of $2,565,000. Critical response The film has an 86% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. On both sides of the Atlantic, Zorba was applauded and Quinn came in for the best reviews. He was lauded as Zorba, along with the other stars, including Greek-born Papas, who worked with Quinn on The Guns of Navarone. Contemporary reviews were generally positive, with Anthony Quinn and Lila Kedrova receiving numerous accolades for their performances, although a few critics found fault with the screenplay. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times lauded Quinn for a "brilliant performance" and Kedrova for her "brilliantly realized" character, citing the only real weakness of the film as a lack of "significant conflict to prove its dominant character. Zorba is powerful and provocative, but nobody gets in his way." Margaret Harford of the Los Angeles Times declared that the film would "stand among the year's best motion pictures, an unusual, engrossing effort" with spots both "outrageously funny" and "painfully sad and tragic." Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post deemed it "a memorable picture" with a "bravura performance" from Quinn, adding that "Lila Kedrova as the dying Mme Hortense is spectacularly touching." Variety found the film excessively long and overstuffed, writing that Cacoyannis's screenplay was "packed with incidents of varying moods, so packed, in fact, that some of the more important ones cannot be developed fully." Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that Cacoyannis had directed the film with "enormous verve" but had written a "not very tidy, not very plausible screenplay." Gill particularly praised Kedrova's performance and thought that she "comes within an ace of stealing the picture from Quinn." The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the film began well, but by the time the characters went to Crete "the pace slows to a crawl, and the narrative line becomes blurred in a series of unrelated incidents of doubtful significance." The review concluded that for all its length, "the film never gets down to a clear statement of its theme, or comes within measuring distance of its vast pretensions." Awards and nominations The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: 2006: AFI's 100 Years...100 Cheers – Nominated Preservation The Academy Film Archive preserved Zorba the Greek in 2004. In popular culture In a January 15, 1968 Peanuts comic strip, Snoopy is happily dancing atop of his doghouse with Lucy looking on until the final panel where