History’s Gender Bias: The Case of Maria Plyta, the First Greek Female Director

Maria Plyta is the first Greek female director. She helmed her first film in 1950 and directed her swan song in 1970. She worked within the commercial film industry and the most popular production companies; she was prolific – her filmography counts seventeen films, most of which did very well at the Greek box office;¹ and she collaborated with the elite of the domestic film industry, from A-list actors to famous composers, art directors and directors of photography. In other words, Plyta’s career ticks all the boxes that should place her in the Greek film canon, make her a household name in Greece, and the subject of books, presentations, university classes and retrospectives. This is not the case. Plyta died in 2006, at the age of 91. Only a handful of people attended her funeral, as we learn from two sources that were close to Plyta until her passing and were present during the last goodbye. That must have been a sombre experience for those few individuals that said goodbye to a woman whose life and work must have inspired her contemporaries but whose legacy remains hidden.

Yet, Plyta’s story is not uncommon in world cinema. On the one hand, history cannot document everything and there aren’t enough academics and/or writers in the world that can account for every individual and every event. Choices are made; individuals, communities and/or events are omitted in the context of a specific thesis, academic assignment, book proposal, and even time frame, access to archives, funding or the lack thereof. On the other hand, I posit that Plyta’s absence from the history of Greek cinema is not a happenstance or an accidental omission but is a result of her gender. Gender is one of those historiographical parameters that can lead to the inclusion or exclusion of individuals and even films from a given national film canon that is usually formed by cinephiles, film critics and scholars. For decades, female scholars² have underlined the gender bias embedded in historiography since the latter’s professionalisation in the 19th century. Predominantly male writers systematically marginalised women’s contributions and dismissed the rich accounts of social customs, daily life, and influential women that female historians documented.³ This exclusion not only devalued women’s perspectives but also reinforced a male-centric view of history. This type of historical discourse was just another way of patriarchy to keep women hidden and limited to the domestic sphere. This systemic exclusion is not merely an oversight but part of a larger ideological framework that naturalises male dominance, AKA patriarchy.

In 2011, I posited that patriarchy can be understood as a myth in the Barthesian sense. Roland Barthes defined myth in 1957 “as discourse… a system of communication,”⁴ and claimed it appears in all aspects of human activities and representations, to which I would add all discourses such as historical writing. Barthes adds that:  

Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification (…) If I state the fact of French imperiality without explaining it, I am very near to finding that it is natural and goes without saying: I am reassured. In passing from history to nature, myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences, (…) it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth, a world wide open and wallowing in the evident, it establishes a blissful clarity (…).⁵

Over millennia, through successive revisions, legal codifications, and cultural amendments, patriarchy has been “naturalised” and internalised by both women and men as an immutable feature of human society. Recent research conducted at Washington University in St. Louis lends empirical support to this hypothesis.⁶ By analysing dental records from over 10,000 individuals across more than one hundred archaeological sites in Europe, researchers provided compelling evidence that modern gender norms and biases possess deep historical roots. According to the study, these norms are “transmitted” or handed down intergenerationally, and they persist even in the face of colossal socioeconomic and political transformations such as industrialisation and world wars.⁷ Thus, the gender bias we encounter in historical documentation stems from patriarchal dictates that appear disguised as “scientific methods,” “important events,” or “great men,” among others. 

This article uses the case study of Plyta to argue that her exclusion from the Greek film canon stems from her gender and the patriarchal norms embedded in historiography. As Janet Staiger observes, canon formation results from negotiations among critics, historians, theorists, and filmmakers. She adds, however, that “written histories of cinema are the more obvious place for canon formation.”⁸ My analysis will thus focus mainly on the content of Greek film history books that survey Greek cinema from 1950 to 1970, the period of Plyta’s activity. My aim is to contribute to the growing literature that exposes the gender bias inherent in historical writing and, more importantly, to reassess the legacy of a pioneering woman filmmaker who deserves critical attention.

