Irene PapasFilmography

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Actors: Nicolas Cage, Penélope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, David Morrissey

Synopsis: Louis de Bernières' best-selling novel of love during wartime is brought to the screen in this story that blends comedy, action, and romance. In 1940, war rages throughout Europe, but the fighting has yet to arrive on the Greek island of Cephallonia, where life continues to follow its own slow Read More

Yerma

Actors: Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, Juan Diego, Irene Papas

Synopsis: Upon learning that her husband may be the reason why she has been unable to conceive, a woman desperate to bear children finds her moral values and her yearning for motherhood in conflict in this drama based on the tale by Federico Garcia Lorca and directed by Pilar Tavora. Yerma (Sanchez-Gijon) Read More

Inquietude

Actors: Jose Pinto, Luis Miguel Cintra, Isabel Ruth, Leonor Silveira

Synopsis: The 89-year-old Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira wrote and helmed this Portuguese-French-Spanish-Swiss co-production, an anthology film drama featuring three tales linked by the theme of death. In "The Immortals," adapted from a Helder Prista Monteiro play, two famous doctors, an 80-year-old Read More

Party

Actors: Michel Piccoli, Irene Papas, Leonor Silveira, Rogério Samora

Synopsis: This French language drama from Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira takes an ironic look at the pretentiousness of international jet-setters while simultaneously examining an obsessive romantic relationship between an aging Lothario and a beautiful married woman. The tale begins at a garden Read More

Jacob

Actors: Sean Bean, Matthew Modine

Synopsis: The biblical story of Jacob explored in this made-for-TV movie starring Matthew Modine as the titular religious figure and Lara Flynn Boyle as his love Rachel. Set against the backdrop of Jacob's many trials from God throughout his life, Turner Pictures' production focuses on the romantic aspect Read More

Pano Kato Ke Plagios

Actors: Irene Papas, Stratos Tzortzoglou

Synopsis: In this antic sex farce, a sexually vigorous older woman (Irene Pappas) and her similarly active gay son Stratos Tzortzoglou) have their amiable life together thrown into high confusion when they both become the love object of an apparently bisexual gym instructor (Panos Mihalopoulos) who claims Read More

Lettera Da Parigi

Actors: Roberto De Francesco, Lucrezia Lante Della Rovere, Irene Papas, Felice Andreasi, Stefano Dionisi

Synopsis: Cristina is passionate, charming, magnetic and forceful, and when she gets involved with Sergio while he is studying at the university, the experience is nearly overwhelming for him. He is easygoing and somewhat aimless; she is determined to have a career as an opera singer. Soon enough she is Read More

Island

Actors: Eva Sitta, Irene Papas, Anoja Weerasinghe, Chris Haywood, Norman Kaye

Synopsis: Greek Irene Papas, Australian Eva Sitta and Sri Lankan Anoja Weerasinghe all meet while vacationing on a tiny Greek island. The threesome discovers that each is a fugitive from an oppressive, unhappy private life. The protective nature of the Island is personified by deafmute native Chris Haywood Read More

High Season

Actors: Jacqueline Bisset, James Fox, Irene Papas, Sebastian Shaw, Kenneth Branagh

Synopsis: Katherine (Jacqueline Bisset) is a photographer who lives in the exotic Greek islands with her sculptor husband Patrick (James Fox) in this comedy. The film lampoons tourists, contains beautiful scenery, and focuses on the relationship and eventual reconciliation of Katherine and Patrick. Side Read More

Cronaca di una Morte Annunciata

Actors: Rupert Everett, Ornella Muti, Anthony Delon, Gian Maria Volontè, Irene Papas, Lucia Bosé

Synopsis: This suspenseful Italian crime drama is set in a Colombian river town and chronicles the series of events that led up to murder. Based on a novel by distinguished author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tale begins in the present as a middle-aged doctor returns to the village after a twenty-year Read More

Sweet Country

Actors: Jane Alexander, John Cullum, Carole Laure, Franco Nero, Joanna Pettet

Synopsis: The Chilean Revolution of 1973 provides the framework of this propaganda drama that chronicles the aftermath of the assassination of President Salvador Allende. Much of the story centers on the effects the revolution has upon an American couple who lived there during the tumult. ~ Sandra Brennan Read More

Un Nino Llamado Jesus

Un Bambino di nome Gesù

Actors: Alessandro Gassman

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Tunisia, the four-hour Italian TV production A Child Called Jesus mixes Scripture with Speculation. The film attempts to fill in the "missing years" of $Jesus, from ages 3 through 12. When King Herod (Hatteb Semlali) fearing that the Messiah has indeed been born, orders that Read More

