Nico Papatakis, who has died aged 92, was the Paris nightclub owner through whom the writer Jean Genet was able to realise his hopes of making a film; the result, a silent short called Un Chant d’Amour, caused a scandal when it was first shown in 1950 because of its homosexual content, but is now regarded as a classic of gay cinema.
Whereas Genet would make no further films, Papatakis went on to tease the censors with several more projects, many of them inspired by his early collaboration with Genet, in which he explored such controversial subjects as political and sexual exploitation. The French newspaper Libération described him as the “cinéaste provocateur”.
Nico Papatakis
Papatakis first met Genet in Saint-Germain-des-Près in 1943. An enigmatic blue-eyed Greek who had arrived in Paris before the war, Papatakis was in his mid-20s and strikingly handsome. At the time both men were desperately poor and they worked in collaboration to burgle the houses of the rich. Though they were never lovers (Papatakis was heterosexual) their relationship was fiery. On one occasion, when Genet earned some money from his writing, he taunted Papatakis with a wad of banknotes, then called the police when the young man tried to snatch the money away from him.
In 1946 Papatakis opened La Rose Rouge, a subterranean cabaret nightclub in the Rue de Rennes which became a favourite haunt of the Left Bank artists, writers and intellectuals of the postwar era. When Genet came to him with an idea for a film, Papatakis suggested they use an empty restaurant room above the club, and the sets were constructed in the space. Papatakis put up the money and Genet directed the film and chose the actors from among the pimps, thugs and male lovers with whom he associated in Montmartre.
Un Chant d’Amour, set in a French prison, was concerned with the mutual sexual longings of two prisoners separated by a wall, and contained explicit homoerotic material. After its initial screening, it was banned in France and subsequently worldwide. In America where the film was shown, briefly, in the 1960s, screenings were violently broken up by the police. To recoup his costs, Papatakis set about selling individual prints to wealthy gay collectors.
In the mid-1970s, after Un Chant d’Amour was approved for public viewing (albeit with some of its more controversial scenes cut), Papatakis somehow contrived to be given a producer’s prize for the film, which he presented as Genet’s recent work. Genet, who had come to dislike the film, was furious and the two men never spoke again.
Nikos Papatakis was born on July 19 1918 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Greek parents. In 1935, after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, he joined Haile Selassie’s army but, after the defeat by Mussolini’s forces, fled into exile, first to Libya and then Greece. In 1939 he moved to Paris, where he studied acting and where his looks won him a ready entrée into Bohemian circles frequented by the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, Jacques Prévert and Jean Vilar.
Papatakis ran his nightclub until the mid-1950s. In 1954 he married the actress, Anouk Aimée, with whom he had a daughter. When the marriage broke up after three years he moved to New York, where he put up the money to enable John Cassavetes to reshoot scenes from Shadows (1959), his first film as director. Papatakis also embarked on an affair with the German-born model Christa Paffgen, who took the professional name Nico from him before falling in with the Rolling Stones and Andy Warhol and performing with the Velvet Underground.
On his return to Paris, Papatakis produced and directed his first feature, Les Abysses (1963). The film, a gothic concatenation of lesbian desire, bloody violence, incest and sadomasochism, was praised as “la Première tragédie du cinema” by Jean-Paul Sartre, but roused the black-tie audience at Cannes to near-riot. This was, in part, due to the film’s thinly-veiled critique of French society and the tensions surrounding the anticolonial struggle in Algeria.
Four years later Papatakis secretly crossed the border into Greece, then under the military dictatorship, to film The Shepherds of Disorder (also known as Thanos and Despina, 1967), a disturbing political allegory about a young shepherd and the daughter of a wealthy landowner who dare to question the traditional values of Greek society. The film starred Papatakis’s second wife, Olga Karlatos, with whom he was active in campaigning against the colonels.
Gloria Mundi (1975), which starred Olga Karlatos as an actor who plays an Algerian terrorist, was withdrawn when the extreme Right threatened to plant bombs in the French cinemas where it was showing, and had to wait until 2005 to be screened again in Paris. The Photograph (1987) was an allegory about the corrupting effect of power, featuring a young Greek hounded by his dead father’s communist past, who takes refuge from the junta with a cousin in Paris and proceeds to exploit him cruelly. Papatakis’s last film, Les Equilibristes (1992), was a thinly-disguised account of Genet’s doomed relationship with an Algerian tightrope walker.
Nico Papatakis died on December 17. His marriage to Olga Karlatos was dissolved in 1982. He is survived by his son and daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8374545/Nico-Papatakis.html
Papatakis ran his nightclub until the mid-1950s. In 1954 he married the actress, Anouk Aimée, with whom he had a daughter. When the marriage broke up after three years he moved to New York, where he put up the money to enable John Cassavetes to reshoot scenes from Shadows (1959), his first film as director. Papatakis also embarked on an affair with the German-born model Christa Paffgen, who took the professional name Nico from him before falling in with the Rolling Stones and Andy Warhol and performing with the Velvet Underground.
On his return to Paris, Papatakis produced and directed his first feature, Les Abysses (1963). The film, a gothic concatenation of lesbian desire, bloody violence, incest and sadomasochism, was praised as “la Première tragédie du cinema” by Jean-Paul Sartre, but roused the black-tie audience at Cannes to near-riot. This was, in part, due to the film’s thinly-veiled critique of French society and the tensions surrounding the anticolonial struggle in Algeria.
Four years later Papatakis secretly crossed the border into Greece, then under the military dictatorship, to film The Shepherds of Disorder (also known as Thanos and Despina, 1967), a disturbing political allegory about a young shepherd and the daughter of a wealthy landowner who dare to question the traditional values of Greek society. The film starred Papatakis’s second wife, Olga Karlatos, with whom he was active in campaigning against the colonels.
Gloria Mundi (1975), which starred Olga Karlatos as an actor who plays an Algerian terrorist, was withdrawn when the extreme Right threatened to plant bombs in the French cinemas where it was showing, and had to wait until 2005 to be screened again in Paris. The Photograph (1987) was an allegory about the corrupting effect of power, featuring a young Greek hounded by his dead father’s communist past, who takes refuge from the junta with a cousin in Paris and proceeds to exploit him cruelly. Papatakis’s last film, Les Equilibristes (1992), was a thinly-disguised account of Genet’s doomed relationship with an Algerian tightrope walker.
Nico Papatakis died on December 17. His marriage to Olga Karlatos was dissolved in 1982. He is survived by his son and daughter.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/film-obituaries/8374545/Nico-Papatakis.html
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