"The extraordinary is as rare in motion pictures as it is in life. [...] Yet there is no better word for Anthony Quinn in the role he was born to play: Zorba the Greek. [...] Everything about the film and the man is different. [...] When Zorba talks, you listen. [...] When Zorba drinks, you taste it. When Zorba loves, you feel it. Because this is a man who devours life as if it were a feast, a man who never puts off till tomorrow what he can enjoy today. Here is his world: sea-bathed, sun-washed Greece. Its sights, its sounds, its music, its dancing. Above all, here are its people: as proud as the silent village beauty whose desires only Zorba understood; [...] the vulnerable English youth whom Zorba sent stumbling into love; the Rabelaisian French madame who was loved by no less than four admirals; people as proud, as cruel, as revengeful, as murderous, as their barren, mountainous homeland. [...] And overshadowing them all, Zorba fighting for life, laughing at death, attaining his place among the immortal characters of our time."