Into the Night

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Michelle Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth, Irene Papas, Kathryn Harrold

Synopsis: Filled with enough cameos to keep film buffs entertained, this otherwise routine action-comedy by John Landis boasts Michelle Pfeiffer as one of its major attractions. She plays Diana, a woman prone to having affairs with some very dangerous men, and Jeff Goldblum is Ed Okin, an aerospace engineer Read More

Il Disertore

Actors: Irene Papas, Omero Antonutti, Mattia Sbragia

Synopsis: In this tragic story that has an unrealized potential to tug at the emotions, a woman in mourning for her two sons lost in World War I is the only one in her village determined to financially support a war memorial. The village poor have too little money, and the richer are tight-fisted. She has Read More

The Assisi Underground

Actors: Ben Cross, James Mason, Irene Papas, Maximilian Schell, Karlheinz Hackl

Synopsis: Set during World War II, The Assisi Underground deals with the efforts made by a handful of hardy European souls to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. Ben Cross plays a dynamic young Catholic priest who puts his own life on the line to save thousands of refugees from Nazi-occupied Italy. While the Read More

Erendira

Actors: Irene Papas, Claudia Ohana, Michel Lonsdale, Rufus

Synopsis: This tantalizing blend of eroticism and mysticism was adapted from a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Erendira (Claudia Ohana) has a strange and wondrous vision; shortly afterward, her grandmother's house burns down. The grandmother (Irene Papas) gets her revenge by forcing Erendira to become a Read More

La Ballade De Mamlouk

Actors: Yorgo Voyagis, Irene Papas

Synopsis: Mamluk (Yorgo Voyagis) is an unassuming, handsome young peasant who happens to have come along just in time to save the king from a fatal trap, and as a reward, the king offers him the amount of land he can mark off by walking around in one day -- but he must return to the starting point before Read More

Lion of the Desert

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Oliver Reed, Rod Steiger, John Gielgud, Irene Papas

Synopsis: Libyan leader Moummar Quaddafi financed this desert epic about a Libyan hero who helped his nation fend off an Italian invasion in 1929. Anthony Quinn stars as Omar Mukhtar, who organizes Libyan forces to hold off the encroaching Italian troops under General Rodolfo Graziana (Oliver Reed), who are Read More

Christ Stopped at Eboli

Actors: Gian Maria Volontè, Paolo Bonacelli, Alain Cuny, Lea Massari

Synopsis: Based on an autobiographical novel by Carlo Levi, Cristo si e fermato a Eboli stars Gian-Maria Volonte as Levi, a prominent anti-fascist author and artist who, during Mussolini's regime was exiled to Eboli, a tiny village in Southern Italy. The government believed Levi's controversial views would Read More

Bloodline

Actors: Audrey Hepburn, Ben Gazzara, James Mason, Claudia Mori, Irene Papas, Michelle Phillips, Romy Schneider

Synopsis: Bloodline, a thriller based on a mystery novel by Sidney Sheldon and directed by Terence Young, is the story of Elizabeth Roffe (Audrey Hepburn), who inherits a huge pharmaceutical company and then discovers that some of her family members may be plotting her death in order to gain control of the Read More

Iphigenia

Actors: Irene Papas, Costa Kazakos, Costa Carras, Tatiana Papamoskou, Christos Tsangas

Synopsis: This production by Michael Cacoyannes is respectfully adapted from the ancient classical Greek play by Euripides (485-406 BCE). When the Athenians took off in ships to recover their fabled noble daughter Helen from Paris of Troy, their sailing ships were stalled for lack of wind among a group of Read More

Moses

Actors: Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quayle, Ingrid Thulin, Irene Papas, Mariangela Melato

Synopsis: Originally filmed for British television as a six-hour miniseries, Moses appeared in the U.S. in 1975 as a 2 1/2-hour theatrical release. God's lawgiver (Burt Lancaster) is chosen by God to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and into the promised land of Canaan. ~ John Bush Read More

The Message

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Irene Papas, Michael Ansara, Johnny Sekka, Michael Forest

Synopsis: This handsomely-mounted historical epic concerns the birth of the Islamic faith and the story of the prophet Mohammed -- who, in accordance with the tenants of Islam, is never seen or heard (any physical depiction of the prophet is considered a heinous sin within the faith). In Mecca in the 7th Read More

Steps

Actors: Irene Papas, Umberto Orsini

Synopsis: This drama is set upon a Greek island and chronicles the struggles of a woman tortured by the memories of her family. During the war all of them were killed by Nazi invaders. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

La Bambina

Synopsis: When the ambitious skirt chaser Saverio (Luigi Proietti) meets serenely nymphomaniac retarded rich Clothilde (Teresa Ann Savoy), he finds he has met his match; he calms down and she wises up. After he has bedded the girls' mother and a housemaid, he tries to figure out how to make use of his Read More

