Traveling on Screen: Tourism and the Greek Film Musical

The image of Greece as a fun-loving tourist resort and escapist paradise which was presented in Greek film musicals of the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the growth of the Greek tourist industry during this same period. These film musicals treated their viewers as virtual tourists, offering them a two-hour wish-fulfillment without any costly physical displacement. This paper explores the social and symbolic parallels between the respective utopian desires on which actual holiday-making and the film musical relied. The analysis of some extremely popular musical films, including Some Like it Cold (1963), Girls for Kisses (1965), and Mermaids and Lads (1969), reveals the development of a contradictory attitude toward the tourist industry in the musical film genre. This is understood as an indirect result of increasing competition from tourism and, ultimately, from a successful leisure industry in Greece.