innocent bystander who values telling the truth believes in one side and not the other. In other words, the facts of the situation entirely favor one side of the argument Gavras is doing this while simultaneously telling a consistently engaging story where there is new information to take in every few minutes. The story is constantly changing and shifting as the government officials try to convince Trintignant’s character that he is simply mistaken. By the end, we are thrilled as he has finally discovered the truth behind the accident and that the conspiracy goes as high up as the Chief of Police.
There is an electric montage of him indicting each and every reprehensible member of the government who was behind the assassination and the obstruction of justice. The theme of the film, a high-energy Greek-inspired song by composer Mikis Theodorakis, plays during this sequence to increase the excitement. We watch with titillation and joy as the leftists rejoice that justice has been served. Yet, this is not how the film ends. The joy of this sequence is undercut by a news broadcast which announces that there was a military coup and all the characters we have grown to know and love throughout the film have been imprisoned or killed. The news broadcast even goes as far to replace the anchor, a photojournalist chronicling the events throughout the film, halfway through with another one who announces that the previous anchor had been arrested as well. The film ends with the anchor listing everything that the new regime has banned including, “…freedom of the press, sociology, Beckett, Dostoyevsky, modern music, pop music, new math, and the letter Z, which means he lives in Ancient Greek.”
It cannot be understated just how entertaining Z is. When you step back from the political nature of the content, you see a film that uses the plot structure of your traditional thriller film like The Manchurian Candidate but applied in the most heart-stopping way possible. Z is constantly moving, whether it be the way it transitions from scene-to-scene effortlessly in a montage or the way the camera is constantly following characters around a space as opposed to cutting. We are always walking somewhere with someone, learning a new piece of information, jumping back and forth in time to discover more pieces of the story, all while the addictive and energetic soundtrack plays in the background. The use of voiceover by a witness for example to take us back into their own flashback and perspective of a certain event is used regularly here and to a great effect. Putting us within these flashbacks allow us to see it as it happened, and form our own opinion on it; an opinion which is likely similar to that of the magistrate.
Another fascinating technique at play here is the use of allegory, which is notable in many of Gavras’ films. This movie is based on a real life assassination of a left-wing political figure by a right-wing government. Yet, throughout the film there is never a single mention of the country they are the name of the character Yves Montand plays. It is so clearly about the assassination of Lambrakis and anybody who followed European political movements at the time would understand this. The assassination caused massive protests in Greece and among leftist movements across the world. So why does he decide to leave the characters unnamed? It is difficult find a direct answer from the man himself to these questions.
However, this mystery still interests the film’s viewers to this day so I’ll give it my best shot. While making the film specific to Greece would have no doubt still resonated with the leftists who adore the film, making it more general accomplishes two things. It shows that this type of action, the suppression of left politics under a fascist government, is not specific to any location or government but is a world-wide problem wherever the ideology reigns. Additionally, it almost forces the audience to make a comparison to a real life event whether it be this assassination or another. This omission of specifics means the audience has to think about what the specifics are. Maybe they will research Lambrakis afterwards or see a similar event occur and remember the movie they saw last week. Perhaps Gavras did not make it specific just to save his own skin, so he would not be attacked by the Military Dictatorship which had recently taken power in his home. Despite this, the film begins with a cheeky disclaimer to its viewers “Any similarity to real persons and events is not coincidental. It is intentional”. From the get-go, you either make the connection real life event or you do your research and find the connection.
Conclusion
The title of the film, Z, was spray painted all across Greece to protest during Lambrakis’ funeral. Naming the film this was a clear political statement. When asked about the film’s intentions, Gavras said that “Z is less a political film, than a political act”. The act here is illuminating a problem to a general public that may be less than interested. The 1960s were fraught political time throughout the world, and Z’s final statement that ‘he lives’ is meant to be a reminder to us all that all movements live on in the face of oppression. The fight against fascism never ends even if you assassinate a prominent leader, the spirit of the resistance will live on. Costa-Gavras packed a lot into a film that on the surface seems like a by-the-books thriller. However, it was this decision to make it by-the-books that made it so electric. He took traditional genre conventions, added his constantly moving cinematography and editing style, and rooted it all in a very real story about the way we can protest against oppression.
In March 1969, there was a National Conference for a United Front Against Fascism held in Oakland, California. Activist groups from around the world came together for this event where the Black Panthers oversaw security. It was a meeting of ideas about how fragmented activist groups we can come together as one group of that fight fascism.There were speeches from notable leaders and at the end of the three days, a film was screened. They had to pick a film that would most represent their fight and be the perfect inspirational closing to a weekend of organizing for political change. They chose to screen ‘Z’.
You can watch ‘Z’ right now on https://www.criterionchannel.com
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Ramirez, Bruno. “Constantin Costa-Gavras.” L’Histoire à L’écran, pp. 265–279., doi:10.4000/books.pum.2379.
Sharpe, Kenan Behzat. “Directing the Revolution.” Jacobin, www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/costa-gavras-z-1968-radical-cinema.
