The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		4.5

The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 11, 2025

When John Kander and Fred Ebb decided to follow up their huge Broadway smash Cabaret, they chose a rather odd property to musicalize: Zorba the Greek. As I mentioned in my now long ago Zorba the Greek Blu-ray review, the original Broadway mounting of the slightly renamed Zorba musical opened with what seems to me at least to be a prototypical Greek sentiment:

Life is what you do
While you're waiting to die.

When the musical was remounted many years later with Anthony Quinn in the lead, Ebb slightly retooled that cynical lyric to state:

Life is what you do
'Til the moment you die.

Some might argue that there's really not that much difference between the two, but for me, anyway, Ebb's original formulation seems to cut straight to the (tragic) heart of the Greek ethos, with a dark, fatalistic subtext which the second version just doesn't quite have. There are some tethers between this property and Zorba the Greek and/or Zorba which will be discussed below, but what kind of unavoidably brought back the musical and that particular lyric for me was a closing statement by the redoubtable Jonathan Franzen in his introduction of the film:

To be in the presence of something strange and fully realized and beautifully made, it's part of being alive, and when you feel alive, then you feel maybe I can write.

Franzen's above quote may not seem to be very much in line with either of Ebb's lyrics, but it's delivered with such μελαγχολία (melancholy) that it's not hard to divine a subtext of writing being what Franzen wants to be doing while he's waiting to die. The whole "world weary" undertone of Franzen's introduction is certainly present in the film, which was initially almost despised in its native country but which has since come to be recognized as one of the enduring classics not just of Greek cinema, but global cinema of that general time period.

In a way it might be joked that this film's central character Thomas (Dinos Iliopoulos), a timid cog in a corporate world, might be seen as a compatriot of sorts to Zorba the Greek's Basil, but who in this case ends up pretending to be a larger than life Zorba himself. It turns out that Thomas is the absolute doppelgänger of an infamous criminal known only as The Dragon, and while perhaps initially horrified at the resemblance, Thomas soon enough realizes he can utilize it to his benefit. He ends up being more or less lionized by a gang he kind of "meets cute" with when he takes refuge in a cabaret. As Jonathan Franzen also mentions in his introduction, the film is rather "music forward", featuring several interstitial musical moments which themselves may presage such later Greek inflected Broadway musicals as the aforementioned Zorba and the previous season's Illya, Darling! (which was a musicalized version of Never on Sunday with Melina Mercouri recreating her Oscar nominated performance).

Along the way, Thomas is still haunted by his social awkwardness, especially with regard to women (something Franzen says he reutilized in Freedom), but one way or the other his impersonation begins to take hold and it becomes more an more apparent that the center will not hold, so to speak, and things are probably spiraling into, well, Greek tragedy. What ultimately happens is kind of like a Greek riff on The Threepenny Opera and might suggest that it's best to be careful what you ask for, or at least with whom you cosplay.

The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Ogre of Athens is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Radiance Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. Radiance's insert booklet contains a rather lengthy set of transfer notes (there's an apparent typo I've removed with an ellipse):

For years the rights of The Ogre of Athens were separated from the rest of Nikos Koundouros's films. After the director's passing in 2017, an effort was made for the film to join the rest of his library, and his heirs organized for. . .all his works to be digitalized at the Stefifilm laboratory in Athens.

in the beginning the work on The Ogre was started from a 35mm print of the film, but as the digitalization process was under way, the Greek Film Academy, while organizing a tribute event celebrating Greek cinema, discovered the original negative at the storage facility of the Greek Cinemateque. The film as presented here was restored in 4K resolution from this original negative.

The sound on the negative however was monophonic and with persistent hiss, and when the film was originally re-released by Filmtrade in theaters there were complaints. Because of this, in coordiatnion with Film trade Koundoros's' family undertook creating a new sound design for the film, intervening as miniamlly as possible while filtering out unwanted hissing and adding a limited number of sound effects, to enhance the narration in parts where they were needed.

At its best, this is a really ravishing looking presentation which really makes the most of cinematographyer Kostas Theodoridis' high contrast chiaroscuro work. Some of the extreme close-ups of faces in particular offer superb fine detail levels. Fine detail on elements like the costumes worn at the cabaret all resonate with precision. There is some recurrent damage which can be spotted, mostly vertical scratches and blemishes for whatever reason. Some of these tend to be more visible simply because Koundourus loves to drench his frame in almost epic blacks at times, and so flaws can more easily be made out. Grain resolves without any issues.

The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Ogre of Athens features an LPCM Mono track in the original Greek. Considering the above verbiage about the audio restoration, things are really quite spry sounding, with only some slight variances in high end and maybe even amplitude belying evidence of tweaks. The score here is by Manos Hadjidakis, yet another link to both Never on Sunday and Illya, Darling! (Hajidakis of course famously won the Oscar for his title song for Never on Sunday). Perhaps ironically, then, Hadjidakis' work here actually reminded me quite strongly of Nino Rota's scores for Fellini, in that you could quite easily imagine the music emanating from some nearby circus or carnival. Aside from the above mentioned anomalies, both music and dialogue are presented without any issues. Optional English subtitles are available.

The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction by Jonathan Franzen (HD; 7:18) is a really fascinating personal reminiscence from Franzen, who was so affected by seeing this film in his twenties that he featured it in his novel Freedom. This is available either as a standalone supplement found under the Special Features menu or under the Play Menu, where it's authored to lead directly into the feature.


• Christina Newland (HD; 11:05) offers some really incisive commentary that marks her as a well versed philhellene. She does kind of strangely seem to say that Nikos Koundouros "was born in 1926 in Crete and was imprisoned in the 1920s for his left wing political views", which suggests he was incredibly precocious.


• Dimitris Papanikolaou (HD; 25:46) features the Greek film expert discussing the "Golden Age" of Greek cinema and The Ogre of Athens' place in it.

Radiance's insert booklet contains an essay by Andreas Giannopoulos as well as an excerpt from Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. The keepcase insert is reversible and as usual this includes an Obi strip.

The Ogre of Athens Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As Jonathan Franzen mentions, this Blu-ray edition of The Ogre of Athens may bring this film the increased recognition it undoubtedly deserves. Both a deconstruction of and kind of a Greek inflected version of noir, as Christina Newland kind of jokingly offers, this is not an optimistic story. Technical merits are generally solid, and the supplements outstanding. Highly recommended.