A Nazi hero in Greek cinema: History and parapraxis in Kostas Manousakis’s Prodosia

Kostas Manousakis’s Prodosia / Betrayal (1964) is one of the few films dedicated to the period of German occupation in Greece, offering a rare portrayal of the German soldier and touching upon the persecution of Jews in Europe. This essay relates this historical representation to the extensive and long-standing debates about the representation of the Holocaust in cinema and deploys Thomas Elsaesser’s concept of ‘parapraxis’ to identify a series of key thematic and stylistic motifs. The film, read through the prism of parapraxis, presents a portrait of history with complex temporalities, inviting us to rethink the course of history through the current perspective and work on our historical imaginary in new meaningful ways.