Plyta’s Place in Greek Cinema History Books

I begin with a brief overview of Greek cinema in order to place Plyta within a historical context. Owing to the political upheavals of the early 20th century, Greek silent film production remained limited. Although sound filmmaking began in the early 1940s, it was only after the end of the Civil War (1946–1949) that film production increased significantly, accompanied by a collective effort to establish a national cinema. The standard periodisation in scholarly literature typically identifies three main eras in Greek cinema history: Old Greek Cinema (approximately 1950–1970), marked by production standardisation, the rise of a star system, and a clear genre divide between commercially popular “melodramas” and “comedies/farces” and “serious” films; New Greek Cinema (circa 1970–1990), characterised by auteur-driven works, mainly including explicit political commentary or social allegory; and Contemporary Greek Cinema (predominantly post-2000), representing the most recent phase of national cinematic development. Plyta is part of Old Greek Cinema, which to date remains the era that produced the most commercial successes as well as the majority of the art films in the Greek film canon. 

The Greek film canon has been shaped by a variety of factors, including the founding of the Athens Film Critics Association in 1950 and the Athens Film Club soon after; the efforts of individuals like Aglaia Mitropoulou to cultivate a Greek film culture; the state’s inadequate—at times indifferent or even hostile—stance toward cultivating a robust film industry; the predominantly profit-driven film producers; the influence of foreign cinema and critical frameworks such as the “auteur” theory; and the longstanding divide between high and low culture and the resulting preference for “art” films. These are the main forces behind the Greek film canon, which primarily features art films and tends to celebrate a relatively homogenous group of male directors. These are also, grosso modo, the criteria used by other countries and the United States in particular. As Staiger notices, the “uniformity” in the canon of American films is understandable since its writers “generally accepted dominant notions of art.”⁹ As I will soon show, Greece was no exception. 

David Bordwell notes that from the 1920s onward, one finds “book-length film histories,” often “based on secondary sources and small bodies of films.”¹⁰ Bordwell is primarily referring to anglophone publications, as relevant Greek books emerged much later, largely due to the country’s tumultuous political history—particularly up until the end of the dictatorship in 1974.¹¹ Until the 1990s and early 2000s, books on Greek cinema were written chiefly by a few passionate individuals and not academics. Accordingly, our corpus includes all Greek cinema history books published in the Greek language since 1961, organised in chronological order of publication. The seven titles are: 

• Frixos Iliadis’s Greek Cinema, 1906 – 1960 (1961), about 250 pages.¹²
• Aglaia Mitropoulou’s Greek Cinema (1980/2005), 466 pages.
• Yannis Soldatos’s History of Greek Cinema, Vol. 1, 1900–1967, (2002), 367 pages, and Vol. 4 – Documents 1900-1970, (2004), 554 pages.¹³
• Ninos Fenek Mikelidis’s History of Cinema (1997), 184 pages.¹⁴
• Angelos Rouvas and Christos Stathakopoulos’s Greek Cinema: History, Filmography, Biographies, Vol. A 1905–1970 (2005), 1237 pages.
• Vrasidas Karalis’s A History of Greek Cinema (2023). 

Of the seven authors above, only the last one is a scholar and the writer of the most recent history of Greek cinema. Frixos Iliadis (1923–2010) was an important figure in Greek cultural life. A journalist, film critic, screenwriter, director, and translator, Iliadis authored Greek Cinema 1906–1960 in 1961, the first complete history of Greek cinema to our knowledge, which includes a rich tapestry of rare photographic material, production posters, and published reviews. Aglaia Mitropoulou (1929–1991) was a foundational figure in Greek cinema, and one could easily parallel her journey with that of Iris Barry. Through her collaborations with important individuals such as the founder of the Cinémathèque Française Henri Langlois and her in-depth knowledge of the arts, she mainly promoted art cinema in Greece, favouring its aesthetic and political dimensions, especially during the transformative decades of the mid-20th century. Mitropoulou also played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Greek Film Archive Foundation (Cinémathèque de Grèce) in 1963 of which she became the first President. Ninos Fenek Mikelidis is mostly known as a film critic, although he is also a published poet and a director of an awarded short film. Yannis Soldatos is one of those individuals that spearheaded the publication of books on cinema with the establishment of the publishing house “Aigokeros” in 1979. A cinephile as well as a director, novelist and playwright, Soldatos has written dozens of books on cinema, plays and novels; for decades, his history books were among the very few reference books that any individual interested in Greek films and their history could consult in their own language. Angelos Rouvas is one of the first Greeks animators and a screenwriter, while Christos Stathakopoulos is a collector of posters, programs and other memorabilia of Greek films. These individuals wrote their histories of Greek cinema driven by their love of the medium, their understanding of its cultural significance and the need to share their knowledge and their archival material with Greek readers. 

