Maybe it’s the Glasgow weather. One minute it rains, then it’s windy, then it’s sunny. In these schizophrenic climatic conditions, I guess it’s only natural to crave of beaches, basking in the sun and enjoying extremely high temperatures. But this unquenchable crave also brings on the desire to wear colourful and summery clothes.
Besides, with the pictures from the Resort 2009 collections all over the Internet, it is also easy to dream about fantastic holiday wear in the style of Mihalis Kakogiannis’ “Otan ta psaria vgikan sti steria” or “The Day the Fish Came Out” (1967), the film starring Tom Courtenay, Colin Blakely and Sam Wanamaker.
As a young man, Greek director Kakogiannis – more famous for his black and white Oscar winning flick “Alexis Zorba” (Zorba the Greek, 1964) – abandoned the legal career to pursue his acting dreams. He studied at London’s Old Vic stage school, starred in different plays – Wilde, Shaw, Salacrou and Gantillon’s works – and enjoyed a discreet success as Caligula in Camus’ eponymous play.
When he went back to Greece he started working as a director, with his first two films, “Kyriakatiko xypnima” (Windfall in Athens, 1954) and “Stella” (1955) winning the approval of the critics. There is actually a rather funny story connected with the latter: as the director didn’t have the money to recreate a football match for a scene he was shooting, he carefully placed some cameras in strategic corners of the stadium during a Greece-Yugoslavia game. The shooting went well, but the main scene was still missing, so he stopped the game in front of 60,000 people, kept back the angry referee, told his actors to go on the pitch and shot the goal scene. Apparently, he was later on jailed for a few days for this “football-related" crime.
"The Day the Fish Came Out” was Kakogiannis’ first colour film. While shooting it, the director kept the plot secret, but explained the movie was going to be set in the future, in 1972 to be precise, and that it was an allegory for the carelessness and stupidity of human beings.
The plot revolves around two atomic bombs being accidentally dropped on the island of Karos by a NATO plane. Two pilots head for the island to get help from their superiors to retrieve the lost cargo, without realising the agents they are trying to contact are already on the island, looking for the bombs disguised as tourists. Unwanted attention from hedonistic tourists, including archaeologist and dominatrix Electra (Candice Bergen), will cause further chaos and confusion.
Kakogiannis designed all the costumes for the film, anticipating future trends with his revolutionary choice of materials such as plastic and paper. The director clad his female extras – many of them former models – in brightly coloured creations that made them look like flowers. Among the most striking costumes for this film there are huge crepe paper capes that resemble fluffy chrysanthemums; evening gowns in the nuances of dahlias, gentians and buttercups and skirts that look like overturned tulips matched with skimpy oval bras. Kakogiannis’ futuristic accessories are also fascinating: apart from feather earrings and huge plastic sunglasses with swirly paper motifs applied on the frame, there are also quite beautiful celluloid necklaces featuring arabesque designs.
Though the movie was set in the future, Kakogiannis interest for the Greek classics is clear: the extras dressed up in his costumes seem to have the same function of the chorus in a Greek tragedy. The chorus was the main commentator on the characters and events in classic tragedies, but, in Kakogiannis’ film, the costumes worn by the extras comment, accompany and complement the main characters’ actions.
Kakogiannis’ futuristic costumes attracted at the time the attention of an American prêt-a-porter company who wanted to buy the design copyrights and actually start producing the costumes. The deal never happened in the end, so I’m destined to just keep on dreaming about these costumes and, at least for the time being, about warm weather.