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IN THE

Theo Angelopoulos:

The Travelling Players

The Journey of the Actors (1975)

THEODOROS AGELOPOULOS

O Thiassos

Thursday June 15, 2000
The Guardian

Of the few great directors who are still with us, Theo Angelopoulos, born in Athens in 1936, is probably the least known. The reasons are obvious. He is a film-maker who refuses compromise. The slow pace and austere style of his work are utterly against current trends, and the content is invariably as formidably intellectual as it is emotional and poetic. He is, to put it bluntly, not everybody's idea of a good night out. At his best, however, he is unquestionably a master. And only the fact that he so obviously knows it renders that fact unsympathetic.

Now finally invested with the Palme d'Or at Cannes - a prize he has coveted for years, even to the extent of making a churlish speech when he was offered the runner's-up award - Angelopoulos seems content to allow history to judge his work. It will certainly judge The Travelling Players (O Thiassos) a classic.

It was filmed in Greece in 1974, at no small risk, under the hard-line rule of the Greek colonels' junta. Why the military police who watched its progress allowed it to be completed is a mystery, since the film clearly examines the turbulent history of its country of origin from a radical Brechtian point of view. Perhaps the colonels' men thought that this story of a troupe of itinerant actors touring Golfo the Shepherdess, a pastoral folk drama set to music and song, was harmless enough. But it wasn't, since the period in which it is set (1939 to 1952) warmed the seeds of their masters' military coup.

Almost four hours long, The Travelling Players has its actors first watch and then get caught up in the political events of the period, so that even the play changes its emphasis. As they progress through the often rainy and wintry provincial Greece in which Angelopoulos usually prefers to shoot, the sequences become longer and longer and the pace seldom changes. The whole film is accomplished in around 80 shots.

But despite that, and even though no one but a Greek can understand all the political, historical and mythic allusions, it is a fascinating progress, enlivened by Yorgos Arvanitis's often luminous photography, Loukianos Kilaidonis's throbbing music, including songs and dances adapted from folk sources, and performances that seem utterly truthful.

How does Angelopoulos achieve this magic? It is partly the utter conviction with which he steers his work towards an inner as well as an outward relevance. But take a look, if you want to see how he manages individual sequences, at the closing passage of this film, when one of the actors is executed for sedition and his fellow performers raise their hands above their heads to applaud his life at the graveside. Nothing could be done more simply - though in most successful simplicity there is a great deal of artfulness. But the sequence, perhaps because of all that has gone before, is far more moving than the myriad funeral scenes in movies manage to be. It has a grace that is almost totally absent from most of today's cinema.

In many ways Angelopoulos has been lucky. As the outstanding Greek director, he has had his every whim granted over the last half of his career by the cultural wing of the country's government. And he is clearly a difficult man to satisfy. But he has forged a unique if often pessimistic style through which to examine as minutely as he can his own country and countrymen. If you were to see all his dozen or so films, you would have not only a much greater appreciation of Greek and Balkan conflicts, but a larger view of the inner turmoil of individuals whose lives have been altered by them.

THEO AGELOPOULOS

Biography by Sandra Brennan

Though he may not be well known amongst the general populace of American moviegoers, filmmaker, screenwriter and producer Theo Angelopoulos is one of the premiere contemporary directors in his native Greece, and according to some critics, the world. The films of Angelopoulos contain engrossing stories that unfold slowly, naturally; they are realistic and yet one never forgets their theatrical roots, and subtle abstractions abound. Angelopoulos was born and raised in Greece. Before going to Paris to study at the prestigious IDHEC film school in the 1960s, he was a practicing lawyer. At that time he began writing and publishing essays, stories and poems. In the late '50s, he served in the military and shortly thereafter moved to Paris to enroll in literature classes at the Sorbonne before moving on to film school. He eventually returned to Greece and became a film critic. In 1965, Angelopoulos attempted to direct his first film, but an argument with the producer killed the project and he didn't try again until 1968 when he directed a short documentary. Two years later he made his fictional feature film debut with Reconstruction His earliest features were based on contemporary Greek history. His most recognized historical films, such as Voyage to cythera (1984), also delve into ancient history and mythology. But whether dealing with the recent or distant past, most of Angelopoulos' films contain a political message applicable to modern times. Many of his films have won awards at international film festivals, but to date, few of his films have made it to commercial release in the U.S.

