Talk:Irene Papas/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Wasted Time R (talk · contribs) 15:12, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I am beginning to review this article. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:12, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:20, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

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Major issue is the length, below

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

   Some prose and MoS issues in the text, see below

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (reference section): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism):

   I think there are some better/additional sources available, see below

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

   The key issue is the article length, see below

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

6. It is illustrated by images and other media, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free content have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   Not completely sure, see below

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

Re MoS and writing issues:

In the lede, 'Antigone' is linked twice and 'films' is a common English word and does not need to be linked at all. I've moved the embedded link of Hamenoi angeloi to an "ill" link to Fallen Angels.

Fixed.

In the lede, dates are given for some films and awards but not for others.

Fixed.

In the lede, the date for Antigone is effectively given twice.

Fixed.

The linking to other-language articles needs to be more consistent in the text and filmography. So for example Dead City (film) does have a Greek language article, el:Νεκρή πολιτεία.

Other-language articles are linked only when there isn't an English-language article, and we have one for Dead City.

The template {{Ill}} is used in some places but can be employed more often. So for instance this would become

See Antigone above; ill-ed Afghanistan Pourquoi ? to a French stub; the 3 remaining unlinked films do not have Wikipedia articles in any language.

Walter Kerr should be linked.

Done.

and photographed spending time with the wealthy Aga Khan. - is this text trying to suggest they were in a relationship? or that it was just a publicity ploy? Unclear.

Just a nice circle to be in, but that's editorialising.

where her portrayal of the "doomed heroine" is described as "outstanding" - who is being quoted here? Should either be attributed in-text or paraphrased.

Paraphrased.

From the opening shot of ... - Links inside of quotations are best avoided, per MOS:LINKQUOTE, and neither of the ones here are necessary, as Euripedes is already linked earlier and classical Greece is covered by the earlier link to Greek tragedy.

Removed.

her height limiting the leading men she could play alongside - unless I missed it, the article never gives her height.

Added.

The scholar of Greek Gerasimus Katsan calls her ... - not sure how to parse, maybe a comma is needed?

In my Britspeak we don't use commas for this but I've added them for you.

This has 11 folk songs sung in Greek - these are contemporary songs written by Theodorakis, not folk songs, right?

Fixed.

In 1979, Polydor released her solo album of eight Greek folk songs - 'solo' is unncessary and/or wrong, and Polydor should be linked and 'Greek folk songs' can be linked to 'Greek folk music'.

Fixed.

Vangelis Papathanassiou - either link the whole name or just use and link his mononym.

Done.

and they had a long and "secret love affair" - who is being quoted here - her? Brando? Some writer?

Rewritten, quoting Papas.

1973: Photo shoot with Magnum photographer Ferdinando Scianna - is this really an award/honour, or an activity that should be moved to some other part of the article?

This could be handled either way. I've moved it to 'Film star'.

The Discography section should eliminate the "Solo" and "Collaborations" dividers - the entries makes the artists involved clear already.

Done.

In both the text and the filmography, the treatment of the names and links to foreign language films should be more consistent. Ideally, the reader should be able to see a link to the English Wikipedia article on the film (whether or not it exists), in italics, a link to that language's Wikipedia article on the film, in italics, and in cases where the title is in Greek, a transliteration of the film's title, which I guess can be in regular font quotes. The {{Ill}} template is already employed in some cases, but I think its use could be more consistently. So two examples from the text could be:

• Fallen Angels  (Greek, "Hamenoi angeloi")
• Dead City  (Greek, "Nekri Politeia")

All films with English articles are wikilinked to those (in both text and filmography); all the rest with foreign articles are inter-language-linked. I do not think we should link to more than one article when such exist; there is a list of foreign language links in each English Wikipedia (film) article for those few readers of English Wiki interested in going further in that direction.

Re better/additional sources:

The article seems to lean heavily on two fairly recent things written by Philip Kemp, the entry in International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers and the Encyclopedia.com entry. Nothing wrong with Kemp, but some other, perhaps older, sources might be valuable. Here are just a few I found while looking around that are readable online:

This New York Times Magazine piece: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/12/24/93231243.html?pageNumber=55

Do you have access to this? But it's just a short article.

Mel Schuster, The Contemporary Greek Cinema (Scarecrow Press, 1979): https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780810811966/page/256/mode/2up?view=theater

Good stuff! Used.

Kerry Segrave and Linda Martin, The Continental Actress: European film stars of the postwar era – biographies, criticism, filmographies (McFarland, 1990) https://archive.org/details/continentalactre0000segr/page/92/mode/2up?view=theater

Used some of this.

