Filopoimin Finos

 

             Filopoimin Finos                                         ΦΙΛΟΠΟΙΜΗΝ  ΦΙΝΟΣ                                                                                       

               Born 1908                                                   Died January 26, 1977

The Father of Greek Cinema

 

Section 14, Number 118A

When I first came across the grave of Filopoimin Finos I was a tad disappointed. It seemed too modest for a man whose production company had dominated the Greek film industry from 1943 to 1977. I had at least hoped for a semi-circle, a stone version of the famous Finos Film logo, something grand that would signify the end, not just of his personal story, but of a cinematic era.

 

Filopoimin Finos created the biggest and most prolific film production company in Greece, indeed, in all of southeast Europe. He produced 187 (1) films and personally oversaw each production from start to finish. He was an innovator, building the first sound recording device in Greece, and shooting the first colour film with stereophonic sound. It is an amazing story, a love story really, from its start to its surprising finish.

 

 

 

His Life:

Filopoimin was born Tithorea, in the foothills of Mount Parnassos but his family came to Athens before he reached school age.  His father, Ioannis, was a doctor by profession but also a businessman who also owned cinemas in the provinces and the Alcazar (2) in Athens near the Larissa train station.  In the earliest days, such venues presented live shows with cinematic reels available as an intermission and an extra incentive to bring in customers.

 

Open air cinemas are still a favourite summer pastime in Athens

As a child and young man Filopoimin spent a lot of time at the Alcazar watching movies, helping around, and even as a projectionist. He was especially fascinated by cinematic machinery and eventually became so adept at tinkering with their inner workings that he was nicknamed  “The screwdriver man”. (A colleague would later comment that from the years 1930 to 1960, if any sound, camera, or lighting mechanism did not meet his needs, he fixed it  or invented some variation of it until it did).

As so often happens, his father had a different future planned for his son. He sent him to the Ionian School, to high school in Pangrati, on to Law School in Athens and then on to post graduate studies in political science in Germany.

To no avail.

His father should never have let him loose in the Alcazar.  Filopoimin was hopelessly hooked on cinema.

The Thirties and Tzella

In the early 1930s Filopoimin’s aim was to add sound to movies and by 1935, he, with the help of friends, introduced a modern sound system that obviated the need for dubbing. It was a huge step forward for cinema.

In 1936, he met Tzella, a well known singer at the famous Mandra of Attik, (3). He contrived to meet her and they fell in love but the affair ended quickly, apparently because of his intense commitment to film.  But they reunited after her short and disastrous marriage to someone else.

 

 

They became lifelong partners and soul mates until his death. It is an unusual story for many reasons. Firstly, they did not marry until 1947. That in itself would have set them apart from the Greek norms of the 30s. Secondly, her devotion and belief in Filopoimin was so great that she decided to end her own career in 1939 in order to assist him.

In 1938 Filopoimin and colleagues founded the Greek Cinema Studio «Ελληνικά Κινηματογραφικά Στούντιο» (ΕΚΣ) and almost immediately they began filming The Song of Separation (Το Τραγούδι Του Χωρισμού) with Filopoimin directing. Tzella helped as did his parents and, it being the depression, a lot of communal pots with beans or lentils were cooked up for the entire crew.

Unfortunately, it was a flop, a fact that had Filopoimin wondering if he should quit altogether. He did not, but chose never to direct a movie again and to stay wholly on the production side of things.

 

Song of Separation can be seen on youtube and, failure or not, its plot is pure Finos: a poor fisherman with a great voice loves a local girl but is persuaded to go to Athens to find fame by a sophisticated Athenian woman, changes his mind, and returns to the island and his first love. Naturally, there are songs throughout.

The Forties: The War Years and the Birth of Finos Film

 

When the Greco-Italian war broke out in 1940, Finos enlisted in the geographical branch of the army and filmed the war effort on the Albanian front.

 

When the Germans invaded in 1941, he was back in Athens and released from the army. He did film the German occupation of Athens but the Germans confiscated his film and destroyed it. (4)  In spite of that and the horrors of the occupation, he somehow managed to found Finos Film. He rented a building on Stournara Street and began filming Voice of the Heart (Φωνη της Καρδιας).  

