May 19, 2021
By John Freedman
Stavros (pronounced stav-ROS) is a little village on the northwest end of the Akrotiri peninsula about a half-hour's drive from Chania. Its most prominent physical landmark - a beautiful rocky mountain that slopes down sharply to the sea - can be seen from far away. It dominates any view of the Chania region if you are looking east and seaward. Up close it is an imposing rock that will not fit entirely into the viewfinder of a regular camera lens, even one that has a partial wide-angle like my Nikon DX VR. The tiny bay beneath the mountain is relatively shallow and has a narrow mouth leading out to the Sea of Crete, ensuring that the water here is always warmer than at most other Chania-area swimming holes. At some point someone always has to bring up the elephant in the room - the fact that a handful of scenes, including the final dance scene, in the Hollywood film Zorba the Greek were shot here. The local area has lazily (and that is the key word here) done what it can to capitalize on the connection to Hollywood, Zorba, and Anthony Quinn's Oscar-nominated performance. There are four huge photos of Quinn marking the entrance to a section of chaises lounges on the beach. One restaurant, the Christiana, used to hold cameraman Walter Lassally's Oscar as a tourist-friendly item until the restaurant perished in a fire in 2012 and the Oscar was lost. I find it a fitting event. It is as if the gods, presumably headed by Zeus - who was, take your pick, either born on Crete, or sheltered here to stop his father from killing him - chose to outrank Zorba and stop this little piece of paradise turning into a vulgar tourist trap. Lassally, who bought a house here in the early 1990s, and lived out the last 23 years of his life beneath the mountain by the sea, was quoted as saying, "When we shot Zorba there were no roads, no electricity, no water and no trees — and not too much has changed... I’ve been around the world and never found a place to live that’s better than this spot in Crete." The no-roads, no-electricity claim is a purposeful exaggeration, but one gets Lassally's point - Stavros, despite any and all efforts to capitalize on its brush with Hollywood fame, remains simple, quiet, unglamorous, and utterly gorgeous in its naturalness. Lassally, before his death at the age of 90 in 2017, also told why they had chosen to film here specifically. Obviously, the beauty of the nature was the primary choice, but there was another reason, too: They needed to have a mine shaft where Zorba worked, and sure enough, about four-fifths of the way up the eastern side of the mountain, there was an ancient cave that the moviemakers could easily present as the entrance to a mine. They built a railroad up the side of the hill to make it look more realistic and there you have it. As my wife Oksana and I were poking around in the water yesterday, she came upon a segment of rails still intact at the bottom of the bay. I can't prove it, but I'm guessing they were leftovers from the Hollywood invasion, again, an example of the place taking back its territory in order to hang onto its own unique personality. Oksana and I swam in the bay yesterday until sundown, then had a fabulous dinner at the Almyriki restaurant as the calm Cretan night descended upon us slowly and gently. One could feel that every wisp of breeze, every sound of leaves and palm fronds rustling, every turn in color as the sun set marked some special, even if unacknowledged, moment in one's life.
All texts and photos in this post are © copyright 2021 by John Freedman. All rights reserved. Should you wish to use some text or photo/s, please ask - it will most surely be possible.
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