Martin M. Winkler, ed., Classical Myth & Culture in the Cinema (Oxford University Press, 2001) https://books.google.com/books?id=f4vCQYhKCvcC&pg=PA72

Interesting interviews. Used some material.

I'm sure there are others.

Re broad coverage:

Here I have to bring in article length. This article is only 1,235 words, which is really pretty low for a major artist from the 1950s on. I looked at the first half of the GA articles list for some actresses from more or less the same era, and by comparison: Carroll Baker is 4,854 words, Olivia de Havilland is 9,850 words, Irene Dunne is 5,268 words, Barbara Hershey is 3,141 words, Deborah Kerr is 2,733 words, Angela Lansbury is 8,154 words, and Carole Lombard is 5,379 words. The Kerr one is the shortest of these, and it sort of has a similar structural approach to this article, but it is still more than twice the length.

Now, I'm not saying that I think long articles are better. A while back when I was looking through the GAN list for something to review, I considered reviewing Toni Collette. But it is 7,119 words, and that for someone who is well-regarded but not exactly a household name and who is still in the middle of her career. I didn't feel like slogging through it, so I didn't review it (someone else did and it is now GA).

But that said, I don't think this article quite does justice to Papas's career at this length.

Point taken; however, length is not a GA criterion, and nor is WP:OtherStuffExists. But your points below are cogent and I'll address them with additional material.

Some specific examples of what is missing:

The infobox is kind of skimpy.

Extended.

She then starred in films such as The Guns of Navarone (1961) and Cacoyannis's Zorba the Greek (1964), - Since I think these are the two biggest box office hits that she starred in, something more should be said about her role in each.

Added.

The part she played in the Cacoyannis films can be stressed even more. In one of those sources above, he makes the point that she wasn't cast in the film but rather the film never would have existed without her, that she was part of the decision to make the film.

Added quite a bit about Cacoyannis and those films.

There's nothing about whether her music albums were well received critically or how well they sold, in Greece or internationally.

Album sales are notoriously difficult to get reliable data on; I've not seen anything usable.

Added critical reaction to her singing.

Regarding the Communist Party of Greece membership, when did she join? For what reasons - was she strongly committed to the ideology and doctrine, or was it more in reaction to what was happening in Greece? Did her communist feelings influence her artistic interpretations? Once she exiled to Italy, how long did she stay there? Did she go to another other countries? Did she ever return to Greece and if so, when?

To oppose the Junta 1967-1974; rewrote the section, added ref.

Category:Greek expatriates in Italy should be added to the article, and maybe others if she exiled elsewhere.

Added category.

But these are just a few things that came to mind. I'm interested in hearing from you whether this short length for the article was an intentional decision, and if so, what your feelings are about expanding it.

I think short and accurate is hugely better than long and unreliably-cited, and feel that the article gives a pretty good idea of her life, improved by your proposed additions. It's quite a bit longer now, too, at some 2600 words.

Re the images:

The top image is okay since the links that show both sides of the promotional photo are still working.

Noted.

The Trojan Woman still image is uncertain since the only link for it is not working, but I guess we have to assume that the original promotional photo had no copyright notice on the back.

Noted.

But the Mikis Theodorakis image seems problematic to me - it is derived from File:Theodorakis, Griekse componist, nog steeds gevangen gehouden in Griekenland (in , Bestanddeelnr 920-7047.jpg, which has a Dutch National Archives tag that explicitly says nothing about the copyright. It was uploaded under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication license, but it seems unlikely that the photographer would actually took the picture intended that to be its license.

Replaced with an image of Theodorakis that is verified to be CC-by-SA. I've added an image, certainly PD, of a fine painting of Clytemnestra, with a cited caption; thought that would be instead, but why not have both, there's space for them.

Anyway, I'm putting the GAN on hold. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:23, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Summary

Thank you for the attentive review. All of this seems readily fixable; I've completed a pass through all the comments to date. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:09, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

A few follow-ups to the above responses:

No problems with the length now. It's at 2,573 words, twice what it was before, and the coverage of various areas is definitely better.

Thank you.

Apologies for not proof-reading my initial posting better, as I managed to false-start my comment on the foreign-language {{ill}} possibilities twice before actually saying what I wanted to say. I now understand your rationale for how you're doing it and it looks reasonable.

Great!

Okay on the Aga Khan mention, however it is missing a period at end of the sentence.

Added.

Feel free to restore any Britspeak usages, this is an article on a European topic and such usages would be fine.

Thanks, seems ok at the moment.