Le Faro Da Padre

Adventures of Ulysses

Synopsis: The Adventures of Ulysses is a 1974 feature-length abridgement of the 8-part Italian TV miniseries The Odyssey. In super-spectacular fashion, the project endeavors to cover virtually everything in the Homer original, with a few dramatic grace notes added along the way. Yugoslav heartthrob Bekim Fehmiu Read More

Sutjeska

Actors: Richard Burton

Synopsis: This Yugoslavian epic depicts the World War II military exploits of Marshall Tito (played here by Richard Burton), who later became the unrivalled ruler of that troubled country. During that war, he was instrumental in resisting Nazi efforts to exterminate the Yugoslav partisans. The film details Read More

Don't Torture a Duckling

Synopsis: When several young boys are brutally murdered in a small southern Italian village, the superstitious locals react with ignorance and violence. All misfits are immediately suspected, such as big-city tart Barbara Bouchet, the local village idiot, and voodoo practitioner Florinda Bolkan, who is Read More

N.P. Il Segreto

Hubo Una Vez En Nueva York

Synopsis: The 1920s sees New York City being overtaken by a mob. Dubbed into Spanish. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Piazza Pulita

Actors: Adolfo Celi, Richard Conte

Synopsis: Any 1972 film starring Richard Conte was like as not produced in Italy. Despite its title, 1931: Once Upon a Time in New York is no exception to this rule. Conte and Adolfo Celi play rival Chicago gangsters, fighting tooth and tommy-gun over territorial rights. Featured in the cast are Read More

Roma Bene

N. P.

Synopsis: Science fiction often enables artists to explore social trends without being hindered by the limitations of current reality, and this Italian film does just that. It explores the meaning and consequences of the total automation of manufacturing. In this film, N.P. (Francesco Rabal) is an Read More

The Trojan Women

Actors: Katharine Hepburn, Geneviève Bujold, Vanessa Redgrave, Irene Papas, Brian Blessed

Synopsis: The Trojan Women is a film of the ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, which is a highly mannered, ritual-like stage play. It was not easy to transform it into a movie while remaining faithful to the play, but there are many rewards for the patient viewer. The score by Mikis Theodorakis (Zorba the Greek Read More

Un posto ideale per uccidere

Synopsis: A philandering man's wife decides to take matters into her own murderous hands. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide Read More

Anne of the Thousand Days

Actors: Richard Burton, Geneviève Bujold, Irene Papas, Anthony Quayle, John Colicos

Synopsis: Anne of the Thousand Days is the belated film adaptation of Maxwell Anderson's 1948 stage play. The story concentrates on the romance between Britain's King Henry VIII (Richard Burton) and his ill-fated second wife Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold). After holding out for marriage rather than an Read More

A Dream of Kings

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Irene Papas, Inger Stevens, Sam Levene, Val Avery

Synopsis: Anthony Quinn plays Matsoukas, a Greek/American ne'er do well, living in Chicago with his long-suffering wife Caliope (Irene Papas). When Matsoukas discovers that his son (Radames Pera) is dying, he decides that the boy needs to get out of the Windy City and recuperate in the more agreeable Read More

Z

Actors: Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Jacques Perrin, François Perier

Synopsis: Z is one of the most politically insightful films ever made, exposing government hypocrisy and cover-up in the wake of a political assassination. Zei (Yves Montand) is a scientist who is scheduled to give a speech against the use of the atomic bomb. On the way to the event, he is attacked outside Read More

The Brotherhood

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Alex Cord, Irene Papas, Luther Adler, Susan Strasberg

Synopsis: In Martin Ritt's The Brotherhood, Kirk Douglas plays Frank Ginetta, an old-line Mafioso who resents the newer policies encouraged by his younger brother Vince (Alex Cord). Frank resists all attempts at modernizing his operation, whereupon Vince cajoles his father-in-law Dominick Bertolo (Luther Adler Read More

The Desperate Ones

Actors: Maximilian Schell, Raf Vallone, Irene Papas, Theodore Bikel, Maria Perschy

Synopsis: In this drama, two Polish brothers escape from a Russian labor camp and try to join the exiled Polish Army in Afghanistan. While awaiting the man who will sneak them over the border, they rent a room. There, one of them falls in love with the landlord's wife, and the other for a local waitress. Read More

A Ciascuno il Suo

Actors: Gian Maria Volontè, Irene Papas, Gabriele Ferzetti, Salvo Randone

Synopsis: Paolo Giana Maria Volonte is a lonely teacher who learns that two of his friends have been murdered in this twisting crime drama. He discovers that the victims were the recipients of threatening, anonymous letters. Paolo falls for Louisa Irene Papas, the widow of one of the dead men. He finds out Read More