Plot Synopsis

In a complex interweaving of drama, history and allegory, this Greek film tells the story of the tours of a theatrical troupe along the Greek isles between 1939 and 1952. In each town, the troupe enacts the play "Golfo the Shepherdess." Simultaneously, an actress in the troupe is searching for a way to exact vengeance against her mother whom she believes was responsible for the death of her father. Her brother, a resistance fighter, helps her accomplish this. This level of the story re-creates, in "real life," the classical Greek drama of the Orestaia. At the same time, Greece is fully embroiled in the Second World War, political struggles, and its own Civil War. This film exists in several versions: the one which is 230 minutes long is the original, preferred version.

Directed by : Theo Angelopoulos
Screenplay by : Theo Angelopoulos
Cinematography by : Giorgos Arvanitis
Production design by : Mikes Karapiperis
Make-up by : Giorgos Patsas
Sound by : Thanassis Arvanitis
Music by : Loukianos Kilaidonis
Choice of texts and songs by : Fotos Lambrinos
Songs performed by : Nena Mendi, Dimitris Kaberidis, Ionna Kiourtsoglou and Costas Messaris
Edited by : Takis Davlopoulos and Giorgos Triantafillou
Produced by : Giorgos Papalios
With : Eva Kotamanidou (Electra), Aliki Georgouli (Mother), Stratos Pachis (Father), Maria Vassiliou (Chrysohemis), Vangelis Kazan (Aegisthus), Petros Zarkadis (Orestes), Kyriakos Kativanos (Pylades), Yannis Firios (accordionist), Nina Papazaphiropoulou (old woman), Alekos Boubis (old man), Kostas Stiliaris (militia leader), Grigoris Evangelatos (Poet).

THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS is a film of epic proportions. The action takes place during the years 1939-52 and is seen as a series of individual, often inexplicable events or tableaux, commentated by monologues, by slogans written on the walls, or by songs. It reveals the period's turbulent history while focusing on a travelling company of actors who spend those fourteen years wandering through provinces, cities and villages, performing, in increasingly threadbare circumstances, a 19th century pastoral melodrama, Persiadis' Golfo the Shepherdess. They never get to finish the play and the tranquil sheep painted on their back cloth gaze down upon generations of anguish and bloodshed. The passage of history reverberates in individual incidents or is summarized in symbols. These sad, shabby, often hungry folk, whose relationship is based on the family of the House of Atreus, are of varying political hues - from active collaborators with the Nazis (Aegisthus), to opportunists (Chrysothemis), to centrist Greek patriots (Agamemnon), to the apolitical (Clytemnestra), to left-wing idealists (Electra), to communist guerillas (Orestes). And they fill these roles as much as they do the mythic ones of wandering general, faithless wife, betrayer or vengeful son. As they travel amid the constant wartime convulsions, they begin, unconsciously, to enact parallels to Aeschylus' tragic cycle.

«Greek people have grown up caressing dead stones. I've tried to bring mythology down from the heights and directly to the people.»

Theo Angeolopoulos

«THE TRAVELLING PLAYERS is about dramas that can never unfold without interference, about governments that fall, revolutions that are aborted and entire streams of history that are diverted... It is about the world that lies just outside the viewpoint of the drama, ever thwarting or changing it. And it is about the transcendence of time... The form gives TRAVELLING PLAYERS its distinction; history and contemporaneity give it intensity; the execution gives it its beauty.»

Michael Wilmington

Running Time: 230 minutes

Language:Greek

Subtitles: English/French

Filmography:

The Broadcast (E Ekpombei) (1968) short film

Reconstruction (Anaparastasis) (1970)

Days of '36 (Meres Tou '36) (1972)

The Travelling Players (O Thiasos) (1975)

The Hunters (Oi Kinigi) (1977)

Alexander the Great (O Megalexandros) (1980)

One Village, One Villager (Chorio Ena, Katekos Enas…) (1981) television

Athens: Return to the Acropolis (Athena, Epistrophi Stin Akropoli) (1983) television

Voyage to Cythera (Taxidi Sta Kithira) (1983)

The Beekeeper (O Melissokosmos) (1986)

Landscape in the Mist (Topo Stin Omichli) (1988)

The Suspended Step of the Stork (To Meteoro Vima Tou Pelargou) (1991)

Ulysses' Gaze (To Vlemma Tou Odyssea) (1995)

Eternity and a Day (Mia Eoniotita Ke Mia Mera) (1998)

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (Trilogia: To Livadi pou dakryzei) (2004)

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