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After a late-night taxi ride from Loutraki, I arrive at my Athens hotel at 3:20 a.m. Before collapsing, I go out onto the balcony overlooking the Greek Parliament and Constitution Square. Suddenly I see a breathtaking sight: the rock of the Acropolis jutting up over the flat skyline with the Parthenon bathed in golden light. I never imagined it was right in the middle of Athens, or that it towered so majestically over the city.
Athens has the reputation of being a congested, polluted, unlivable agglomeration. All of that is true. But there is plenty of atmosphere in Plaka, the city's teeming old quarter, with its souvenir and antique shops, ubiquitous stray dogs, cafés and open-air tavernas that serve up Greek food and music late into the night. And in spite of the noise and bustle that dominate the Greek capital, there are peaceful, residential neighborhoods like Lycabettus, where I met American-born filmmaker Jules Dassin.
Dassin is a lonely man. His wife, Greek actress and former culture minister Melina Mercouri died of cancer in 1994. His son, pop singer Joe Dassin, was killed in an automobile accident in France in 1980. But at 88 years old, the American-born film-maker ("Phaedra," "Topkapi," "Never on Sunday") now lives for one thing: seeing the famous Parthenon marbles returned to Greece.
Hacked off the façade of the Parthenon at the beginning of the 19th century by the British Ambassador to Turkey, Lord Elgin, the matchless sculptures were subsequently sold by him to the British government and have resided in the British Museum since 1819. Over the intervening years, there have been numerous efforts to return them to Greece, but the British parliament still refuses to give them back. When Mercouri became Culture Minister in 1981, she made the Elgin Marbles her cause célèbre. Dassin has picked up the banner following her death.
Dassin was under the weather when I visited him in his cozy book-lined study in Athens. Dressed in blue jeans and a dark blue cardigan sweater, he nurses a warm milk-and-cognac toddy and frequently wipes his nose with a handkerchief. "I nearly cancelled our appointment," he says, "but when I realized you wanted to talk about the marbles, I decided to make an effort. It's too important."
With his high forehead and snow white hair, he looks like an ancient Greek sage — even though he was born in Middletown, Connecticut. He met Mercouri while filming "Phaedra" in 1962, and the couple settled in Athens after the fall of the junta in 1974. But Dassin first became enamored of the marbles long before that. "This germ was born in me right after the war, when I first saw them in the British Museum," he says. "I am an old man, but I still remember what I felt. One masterpiece after another, so full of humanity and love — it moved me as a human being."
Dassin recounts the story of Lord Elgin's perfidy with such emotion and immediacy that he seems to be describing some neighborhood scandal that happened yesterday. "It's shocking, scandalous," he says. "Very few rapacious episodes in the history of culture come near to what happened here. These things were as close to perfection as you can get. With huge saws, they hacked away half of the sculptures, doing great structural damage. They even tore Poseidon's torso — they tore his torso!"
Since Mercouri died, Dassin has testified before the British Parliament and worked with various committees for the return of the marbles. "It's a deep, deep passion of mine," he says. "I've been doing nothing else for the last five years. I've never known how much this passion came from Melina to me, but I felt it very strongly even before she asked for them back." With UNESCO, the European Parliament and even a large majority of British public opinion supporting the marbles' return, Dassin feels confident that they will eventually be sent back to Athens. As he sees me to the door, he adds a final thought. "I'll never forget something Melina said — My God! she really cared, and wept. When she became ill, someone mentioned the marbles, and Melina said, 'Well, I hope to see them back here while I'm still alive. But if they come back later, I'll be reborn.' She really believed that."
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