The information above reinforces Bordwell’s essential observation that “most useful histories (of the past) were written by film aficionados, archivists, and independent scholars.”¹⁵ This assertion highlights the tendency of film history books to be either nation-based or global surveys, rather than focused monographs. In the case of Greek cinema – with the exception of Mitropoulou’s theoretically targeted and eclectic approach, and Karalis’ recent monograph – most contributions consist largely of film lists, archival materials (including posters, stills, interviews, and reviews), and brief accounts of milestones, such as the first Greek film, the first producer, or the first cinema theatre. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to these early pioneers: their dedication to cinema, their passion for Greek films, and the countless hours they spent collecting materials, watching films, writing, reviewing, and organising events. They were the first to recognise the importance of preserving Greece’s cinematic heritage. However, despite our gratitude, it is now our responsibility to reassess the canon and identify any discrepancies, inaccuracies, or omissions. Historical progress cannot occur without adapting to social changes. Therefore, while we acknowledge the vital work of these writers, a gender-sensitive and Plyta-centred critique is essential to filling the gaps in Greek cinema history. 

Iliadis’s Greek Cinema, 1906–1960 represents the first systematic attempt to trace the evolution of domestic film production from the silent era to the end of 1960. His approach is primarily descriptive and archival: he lists all the films produced in Greece during this period, offering a valuable record of titles, cast, and production companies, but generally refrains from prioritising individual directors. In many entries, emphasis falls on actors or production companies rather than the filmmakers themselves. This tendency is evident in his treatment of Plyta’s debut. Iliadis writes: “‘Novak-Film’ makes a noble effort to adapt a beautiful play, The Engagement by D. Bogris. The giant Aimilios Veakis leads the cast along with (…). Screenplay and direction by Maria Xatzinakou-Plyta (…).”¹⁶ Although Plyta is credited, her groundbreaking role as Greece’s first female director is not mentioned, while the production company and the stature of Veakis overshadow her historical “first.” On the following page, Iliadis seems to offer a partial corrective when discussing her second film: “Maria Plyta-Xatzinakou, moving for a second time within the ethography genre, presents She-Wolf, another commendable creation of ‘AnZervos’ (a production company). This esteemed first female director adapted the novel by Sol. Makris, a distinguished emerging novelist.”¹⁷ Despite referring to Plyta as “esteemed,” Iliadis’s framing continues to foreground institutional and star elements over the female director’s role. While he does document all of Plyta’s films within the period he examines, the lack of critical commentary leads—perhaps unintentionally—to the underrepresentation of her role in shaping Greek cinema in its early stages.

In fact, an important observation about most of the history books of our corpus is that they avoid detailed contextualisation, systematic categorisation, theoretical frameworks, or contemporary evaluation. Most authors state their goal as follows:

This book attempts, from a personal perspective — it couldn’t be otherwise — to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the evolution of cinema in our country.¹⁸ 

This work comes, in two volumes, to complement the three corresponding volumes of History, by classifying and presenting documents from the approximately one hundred years of the history of Greek cinema. From the endless number of pages covered by domestic publications… certain ones were selected with the aim of conveying an atmosphere…¹⁹

Even though we came from different professional avenues, we decided to join forces (material and mental) and to move forward with a provocative venture, which had as its goal the most complete collection possible of elements (mainly photos) related to the totality of feature films and their contributors in Greek cinema over the last hundred years. We worked not with the critical eye of two film historians (which we are not), but as amateurs (…).²⁰

Yet even though the short introductions claim an absence of criticism, evaluation, or any division between art and popular/mainstream cinema, they nonetheless contain traces of judgment. Soldatos’s one-page introduction (2004) mentions three celebrated art films — two from the 1950s and one from 1971 — that are still regarded as landmarks of Greek cinema.²¹ Moreover, the author does not clarify the criteria used to “choose” the documents he presents. Similarly, Mikelidis’s (1997) introduction references almost two dozen individuals (mostly producers and directors) — including two female auteurs from the 1980s and 1990s — but his selection once again reflects the division between art cinema and commercial productions. 

