The emigrant saga For two centuries, the main source of population growth in the United States is immigration from other countries. Now the bulk of immigrants come to the United States from Asia and Latin America, but in the XIX and XX centuries, many immigrants from Europe looked at America as a country of great opportunities and saw in emigration hope to get rid of poverty and start a new life. Among the immigrants were many filmmakers who tried to reflect this theme in their films and made many films – from The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America to all the forgotten low-budget films. The second category includes the painting “Dark Odyssey”.
The main character of the film is a Greek sailor named Yanny Martakis, who arrives in New York and comes ashore. Soon he meets a beautiful girl Niki, also a Greek, falls in love with her and gets close to her family. Nicky's parents see Yanni as a potential suitor for their daughter, but she doesn't know that he has a secret purpose - to find and kill the man who raped his sister. For this, the young Greek is even ready to jeopardize his family happiness.
The debut picture of William Kyriakis and Radley Metzger, shot on life in New York with the participation of non-professional actors, clearly experiences the influence of both Italian neorealism and the creativity of independent American directors. For example, the film has borrowed from the film “In the port” Elia Kazan, who, by the way, two years later made his own film about the fate of the Greek emigrant – “America, America”. Although Dark Odyssey received favorable reviews from a number of critics, it was unable to find a distributor and reach the wide screen. The fate of the directors was different. Kyriakis no longer worked in cinema, and Metzger founded his own rental company and soon became known as the creator of erotic paintings. But that's another story altogether.
6 out of 10