 

Success and then Tragedy

In spite of the German occupation (or maybe because of it) Voice of the Heart was an astounding success. It starred Aimilios Veakis and premiered at the Rex Theatre (5) near Omonia Square on March 29, 1943.   The plot was simple: an old man after many years in prison for killing his wife’s lover, returns in the hopes of being reunited with his daughter.

 Apparently the line ups to see the film stretched all the way past Syntagma Square.    

Months later Filopoimin and his father were arrested by the Gestapo and held in its notorious cells on Merlin Street in the centre of Athens.(6) The charge against his father was being an ‘active communist’ because he was charged with giving wheat from properties he owned to the resistance.  Tzella would later say: My father in law was a patriot - who should he feed – the Germans or the Greeks? If that made him a communist, then he was.  Tzella managed to bribe a guard and send encouraging letters. Filopoimin was released but his father was hung in July 1944 with other ‘traitors’ - just a few months before Athens was liberated. 

Filopoimin was in front of the Grande Bretagne hotel to film the liberation of Athens and to record the devastation the Germans left in their wake. No doubt with his father’s fate in mind, and his own brush with the Nazis, he weathered the turbulent civil war years by staying out of the fray. Who can blame him?

In 1947, he and Tzella married. Apparently his friend Alekos Sakellarios, thinking it was time, brought a priest to the studio to marry the couple. Filopoimin was willing, but told the priest to keep it short, because he had work to do.  (Τέλειωνε, παπά, γιατί έχουμε δουλειές).  He was, of course, a workaholic and, happily, Tzella had the knack to meld their domestic life with his professional one.

 

 

 

 

The Rest

In 1953 the offices of Finos films were founded in a neoclassical building at 53 Chiou Street in Metaxourgiou. It was both his office and his home. Every aspect of a film (displays, editing, mixing etc) passed through this building - from preproduction to the final copy.

 

53 Chiou Street

It was not exclusively used for his own productions. For example, his studio aided in the production of Kakoyiannis’ Electra, the 1962 classic starring Irene Pappas. It won many awards, including one for Finos for sound.

 

Irene Pappas with Tzella and Filopoimin

The way in which Finos chose to work is one reason why Hollywood never tempted him as it did so many other Greek entrepreneurs. He said: In Hollywood they would not let me dig around in the cameras with my screwdriver. There they make films with their head. I make them with my heart. (7)  His life style was simple.  He literally lived over his work. Tzella made sure he was looked after domestically and except for his love of fine cars, he poured all of his money into his next film.

Finos and Tzella never had children of their own but they did not lack family. Over the years, they employed over 12,000 actors and technicians and many would work again and again for Finos Film: actors such as Aliki Vougiouklaki, Dimitris Papamichael, Thanasis Vengos, Rena Vlackopoulou and  Kostas Voutsas , just to name a few.  Voutsas has the record. He appeared in 30 Finos productions. Finos was godfather to Aliki and Dimitris Papamichael’s  son and so on. Many actors and technicians, not to mention writers and musicians, became close friends.

 

He was not always correct in his choices. He did not believe Melina Mercouri had a future in cinema; her mouth was too big and he passed up the opportunity to co-produce Never on Sunday. She was the one of the few who got away!

By 1958 there was a growing need for new stages and sets and a new one began operating in Agios Anargyros, a suburb of Athens. It had two stages, a carpentry shop, dressing rooms, a ‘city’ set and so on. It was on these stages that many of his so-called ‘Golden Age’ films were made

Filopoimin continued to innovate. Κορίτσια για φίλημα  (Kiss the Girls)  which premiered in 1965 was the first Greek colour film in stereophonic sound. The company seemed poised to go from strength to strength.  

1970 saw a new and larger studio being completed in Spata outside of Athens. Finos wanted to create a Greek Cinecittà. He even sent his architects to Rome to get ideas. The new studio had two stages and all the necessary attendant spaces. The Spata venue is still one of the biggest in Greece.