In her seminal monograph on Greek cinema, Mitropoulou proposes a historical periodisation that presents an evolution—from early pioneers to the politically charged cinema of the post-1967 era. Her chapter “In Search of Identity (1950–1967)” focuses entirely on male directors, including sections on filmmakers such as Yiorgos Tzavellas, Iliadis, Michael Cacoyannis, and Nikos Koundouros. The chapter also contains thematic subsections like “Neorealism,” “Tragedy Adaptations,” and “New Directors – New Perspective.” Of the chapter’s 126 pages, 55 are devoted to Cacoyannis (40 pages) and Koundouros (15 pages). This emphasis instantly reflects Mitropoulou’s critical framework and her alignment with a canon shaped around auteur-driven, art-house cinema—one in which a more mainstream but no less important female voice such as Plyta’s will remain largely absent. Indeed, Plyta’s name is only included in the directors’ index at the end of the book where she is acknowledged as the first female director of Greece. The historical information and theoretical insights in Mitropoulou’s book remain unquestionably essential for the study of Greek cinema in the 21st century. Yet, the notable exclusion of Plyta as a pioneer in the journey of the country’s search for a cinematic identity can only reflect the internalised gender biases of Mitropoulou’s era. Plyta’s omission highlights how even trailblazing female historians replicate dominant patriarchal narratives, sidelining women’s contributions.

Soldatos’s History of Greek Cinema, Volume 1 (1900–1967) (2002) covers the majority of Plyta’s oeuvre—she directed only one more film after 1967. The volume includes only two references to Plyta. The first appears in the section titled “The Other Films of the Decade” (1940s), a framing that immediately marginalises the works mentioned therein as inferior to those highlighted in the chapter “The First Post-War Years,” which includes dedicated subheadings focusing on historical context, the film industry, key directors, and individual films. Among the four titles discussed in “The Other Films of the Decade,” Soldatos does include a contemporary positive review of Plyta’s directorial debut. There are also brief mentions of her in relation to the casting of comedian Mimis Fotopoulos in her 1951 film O Vaftistikos (The Godson), and a short paragraph on page 271 discussing a few of her 1960s films. In Greek Cinema: A History of Documents, Volume A (1900–1970) (2004), Soldatos presents an extensive archive of Greek film history, offering rare documentation—including photos, posters, interviews, and newspaper reviews—spanning from the early silent era to 1970. The book provides valuable visual material and insights, particularly into early film productions and those predating the end of the Greek Civil War in 1949, a year commonly viewed as the starting point of standardised film production in Greece. Plyta’s name appears thirteen times, yet eleven of these are limited to captions or lists. 

The book is organised by decades, with Soldatos offering brief summaries at the beginning of each section. In the “1951-1960: Reorganisation” chapter, he refers to 12 male directors.²² He highlights Grigoriou, Stelios Tatasopoulos, and Greg Tallas for their contributions to neorealism; Nikos Tsiforos for making Aliki Vougiouklaki a star in the 1954 film To pontikaki – though there is no mention of Tsiforos’ impressive noir influences or the excellent cinematography of the film; Cacoyannis and Koundouros for their art films and international recognition; and the rest as debuting directors of the decade. Notably, there is no mention of the nine films directed by Plyta between 1951 and 1960. These include neorealist works inspired by Greek traditions, such as I lykaina (The She-Wolf, 1951), one of the first Greek musicals; The Godson; the modernist 1953 Eva (which was decades ahead in its exploration of female agency); the first sound female biopic, Doukissa tis Plakentias (The Duchess of Plakendia, 1956); two poignant female-driven dramas, To koritsi tis geitonias (The Girl of the Neighbourhood, 1954) and  Ta navagia tis zois (The Shipwrecks of Life, 1959); and one of the rare Greek comedies that uses cross-dressing to critique contemporary gender roles, Andras eimai… kai to kefi mou tha kano! (I’m a Man and I’ll Do as I Please, 1960). 

Since many Greek film histories divide films into comedy/farces and melodramas, often dismissing the latter as inferior,²³ it is possible that Plyta’s omission reflects Soldatos’s affinity towards this division. His comment that “melodrama and farces-comedies had already begun to dominate the cinematic landscape,” suggests a bias against these genres, which were not considered “serious” films. Therefore, since most of Plyta’s films were categorised as melodramas, they were unworthy of further analysis. Consequently, even though her narratives intelligently used and/or subverted generic conventions and explored more complex themes around gender identities and social class, they were almost a priori overlooked in favour of films that conformed to a widely accepted notion of serious cinema both domestically and internationally.

