Do you like Jenny Karezi; Do you consider yourself a fan of hers? Are you saying that you have laughed or cried with all her movies? Now it's time to review. No, if you love the unforgettable actress. This can not happen. But for having seen all the movies he has starred in.
"A sphere in the heart"! Most likely, this title does not tell you many things. Unless you've been searching for what the summer movies will show in the next few days and you've stumbled upon it. Although it is almost certain that you will pass him. And yet…
This is the title of Jenny Karezi's lost film. The only international production that the Greek star ever participated in. A movie that had been shown in cinemas since 1966 and many thought they would never see it again!
Francesco Montelepre (played by Sami Frey) is a young fallen aristocrat from Sicily. A marquis tangled with the local mafia which tries to "eat" his property. Montelepre gets into extra trouble with the mobsters when he injures one of them. He is forced to leave Italy in pursuit of the mobsters.
He arrives in Greece and tries to hide in bustling Athens. The mafia boss Richard (played by Vassilis Diamantopoulos) orders Montelepre to be found and executed and somehow the chase begins.
The young aristocrat is forced to do various chores, such as pianist or accompanist.
The feeling of Anna, played by the impressive Françoise Ardi (who at that time was already a famous singer in France), is on vacation in Greece with a friend and complicates the case when she finds out that Francesco Montelepre has fallen in love with a singer of a bar.
Carla is the third consecutive role and in fact in the same number of years, where the unforgettable Jenny Karezi plays a woman of "free morals" who makes a living in a Trump cabaret.
In addition to the starring duo of Sami Frey and Françoise Ardi and co-star Jenny Karezi, the cast also includes Spyros Fokas, Vassilis Diamantopoulos, o Sotiris Moustakas, Viveta Tsiouni, Artemis Matsas, Dimitris Myrat, Anna Raftopoulou, George Moutsios, Christos Negas and Nikos Tsakiridis, Nikos Fermas, Costas Ferris, Fanis Chinas, George Marinos and Zanino!
The shooting of the film took place in Trump, Perama, Athens, Delphi, Ahladokambos, Skyros and Sicily. It was filmed in 1965 and some of the filming (which lasted four months) coincided with the bloody Juliana in Athens.
The director of Jean-Daniel Pole chose him as his assistant Costa Ferri with whom they developed a strong friendship when the first had come again to Greece to shoot a documentary at the temple of Epicurean Apollo in 1964.
After the shooting of the film, the two of them took to the streets of Athens to demonstrate. The relationship that developed between them led Ferris to seek refuge in France when the junta of colonels was imposed in 1967.
To return to the film, it should be noted that in the original distribution of the roles, that of the "bar singer", Carla, was intended for Vera Kruska. Jenny Karezi won her role in the film with the fluent French she was taught as a student in Ursulines. She also sings two songs in the film, the music of which is signed by Mikis Theodorakis.
The film was released in Greece and France in 1966 and then disappeared from the screens. The irony is that this was Pole's only attempt to flirt with commercial cinema, aiming for tickets, but the commercial performance of the film in Greece and France disappointed. It was shown in Thessaloniki Film Festival in 1967, but was never played on television, as it was considered an artistic and financial failure and has since been forgotten in a drawer.
The duration of the film is 84 minutes, it is in color and the language in which it was shot is French and it has Greek subtitles.
All these years the only ones that had survived from the film were some of her posters, the songs of Mikis Theodorakis who wrote the music for the film and a short excerpt in which Karezi does not appear (as the protagonist was Françoise Ardi). Everyone knew about Karezi's lost film but no one could say anything more because on the one hand no one knew where she was and on the other hand few had seen her.
Everything changed, however, in 2018 when a copy of it was discovered in France. Carousel Films undertook its restoration and re-release, while a year later in 2019, the French Cinema Center funded the full digital restoration of the film.
On Wednesday, September 10, the film was screened again for the first time in Greece after 1966 and somehow Jenny Karezi's blue-green eyes shone again on the big screen and in fact with material that was considered by many to be lost.
For those who are interested in moving to another era and admiring a forgotten film by the unsurpassed Jenny Karezi, "a sphere in the heart" is shown daily at the Riviera summer cinema, at 46 Valtetsiou Street at Exarchia and at the Martha Karagianni cinema in Drapetsona, only on Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 September.