Though acclaimed on its first appearance (it won the Best Direction Awards at both the Salonica and Athens Film Festivals in 1966), Prosopo me prosopo has been subsequently banned in its native country. Manthoulis himself, pressurised by the authorities into leaving Greece, now lives in Paris… And though much of the political satire in Prosopo me prosopo is veiled or oblique, the overall message is spelled out clearly enough to make Manthoulis’ unpopularity with the higher powers understandable. Set during the days of turbulence which led to the Generals’ coup, the film brings its troubled academic hero face to face with the workings of bourgeois capitalism at its most omnivorous and exploitative, incarnated here in a wealthy family who set out to devour their daughter’s tutor. The film’s title suggests a confrontation, and Manthoulis’ satire works not only by pitting the hero’s scholarly ingenuousness against the alternate sophistication and brute appetite of his employers, but by establishing an insistent and ironic counterpoint between the old, classical Greece and its new, materialistic counterpart. Manthoulis’ wealthy family are seen as the new barbarians (the daughter’s name Barbara is an explicit pun), and their impending seizure of power is suggested by the presentation of their house as a kind of labyrinthine political HQ, with rooms linked by intercom and all movement of guests or personnel traced on a scale map of the interior.

Nigel Andrews, “Monthly Film Bulletin”, 1 January 1972

Dimitris embodies a typical working-class man who, despite holding a university degree, lives almost in poverty. His entrance into the house of a rich Athenian family signifies the beginning of his meeting with a new code of morals and values. This new code initially dominates his rather traditional beliefs regarding gender, sexuality, morality, entertainment, material culture and family relations. At the end of the film, however, Dimitris performs his own personal revolution and dares to abandon an environment which antagonizes his personality and depresses his manhood. In this way, he becomes a symbol of the rejection of modernity and upper-class lifestyle and, at the same time, a heroic prototype of working-class masculinity.

Achilleas Hadjikyriacou, Masculinity and Gender in Greek Cinema 1949-1967, Bloomsbury, London 2015