Bottom of Form

Nowhere in Soldatos’s 554-page volume is Plyta’s complete oeuvre recognised as a rich tapestry of female subjectivity or even as a significant film output. However, the book does include two historical documents. First, it reproduces a 1959 interview with Plyta,²⁴ and a 1955 review by critic Kostas Stamatiou of her biopic The Duchess of Plakendia.²⁵ Contemporary scholarship on the biopic has highlighted the rarity of female-centred narratives.²⁶ In this context, Plyta’s Duchess deserves credit as the first female-driven historical biopic produced in Greece after the advent of sound. Stamatiou’s 1955 review is dismissive from the outset, exemplifying the critical bias Plyta’s work faced:

As if we didn’t have enough problems, now comes this. It’s harsh to welcome The Duchess of Plakendia with such words—a film that cost Mrs. Plyta-Hatzinakou years of hard work—but we cannot avoid writing them. At a time when we still haven’t managed to portray the heroic figures of our own History, at a time when we can barely even present today’s reality, why do we need this foreign eccentric woman who, if we are to believe the Encyclopaedia, played a rather suspicious and harmful role in our country? Unfortunate, then, is the choice of subject—and even more unfortunate is its execution (both in writing and in production). Period films require responsibility, because they involve issues of language, historical accuracy, architecture, costume design, etc. That sense of responsibility seems to be missing from Mrs. Plyta’s film: she presents the foreign adventuress unanchored (in essence, only three years of her life: 1834–1837), mixes things up casually and arbitrarily without shedding the slightest light on important figures (…) These are not serious things. We fully acknowledge the difficulties and the effort, but we cannot help but say it: this is an arbitrary, depressing, and boring melodrama.²⁷

Soldatos includes many of Stamatiou’s reviews, the majority of which are harsh—even towards films that are now considered milestones in Greek cinema. Yet, his judgmental assessment of The Duchess of Plakendia, his failure to acknowledge its status as the first female-centred historical biopic in the sound era, and his omission of the mother-daughter relationship at its core reveal a traditional masculinity and an ideological stance that legitimises only a narrow spectrum of films while “cancelling” others.

In The Great Moments of Cinema: 100 Years. Greek Films. From 1897 to Today in 1997, Nino Fenek Mikelidis mentions Plyta twice. He first positions her in the period 1950-1959 which he labels “For a stronger realism,” and discusses her first two films in a brief paragraph, noting that she is the first female director.²⁸ Plyta is mentioned again on page 158, in the short bios of the last section of the book, titled “Filmography of Greek Directors,” although her birth year (1915) is wrongly stated as 1950. Mikelidis notes that Plyta mostly directed melodramas, placing women in central positions. However, his example is Lykaina, the 1951 film he considered an ethography. 

The director entries in the volume reflect the author’s preference for art cinema and auteurism and his disapproval of mainstream filmmakers and/or genres. Short biographies of these directors are characterised by references to their “commercial” status, in contrast to the positive, nuanced adjectives used for other filmmakers. For example, Mikelidis notes that Tzavellas’s films “stand out for their beautiful, detailed, and cared-for shots,” while, although he characterises Vasilis Georgiadis as a commercial director, he does remark he “managed to imbue his films with something more essential.”²⁹ Praise is reserved primarily for Koundouros, Cacoyannis, and the younger generation of Greek auteurs. Mikelidis’ focus on art cinema is not inherently problematic, assuming the book’s objective is to discuss this specific aspect of Greek cinema. However, given that the book does not explicitly state this intent, its ultimately limited scope, and particularly its near-absence of Plyta suggests an unconscious gender bias and a prevailing historical and cinematic discourse that prioritises art cinema, sidelining and even silencing important voices.

The two-volume edition Greek Cinema 1905–2005 by Rouvas and Stathakopoulos is an impressive chronicle of a century of Greek cinema, published under the aegis of the Municipality of Athens, the Greek Film Archive Foundation, among other national organisations and institutions. It is richly illustrated with rare photographs, film stills, and archival materials, and still serves as both a scholarly resource and a visual celebration of Greece’s cinematic heritage. At first glance, it documents the work of Plyta, as it includes all her films and a very short bio whose length equals that of most of her male counterparts. Yet, a closer look unveils the subtle patriarchal norms that permeate this impressive historical catalogue. 