Zeugin Aus Der Hoelle

Actors: Irene Papas, Heinz Drache, Daniel Gélin, Werner Peters, Jean Claudio

Synopsis: In this drama, a Yugoslavian journalist is hired by a German policeman to find the last surviving ex-inmate of a concentration camp. The cops want her because they believe she witnessed atrocities at the hands of the camp physician. The journalist finds her and the cops and prosecutors try to Read More

Roger La Honte

Actors: Georges Géret, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Irene Papas, Jean Topart

Zorba the Greek

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Alan Bates, Irene Papas, Lila Kedrova, Georges Foundas

Synopsis: If ever there was a role that Anthony Quinn was born to play, it was the lusty, life-affirming title character in Zorba the Greek. The scene is the isle of Crete, where English writer Alan Bates arrives in the hopes of realigning his own values and outlook on life. He is "adopted" by the Read More

The Moon-Spinners

Actors: Hayley Mills, Eli Wallach, Peter McEnery, Joan Greenwood, Irene Papas

Synopsis: Disney produced this distilled Hitchcockian suspense yarn, diluted for the consumption of children. Hayley Mills stars as Nikky Ferris who is spending time in Crete at a small inn called The Moon-Spinners with her Aunt Frances (Joan Greenwood). One day Nikky discovers a handsome young man, Mark Read More

Electra

Actors: Irene Papas, Yannis Fertis, Theanno Ioannidou, Notis Peryalis

Synopsis: This excellent adaptation by Michael Cacoyannis of the famous tragedy by Euripides garnered him his first international success and an award at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Irene Papas plays Electra, the daughter of King Agememnon and sister of Orestes, caught up in an uncontrollable need for Read More

The Guns of Navarone

Actors: Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren

Synopsis: The guns of Navarone are huge Nazi cannons, installed on an Aegean island behind enemy lines. Anthony Quayle is the officer assigned by the British to lead a task force to put the guns out of commission. When Quayle is injured, the mission winds up in the relatively inexperienced hands of Gregory Peck Read More

Antigone

Synopsis: Yiorgos Tzavellas wrote and directed this award-winning attempt at reimagining the classic tragedy by Sophocles as an actual motion picture rather than simply filming the play, as was common in Greek adaptations of theatrical productions since the late '20s. Manos Katrakis received widespread Read More

Tribute to a Badman

Actors: James Cagney, Don Dubbins, Stephen McNally, Irene Papas, Vic Morrow

Synopsis: The catch-all title Tribute to a Bad Man had been floating around MGM for years (at one point, it was the working title for The Bad and the Beautiful) before it was finally affixed to this big-budget western. Originally intended as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, the film was recast with James Cagney Read More

Attila, Flagello di Dio

Actors: Anthony Quinn, Sophia Loren, Henri Vidal, Irene Papas, Colette Regis

Synopsis: Italian director Pietro Francisci directed this 1954 drama about the fifth-century invasion of Rome by Attila the Hun. Anthony Quinn stars as the legendary barbaric King of the Huns who wreaked havoc upon Rome, threatening to topple the entire empire. Sophia Loren costars as Honoria, the beautiful Read More

Teodora, imperatrice di Bisanzio

Actors: Georges Marchal, Gianna Maria Canale, Roger Pigaut, Henri Guisol

Synopsis: The English-language title of this European costume epic alternated between Theodora, Byzantine Empress and Theodora, Slave Empress. Gianna-Maria Canale stars as Theodora, the Egyptian dancing girl who wins the heart of Roman emperor Justinian (Georges Marchal). Many historical accounts indicate Read More

The Man from Cairo

Actors: George Raft, Gianna Maria Canale, Massimo Serato, Guido Celano, Irene Papas

Synopsis: It's hardly a coincidence that George Raft made so many films outside the U.S. when he began to have income-tax problems in the early 1950s. The Man From Cairo casts Raft as an American vacationing in Algiers. In short order, he becomes involved with a group of mercenaries who are searching for a Read More

Le Infedeli

Actors: Gina Lollobrigida, May Britt, Anna Maria Ferrero, Pierre Cressoy, Marina Vlady

Synopsis: Le Infedeli is graced by two internationally popular leading ladies: Italy's Gina Lollobrigida and Sweden's Mai Britt. The two actresses are but small portions of a larger plot mosaic, all about keeping up appearances no matter what the provocation. A group of "respectable" people are all partly Read More

Greece: It Was Nothing...It Was Everything

Actors: Irene Papas