Oi Papatzides // The Swindlers

This one came up in my feed just yesterday; it is pretty darn fantastic.

Be forewarned, it is a long clip.  The first part seems to be a crap game that goes bad, ending in a brawl and a thrown stool that injures a man who will soon be doing some wonderful dancing.  If you have a plane to catch, if you are discretely watching this in your high school physics class, or if you have seen (or participated in) enough crap games gone bad, you can skip this part and start at 1:57 when the scene shifts to the taverna, or you could skip all the way to 2:45 when the band is featured.

For fans of wild and inspired Zembetiko dancing, the fun starts at 4:08 when a sailor pays the band and does a fine job spinning and hoofing  (and doing a nice roll) before dusting himself off and nonchalantly sitting down with his friends.  The true highlight of the video is towards the end at 7:58 when our friend who was the recipient of the flying stool gets up and does his bit to upstage the sailor.  This dance is truly special.

Here's what I think I know about this video.  It says 1957, but I think this film is the 1954 film "I papatzides" (the Swindlers) directed by Alexis Sakellarios.  The IMDB site summarizes the movie as: Struggling to eke out an existence in post-civil-war Greece, a trio of con men find themselves with their backs to the wall after a regrettable affair and a brush with the law. Can the three Athenian swindlers make things right again? The final dancer is Petros Giannakkos, of whom I know little.  His friend, the fellow in the beret, is Nikos Stavridis who shows up in many of the most inspired of these videos and always adds a certain flair to the proceedings.

One of the musicians (the bandleader?) is Yiorgos Batis, who I have not encountered before.  According to his Wikipedia page he worked brewing and selling patent medicine, he collected musical instruments, and he recorded and collaborated with the great Markos Vamvakaris in the 1930s.