An interesting observation regards the visual material of Plyta’s films. Most film stills contain the male characters, even though there are titles which clearly point to a female protagonist. For example, for Eva, the authors include a still of the heroine’s male object of desire and an old woman in the background.³⁰ For the first female biopic of Greek sound cinema – which is not referred to as such – The Duchess of Plakendia, there is a still of the Duchess with her husband,³¹ instead of a still of the Duchess and her daughter whose relationship is the basis of the narrative. And, for O aniforos (Uphill, 1964), the story of a young woman’s struggle to achieve independence despite sexual harassment and attempted rape, there is only a photo of her soon-to-be boyfriend and husband with his father.³² There are also subtle omissions or misunderstanding in several plot summaries. For instance, Eva does not return “remorseful”³³ to her husband in Eva; the love between the couple in Lykaina, does not have a “tragic”³⁴ ending; and the heroine in Uphill does not aim to get married.³⁵ One could argue that these and several other examples of imprecise wording are exactly that; cases of simple and trivial mistakes that are expected in a work of such breadth and wealth of facts and figures. However, we remain sceptical.

Another notable point concerns Plyta’s directorial debut. In their commentary on T’arravoniasmata (The Engagement, 1950), Rouvas and Stathakopoulos write: “Plyta, who was born in Thessaloniki and began her career as a literary writer, undertook the film adaptation of the work. The success of the film gave her the opportunity to continue and establish herself among the most successful directors of her time.”³⁶ Although the authors include The Engagement in their list of the most commercially successful films of 1950,³⁷ and are careful throughout the two volumes to highlight the “firsts” in Greek cinema (debuts of directors, genres, actors), they nevertheless silence Plyta’s achievement as the first female director and erase her unique historical position—especially at a time when so few women held this role worldwide.

This erasure is not limited to thematic or historical framing but extends to factual inaccuracies that further obscure her legacy. In Soldatos’s 2002 History, the filmmaker’s name is incorrectly cited; on p. 542, she is twice referred to as Maria Xatzinakou Plyta rather than the correct Maria Plyta-Xatzinakou. Similarly, in Rouvas and Stathakopoulos’s 2005 work, her name appears inaccurately as Maria Plyta (Xatzinakou). In Greek naming conventions, a hyphen is used—not brackets—when both surnames are retained. Moreover, it was highly unusual, if not radical, for a woman of the era to retain both her maiden and married names. Notably, from 1954 onward, her film credits list her simply as Maria Plyta. Our archival research has uncovered her 1950 application for divorce, clarifying the use of the hyphen during her marriage, as well as the court’s final decision in 1952, which explains her return to the name Maria Plyta in film credits from 1953 onward. While an exhaustive archival review is not expected of all researchers, a basic inspection of film credits should suffice to ensure her name is correctly recorded for each film.

A subsequent and more important consideration involves the carefully selected wording that elevates certain films while diminishing the value of others. Although all film summaries in Rouvas and Stathakopoulos’ volume are brief and there are no major length discrepancies between entries on Plyta’s films and those of her male contemporaries, gender bias becomes evident upon closer inspection. To date, Grigoris Grigoriou’s film Pikro psomi (Bitter Bread, 1951) is considered the first neorealist film in Greece. This view is supported by Iliadis (1961, p. 95), Mitropoulou (1985, p. 122), Mikelidis (1997, p. 21), Rouvas and Stathakopoulos (2005, p. 77), and Soldatos (2002, p. 78), who also notes that “Grigoriou was named ‘the father’ of Greek Neorealism” and adds: “With Bitter Bread, Grigoriou manages the first serious (my emphasis) neorealist film.”³⁸ Almost 75 years after its release, Bitter Bread is still regarded as the quintessential neorealist film in Greek discourse—revealing not only the persistence of patriarchal narratives but also a lack of updated scholarly literature.

This raises two main questions: If neorealism is defined by traits such as location shooting, depictions of working-class struggles, and morally or politically engaged narratives that confront historical traumas,³⁹ why isn’t Plyta’s 1950 directorial debut The Engagement (see image below), which predates Bitter Bread, acknowledged at least as a precursor to Greek neorealism—along with O methystakas (The Drunkard, Yiorgos Tzavellas, 1950)? After all, Plyta’s film is set in a fishing village and highlights the sexual abuse of thousands of women known as psichokores (“soul daughters”)—orphan girls sent to work as maids in other families, who were often abused and/or raped by male members of those households. Is it the fact that Plyta’s film is based on a novel while Bitter Bread is an original screenplay? After all, many seminal neorealist films – such as Ossessione (Luchino Visconti, 1943), I bambini ci guardano (The Children Are Watching Us, Vittorio De Sica, 1944), La terra trema (The Earth Trembles, Luchino Visconti, 1948), and Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica, 1948) – are also adaptations. 

