To Xypolito Tagma - The Barefoot Battalion

(Fiction, Greece, 1954, 93 min.)

Gregg Tallas' Delightful Movie about Children in German Occupied Greece

The Plot

In post war Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1953, a young, barefoot, ragged and homeless
boy named Stavros wakes up on an abandoned rowboat... It is getting cold on the
boat so he goes to shore, and, in order to buy a blanket, attempts to steal a purse
from a woman in the crowded market. Demetri, a young man who sees the whole
thing and sees him run off, follows the boy, catches him and searches him.

When Stavros begins to cry, saying he has no family, Demetri explains that he only
wants to help and that he too used to steal on the street for a living... As the two talk
we flashback to 1943 to wartorn, besieged Thessaloniki in German-occupied Greece
and Demetri relates his own story - a war orphan who lives with his young sister
Martha in an abandoned wrecked boat, with only food rations for survival. As they
become desperate for food they join a group of boys, known as
or The Barefoot Battalion.
The Film

Based on a true story of a group of young boys who lost their parents when the Nazis
occupied Greece in 1941, and the children sent to orphanages, this delightful film
recounts the courage and bravery of a marvelous group of children, "The Barefoot
Battalion" who got together to provide food for themselves and others who had no
means, while at the same time working closely with Greece's dynamic underground
resistance movement who worked to help Americans and Allied Forces escape to the
Middle East, hiding and eventually smuggling an American airman out of the
country...

The idea for the film came in the late 40's, when Greek actor Nikos Katsiotis, who
was in the USA at the time, was discussing with Greek American director Gregg
Tallas, the story of Thessaloniki's victory parade in November of 1944, on the day it
celebrated its liberation from German Occupation. Katsiotis told Tallas how right at
the tail end, a group of barefoot, bedraggled kids paraded, holding a banner with the
words ' ' ...

Gregg Tallas was so enchanted and moved by this story that he decided to make it
into a film, a film which was shot on location in Thessaloniki and Athens, even at the
notorious black market site and the cast was made up of some of Greece's well
known actors of the day, while 63 of the 66 children came from orphanages and
reform institutions in Athens and Thessaloniki...

Xypolito Tagma is a brilliant film - a film which the reknowned director Vittorio de
Sica is said to have praised so highly that he told Gregg Tallas that if The Barefoot
Battalion had preceeded his own masterpiece 'Bicycle Thief', then he, Tallas, would
have been de Sica...

Some Facts about Film

the director was Gregg Tallas, born Gregory Thalassinos in

Constantinople/Istanbul in 1903 ...

Many of the cast and crew were of Greek descent including Peter Boudoures,
the producer, a Greek-American restaurateur in San Francisco who had been
the regional director of Greek War Relief on the West Coast of the USA from
1940-1949

The film's production cost was $38,000.

It was shot without sound, using a 1920s era camera (!!) and minimal
technical equipment.

The music for the film was the first film score that Greece's national
composer, Mikis Theodorakis ever wrote.
 The Barefoot Battalion opened in New York on 28 May 1954 and Los Angeles
on 11 June of the same year to great acclaim

In 1955 it was awarded the Golden Laurel at the Edinburgh International Film
Festival, thus becoming the first Greek film to win a prize at an international
film festival

It has been the subject of many university studies around the world,
especially historical studies

Greg Tallas with the children

Enjoy!