Paradise lost, paradise regained: Cacoyannis's 'Stella'

This paper focuses on Cacoyannis' film, Stella (1955), and the conflicts of Athenian society in the 1950s as represented by the characters who frequent the bar Paradise. The film is punctuated by violent attempts to invade Paradise and by the heroine's determination to resist these external pressures. Stella both embodies and "narrativizes" the space of the bar that she protects. In Cacoyannis' film, conflicts are articulated through the mediating presence of artifacts (namely, the car and the piano), which both divide and connect the different worlds that the characters inhabit. The possibility of reconciling antagonistic social viewpoints is also suggested in the attempt to assimilate diverse musical styles in the film. The final section of the paper focuses on the ways in which Stella resists the controlling male gaze. In so doing, the heroine is associated with a dynamic model of reciprocity that holds out the possibility of reconciliation.