The Engagement. A rare travelling shot on location.

The second question arises from two comments in Rouvas and Stathakopoulos’s and Mikelidis’s books. Writing on Plyta’s second film, She-Wolf, Rouvas and Stathakopoulos argue that “the film has several neorealist elements.”⁴⁰ Likewise, Mikelidis writes that “Plyta combines neorealist elements with a style that is unusual for the (Italian) movement, a path she regretfully abandoned later to work on more ‘commercial’ genres.”⁴¹ Mikelidis, however, does not include this comment in his section titled “neorealist influences,” but in the section “ethographies and other movies” of the 1950s. This categorisation—despite the implicit critique in the words “regretfully” and “commercial”—raises a key question: why isn’t She-Wolf, which premiered in March 1951—months before Bitter Bread premiered in December of the same year—celebrated as the first neorealist film in Greece? Both films ranked among the most successful productions of the year, with She-Wolf surpassing Bitter Bread in ticket sales by nearly double. What occurred in the intervening decades to obscure Plyta’s contribution to Greek cinematic neorealism? Which specific cultural, social, and political events—and which actors or institutions—shaped the dominant discourses that led to the systematic omission of Plyta’s work? And how have these discourses endured in Greek film historiography?

The first scholarly history of Greek cinema was published, interestingly, in English in 2012 by Professor Vrasidas Karalis from the University of Sydney. Karalis was the first scholar to acknowledge Plyta’s significance within a national historical account of Greek cinema. One of his stated goals in A History of Greek Cinema is to “emphasise the importance of foreigners, such as the founder of Greek cinema Josef Hepp, of women directors like Maria Plyta and of commercial directors like Yannis Dalianidis, who have been either forgotten or ignored.”⁴² His intent aligns with a broader international trend in film scholarship: the recovery and re-evaluation of overlooked female filmmakers and the revision of established film canons.

Karalis offers a meaningful reassessment of Plyta’s films, both thematically and technically. Although his discussion spans only a few pages, he recognises Plyta as the first female filmmaker in Greece and identifies her early work as formally inventive and thematically subversive.⁴³ He notes her impressionistic camera work, her focus on female emotional interiority, and her bold treatment of subjects such as sexual guilt and desire. Karalis highlights She-Wolf as introducing “the first charismatic and independent female character in Greek cinema,” and considers the obscure Eva a breakthrough moment in gender representation, arguing that it anticipated Cacoyannis’s international success Stella (1955) two years later.⁴⁴ Though brief, Karalis’s treatment marks a crucial intervention in Greek film historiography—one that begins to rectify Plyta’s omission while still celebrating established male auteurs such as Cacoyannis and Koundouros.

Some concluding remarks

The content analysis of the seven histories of Greek cinema, published between 1961 and 2012, demonstrates that Plyta’s absence from the contemporary cultural memory of Greek cinema is the result of a gender-biased historiographical process grounded in the “mythos” of patriarchy, widely understood as a “natural” state of affairs. These prejudiced practices have led to Plyta’s misrepresentation, the minor references to her work, and the absence of critical engagement with her filmography. Unfortunately, most publications after the new millennium continue to follow the canon, viewing it as a monolithic structure that cannot be changed. Suffice to note that the 2023 important publication, Greek Criticism/Greek Cinema (Volume A’ 1925-1975), does not include a single review of any of Plyta’s 17 films despite comprising 828 pages.⁴⁵ Plyta’s 17 films—marked by commercial success, complex female protagonists, and narratives that focus on class and gender inequalities, exploring diverse masculinities and femininities in ways that anticipate contemporary audiovisual texts—should be recognised as part of Greece’s cinematic heritage and included within its film canon. If, as Janet Staiger argues, film canons are formed not only through market forces but also through the writing of history, then a re-evaluation of Plyta’s career constitutes a necessary step in revising the dominant narratives of Greek film history. Let’s hope this article constitutes one of the first steps towards this reassessment. 

The article is one of the deliverables of the Project “Plyta’s Uknown Cinema” (2025-2028), conducted in the framework of the H.F.R.I. call “3rd Call for H.F.R.I.’s Research Projects to Support Faculty Members & Researchers” (H.F.R.I. Project Number: 24781). 

Bibliography

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Endnotes