Constantin Costa-Gavras Films | Constantin Costa-Gavras Filmography | Constantin Costa-Gavras Biography | Constantin Costa-Gavras Career | Constantin Costa-Gavras Awards

The films of Constantin Costa-Gavras are exciting, enthralling, superior examples of dramatic moviemaking, but the filmmaker is far from being solely concerned with keeping the viewer in suspense. A Greek exile when he made Z, set in the country of his birth, Costa-Gavras is most interested in the motivations and misuses of power: politically, he may be best described as an anti-fascist, a humanist. As such, his films are as overtly political as any above-ground, internationally popular and respected filmmaker in history.

Costa-Gavras's scenarios are often based on actual events in which citizens are deprived of human rights and expose the hypocrisies of governments to both the left and right of center. In Z, Greek pacifist leader Yves Montand is killed by a speeding truck, a death ruled accidental by the police. Journalist Jean-Louis Trintignant's investigation leads to a right-wing reign of terror against witnesses and friends of the deceased, and to revelations of a government scandal. The Confession is the story of a Communist bureaucrat (Montand) who is unjustifiably tortured and coerced into giving false testimony against other guiltless comrades. State of Siegels based on the political kidnapping of a United States official in Latin America (Montand); the revolutionaries slowly discover the discreetly hidden function of this "special advisor"?to train native police in the intricacies of torture. In Special Section, a quartet of young Frenchmen are tried and condemned by an opportunistic Vichy government for the killing of a German naval officer in occupied Paris. In Missing, an idealistic young American writer (John Shea) is arrested, tortured, and killed in a fascist takeover of a Latin American country. His father, salt-of-the-earth businessman Jack Lemmon, first feels it's all a simple misunderstanding. After he realizes that he has been manipulated and lied to by the American embassy, he applies enough pressure and embarrasses enough people so that he can finally bring home the body of his son.

Despite these sobering, decidedly noncommercial storylines, Costa-Gavras has received popular as well as critical success, particularly with Z and Missing, because the filmmaker does not bore his audience by structuring his films in a manner that will appeal only to intellectuals. Instead, he casts popular actors with significant box office appeal. Apart from a collective message?that fascism and corruption may occur in any society anywhere in the world?Costa-Gavras's films also work as mysteries and thrillers. He has realized that he must first entertain in order to bring his point of view to a wider, more diversified audience, as well as exist and even thrive within the boundaries of motion picture economics in the Western world. As Pauline Kael so aptly noted, Z is ?something very unusual in European films?a political film with a purpose and, at the same time, a thoroughly commercial film.? Costa-Gavras, however, is not without controversy: State of Siege caused a furor when it was cancelled for political reasons from the opening program of the American Film Institute theater in Washington.

Not all of Costa-Gavras's features are "political": The Sleeping Car Murders is a well-made, atmospheric murder mystery, while Clair de femme is the dreary tale of a widower and a woman scarred by the death of her young daughter. Both of these films star Yves Montand. But while Costa-Gavras's most characteristic works do indeed condemn governments that control other governments or suppress human rights, his concerns as a filmmaker have perhaps shifted toward the more personal. The two features made with scriptwriter Joe Eszterhaus, Betrayed and Music Box, focused on the relationship between the central female character and a man (a lover in Betrayed, a father in Music Box) who is subsequently revealed as a fascist.

On further review, both Betrayed and Music Box prove to be deeply flawed films. Both are set in America, and spotlight quintessentially American characters: an all-American farmer and an up-by-the-bootstraps immigrant. Yet both reveal deeply prejudicial, preconceived notions about the essence of the American character.

Betrayed covers a difficult, explosive topic: Racism and white supremacy in mainstream America. Gary Simmons (Tom Berenger) is a Vietnam war hero and widowed farmer who, outwardly at least, is a likable, salt-of-the-earth American. His mother is the type whose apple pies win blue ribbons at county fairs. His two kids, a boy and a girl, are fine, well-behaved youngsters. On the Fourth of July, this family joins with its neighbors for an afternoon of picnicking and an evening of fireworks.

Yet underneath this picture-perfect view of Main Street lies something warped and sinister. Through changing times and economic realities beyond their understanding and control, Gary and those like him have been losing their farms and their way of life. This powerlessness has been translated into a violent, horrific extremism. Gary?and, it is implied, thousands of others like him?has become a clandestine terrorist. He spouts the gospel that ?the Jews are running the country.? He claims that blacks are not human, but rather ?mud people.? In a sequence that is among the most jarring of any movie of the late 1980s, he and his cronies hunt down and kill a black man strictly for sport. Most disturbing of all, Gary's sweet, cuddly daughter repeats what she's learned from her father. On to the scene comes a government investigator (Debra Winger), posing as an itinerant farm laborer. Before she is certain of his true nature, she finds herself becoming involved with him sexually and romantically.

Betrayed is ultimately an outsider's view of the American heartland and the Vietnam veteran. While Gary and his ilk objectify blacks, Jews, Asians, and gays, Costa-Gavras and screenwriter Joe Eszterhaus are equally as guilty of objectifying white midwesterners. The film would lead you to believe that every last American farmer is a closet cross-burner. And Gary Simmons, a psycho in sheep's clothing, is yet one more superficial celluloid Vietnam veteran.

In Music Box, Armin Mueller-Stahl takes on the Berenger role: a Hungarian-immigrant father accused of horrible war crimes and thus faces deportation. Jessica Lange plays his devoted attorney daughter who defends him in a high-profile trial. Of course, the sweet old man eventually is shown to be guilty as charged. The generalization here is that all working-class immigrants hold equally sinister views, and equally clandestine pasts.

La Petite Apocalypse (The Minor Apocalypse), is a decidedly minor affair, a satire of 1960s radicals, capitalist greed, the demise of communism, and an overzealous media. It premiered in New York in 1995 not on a theatrical run, but as the opening film in the Sixth Annual Human Rights Watch International Film Festival.

Costa-Gavras was one of 40 filmmakers who took part in Lumi?re and Company, a collaborative project that celebrated the 100th anniversary of film. The actual movie camera first developed by the Lumi?re brothers, the Cinematograph, was restored and each of the directors used it to film tiny vignettes, constrained mostly by the capabilities of the machine. Filming was composed of a single shot that could not exceed 52 seconds; only three takes were allowed; and no artificial lighting or synchronous soundtrack could be used. These were interspersed with segments of interviews with the various directors. Costa-Gavras's contribution captures the delight and amazement of people on the street as they peer into the humble wooden box with its crank handle. It is an apt reminder of the power of cinema.?ROB EDELMAN