 

Spata Studio on Finos Film Street (of course!) is now used mainly for television

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But trouble was coming with the advent of television, his struggle with cancer,  and his own inability to work with financial partners. His lifelong friend Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis offered Finos a government subsidy and his refusal amazed Aliki Vougiouklaki: He wanted not just veto power but also the risk,( "ήθελε να έχει όχι μόνο το βέτο αλλά και το ρίσκο").

His own assessment of his difficulties was as laconic as it was perceptive: as a producer I am a real success; as a businessman, no. (8)

He died in debt in 1977.

 

His funeral was attended by actors all across the spectrum. The line between serious theatre, art film, and popular film has always been a permeable one for actors in Greece.

 

Tzella struggled to keep his name and contribution to film alive. She succeeded. Finos Film has now digitized all of the films and is doing well with rentals.  

Tzella died in 2010.

 

Afterword

For the body of his work (drama, melodrama, comedy, farce, (sometimes in the same film!) Finos has drawn criticism over the years: his films are not serious, the plots are unreal and avoid serious themes. I admit to many of these feelings but enjoy a good many of them for precisely those reasons. (9)

Cinema has always been the popular medium of the people: everyday lives viewed from inexpensive seats in cinematic Alcazars all over Greece - little fortresses from which some of the harsh realities of life can be ignored or at least filtered through rose coloured glasses for an hour or so - and endings can be satisfying.

In reality, Finos’ output was only about 20% of the films made in that era. And yet his name defines it because he had his finger on the pulse of ordinary people and his characters touched a chord in Greek hearts. That was his genius; he produced what people wanted to see more successfully and more consistently than anyone else.

His films can be called classics today because people still want to see them.

 

The Greek Ministry of Culture and mayor of Athens recognized his contribution in 2023 with a marble stele topped by his bust in a park hard by Stathmos Larissa not far from where his beloved Alcazar once stood.

 

Yes, People still leave roses…

 

The Grave

Section 14, Number 118A

 

ΤΕΛΟΣ

Footnotes

 (1)  For a complete list of his films and the actors in them see the Finos Film website: https://finosfilm.com/  Each film is shown alphabetically with its    poster. The text is in Greek.

(2)  The name ‘Alcazar’ comes from the Arabic “al-qaṣr” meaning a palace or a castle. It was a popular name for early cinemas worldwide and, in fact, very apt. These venues were palaces for the people.

(3) Attik was a cosmopolitan composer and entrepreneur who, after many years abroad, started his club in Athens.

(4 For what is left, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4OWmBiiLl0  from ERT Archives.

 

(5) The Rex on Panapistimiou Street was built between 1935and 1937 and was inspired by American Art Deco. The cinema was on the ground floor. The building is still there and quite a landmark.

 

 

(6) During this terrible period with the Nazis in charge and successive quisling governments attempting to appease them, many people found themselves in Merlin Street cells and many never knew why or who had betrayed them.  Sometimes they were kept, and sometimes they were freed, perhaps just because of chaos, a whim, or sometimes a judicious bribe. It was a terrible period in Greek history and left its scars on all who lived through it.

 

(7): «Στο Χόλιγουντ δεν θα με άφηναν να σκαλίζω τις κάμερες με το κατσαβίδι μου, εκεί κάνουν σινεμά με το μυαλό, εδώ κάνουμε με την καρδιά».

 

(8) «ως παραγωγός, πράγματι είμαι πετυχημένος. Ως επιχειρηματίας, όχι» and "ήθελε να έχει όχι μόνο το βέτο αλλά και το ρίσκο" from (https://www.athensvoice.gr/politismos/kinimatografos/719015/finos-films-giati-oi-tainies-toy-finoy-skorpoyn-akoma-gelio/ )

(9)  I have come to admire almost all of the Aliki - Papamichael films, and the comedies but have a little more difficulty with his musicals.  Just last night, Skai showed Κορίτσια για φίλημα (Kiss the Girls) and I found it cringe-worthy except… the sets were sometimes real blockbusters and the costumes just over the top and pretty fabulous. Finos Film today guards his legacy so only bits can be found on youtube. They are, however,  reproduced often Greek television.

 

 

 

Sources

https://finosfilm.com/tainies/  For a list of every movie he produced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4OWmBiiLl0  a documentary on F inos