Good to have her height now, but it would be better to render the equivalent in feet and inches rather than decimal feet. Otherwise many readers will mistakenly see 5 ft 8 in, when she is actually 5 ft 10 in, a significant difference. The {{convert}} template does have an option to do this.

Fixed.

joined the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).[38][39] – This is still a problem. The cited footnotes 38 and 39 cover some of the other material in this text portion but they don't say anything about being a communist or joining the KKE. This statement was originally added to the article back in December 2015 based on this edit, which gave no sources but said it was being brought over from the Greek Wikipedia. At that time the Greek article looked like this, which in this translation gives no cite for this. The current version of the Greek article does give a cite for this, a Mononews piece from February 2018, which says in this translation that "Irini Pappas never hid the fact that she was a member of the KKE, ..." As it happens, that Mononews piece is footnote 3 in this article, used once as a source for something else. But the statement about her being in the KKE really needs stronger sourcing than a brief aside in a retrospective article written many years later. And if she never hid from her KKE membership, presumably there is a quote somewhere about her feelings on it. Otherwise on BLP grounds I think it should be taken out.

Removed.

Some additional comments and comments on the new material:

The Theatre section seems to imply that she had no stage appearances after 1973, but per the AP story in footnote 39, she appeared in a staging of Electra at the Epidaurus Theatre in 1985. I think that should be mentioned, as well as any other later theatrical roles of significance.

Added.

Greek film-makers however thought her a "noncommercial actress" – It's a very common notion that some artists have commercial appeal and some do not, so I don't see the need for quotes here.

Removed.

signing with Lux in Italy – it isn't clear if Lux is a person or a company. Using instead Lux Film would make this clear.

Done.

She played in Lux's "forgettable" – who is saying that, Papas or some writer?

Segrave and Martin, but it'd interrupt the flow here to mention them so I've removed the adjective.

You might try shifting the Clytemnestra image over to the left side, because otherwise it dominates the more important Trojan Woman image below it.

Done.

In his book on Greek cinema, Mel Schuster called Papas ... - Maybe this paragraph and the one after it should be moved to the "Film star" section, where other critical analysis of her acting persona is?

Why not, moved.

The additional material for The Guns of Navarone is good, and you could also add from the AP story in footnote 39 that it was this film that most established her internationally.

Added and reffed.

There is a stray single quote mark in the filmography entry for A Child Named Jesus

Fixed.

Footnote 9, the Encylopedia.com article, should credit Philip Kemp as the author of the Papas entry. If there are any other missing authors on tertiary sources being used, they should be added as well.

Added.

Anyway, the article is definitely better now. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:19, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:54, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Latest comments

Re the added statement about The Guns of Navarone being what most established her internationally, you included Zorba the Greek in your addition of that, but the AP story only mentions Navarone in that context.

It's cited to Monaco 1991 and McDonald Winkler 2001 as well. Monaco mentions Zorba but not Navarone as doing this, so it's swings and roundabouts. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:33, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Re the height formatting, that is okay now, but I realize that the height figure needs a good source (the Ebert piece isn't specific). This 1955 AP story by its Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas gives her height as "a statuesque 5 feet 6 inches". While this 1962 Look magazine snippet about Spencer Tracy puts her at 5 feet 10 inches and says her height is one of the reasons that Tracy bailed on Tribute to a Bad Man and was replaced by Cagney (which lore may have been the origin of Ebert's remark).

Added ref.

Moreover, I realize now that something should be said about her upbringing in Greece during World War II and then the Greek Civil War. The Thomas AP story does have some of this, including a quote from her that could be used (assuming it's accurate and isn't something a Hollywood publicity person made up for her to say). Hopefully there is a corroborating source out there somewhere. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:30, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Added more on her education from Kourelou 2020. Not sure what the "Thomas AP story" is but since Kourelou is reliable we probably don't need it.

For her experiences during the war I was referring to this 1955 AP story by their Hollywood reporter Bob Thomas that I mentioned above. But the details seem a bit off – if she was born in 1926, she would have been age 14 when the Italians and then Germans invaded Greece in 1940–41, not 10, and wasn't her family living in Athens by then, not a village? There isn't anything about her war experiences in the other early accounts of her life that are being used as sources here. So this 1955 account may have been concocted or exaggerated for Hollywood publicity purposes. Or her quote may indeed be true – she or the studio could have been dissembling about her age in 1955, common enough in the acting world, and her family could have left the city for the countryside once war began, also common in many countries during World War II. It's hard to know. Wasted Time R (talk) 18:00, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

In any case, I have now passed the article for GA. Good work on it. Wasted Time R (talk) 18:06, 7 March 2021 (UTC)