The Last Modernist: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos

Tbe Last Modernist The Films of Theo Angelopoulos

cinema voices Series editor: Matthew Stevens, FUCKS BOOKS Series consultant: Brian Mcilroy, University of British Colu mbia This series provides critical assessments of film directors whose work is motivated by social, political or historical concerns, or reveals an opposition to conventional filmmaking systems and · structures. The following titles are published or in preparation: · Auteur/provocateur: the films of Denys Arcand Edited by Andre Loiselle and Brian Mcilroy ·

nark alchemy: the films of Jan Svankmajer

Edited by Peter Hames ·

Queen of the 'B's : Ida Lupine behind the camera

Edited by Annette Kuhn · By angels driven: the films of Derek Jarman Edited by Chris Lippard · Poet of civic courage: the films of Francesco Rosi Edited by Carlo Testa · A call to action : the films of Ousmane Sembene Edited by Sheila Petty · Agent of challenge and defiance: the films of Ken Leach Edited by George McKnight · The last modernist: the films of Theo Angelopoulos Edited by Andrew Horton Lucid dreams: the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski Edited by Paul Coates

Tbe Last Modernist

The Films of Theo Angelopoulos

Edited by Andrew Horton

cinema voices series

Fi FLICKS BOOKS

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-9489 1 1-74-3 (Hb) ISBN 0-9489 1 1 -79-4 (Pb)

First published in 1997 by Flicks Books 29 Bradford Road Trowbridge Wiltshire BA 14 9AN England tel +44 1 225 767728 fax +44 1225 7604i8

© individual contributors, 1997

An edition of this book is published in North and South America by Greenwood Press in hardback, and by Praeger Publishers in paperback.

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contents

Preface

vi

Introduction Andrew Horton

1

Modernism, minimalism, melancholy: Angelopoulos and visual style David Bordwell ll Angelopoulos, Greek history and Tbe Travelling Players Dan Georgakas

27

A tour of the graveyard of Greek ideals: Voyage to Cythera

Vasilis Rafalidis

43

Tessellations and honeycombs: Tbe Beekeeper Gerald O 'Grady

51

Theo Angelopoulos: landscapes, players, mist Michael Wilmington

57

The empire of the journey in Voyage to Cythera Yvette Biro

69

Theo Angelopoulos: the past as history, the future as form Fredric jameson

78

" What do our souls seek?": an interview with Theo Angelopoulos Andrew Horton 96 Theo Angelopoulos: filmography Compiled by Andrew Horton

111

Theo Angelopoulo s: selected bibliography Compiled by Matthew Stevens and Andrew Horton

116

Index

132

Notes on contributors

138

Preface

In 1995, in celebration of 1 00 years of cinema, a French-Spanish­ Swedish compilation film entitled Lumiere et compagnie (Lumiere and Company) was released. The concept was simple: 39 directors from around the world were asked to use one of the original Lumiere brothers cameras to shoot a piece of their choice that would be only 52 seconds long, the length of the first film made 1 00 years ago. It says much about the importance of Thea Angelopoulos to world cinema as the 20th century closes and the second century of filmmaking begins that he was given the honour of closing the film with his "shot" . He chose a shot he had made for his award-winning latest film, To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ( Ulysses' Gaze, 1 995), but which he had not finally chosen to use in his own film. It is a simulated black and white film from the beginning of the century of an actor playing Ulysses/Odysseus, and crawling out of the sea after his escape from Calypso's island. He stares into the camera and thus at us, across the 20th century, and a title card appears echoing Homer's line: "On what foreign shore have I landed?" Fade out on Lumiere and Company and on the first century of the magic of the motion picture. That provocative leap of vision and filmmaking that combines Homer and silent cinema at the end of the century is typical of this filmmaker in a Greek landscape, Thea Angelopoulos. This collection is dedicated to exploring his vision and accomplishment as we attempt to suggest what cinematic and cultural shores his films have landed upon.

vi

J1ltrOOUction Andrew. Horton

I.

The poet's journey on film

This collection of essays represents the first book in English to bring together an important diversity of critical voices focused on one of the world's most significant and distinctive film directors, Theo Angelopoulos. 1 As this volume makes clear, Angelopoulos' impact on cinema can be seen in four major areas: as an innovative film stylist (the essays by David Bordwell and Fredric Jameson pay particular attention to this aspect); as a committed filmmaker concerned with a cinematic representation of history (the essays by Dan Georgakas and Vasilis Rafalidis); as a Greek filmmaker attempting to represent a cross-section of Greek culture that has been either ignored or under­ represented in previous films set in Greece (most of the essays elaborate this dimension); and as a screen artist able to go beyond the limits of national cultures to evoke the ageless, the universal and the mythical, or, put simply, that which transcends history (essays by Biro and Wilmington). Taken together, these elements suggest a cinema of contemplation - that is, a cinema that points to an inner voyage or journey (essay by Gerald O'Grady), as Angelopoulos himself suggests in the interview with him in the final section of this collection. A cinema in the mist paradoxically suggests that Angelopoulos' cinema seeks for clarity beyond the mist that history and culture have woven during this century that is closing and, by extension, throughout time. Hailed by critics as a major auteur in Europe, including England, and also in Japan among many countries where his work has been known since 1 970, when his first feature film, A naparastasis (Reconstruction) , appeared, Angelopoulos nevertheless has remained practically unknown in the United States and many other English­ speaking countries. We hope that this anthology will help make Angelopoulos more accessible to those unfamiliar with his works. It is fortuitous also that these essays were brought together at a time when Angelopoulos has entered a new phase with his latest film, To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ( Ulysses' Gaze), the 1 995 Cannes Grand Jury prize-winne r, which is shot mainly in English and stars Harvey Keitel. For, even such a popular magazine as Time took note of this poetic

1

Greek filmmaker. In describing Ulysses' Gaze at the Cannes Film Festival, Richard Corliss noted that "[t]he intelligence behind the camera is matched by the aching humanity in front. Ulysses' Gaze surely deserved to win the Palme d'Or" _2 Any viewer will be struck by the immediacy of Angelopoulos' cinematic eye for composition of scenes and images (with his career-, long collaboration with cinematographer, Giorgos Arvanitis). But there also remains much in each of his ten features made since 1 970 that is quite "Greek", and thus only partially grasped by a non-Hellenic audience. Put another way, Angelopoulos has steadfastly resisted the methods and material of traditional Hollywood and European popular cinema in order to pursue his own vision of an austere yet rewarding cinema of contemplation, self-reflection and "reconstruction" of history, myth, culture and, ultimately, identity itself. These essays are dedicated to helping to contextualize and illuminate corners and strands, patterns, textures and themes that contribute to making his seemingly simple style yield such complex responses. Angelopoulos' cinema is very definitely a Greek cinema, for, as Dan Georgakas explains in his essay on 0 Tbiassos ( Tbe Travelling Players, 1 975) , the "larger theme" for Angelopoulos "is Greek national identity" . And that is exactly where the poet enters. For as Angelopoulos explains in the interview, poetry was his first love. Furthermore, he was particularly taken by the works of the Greek Nobel Prize-winning poet, George Seferis, and by those of T S Eliot, with whom Seferis has often been compared. One other poet has played an even greater role in Angelopoulos' career - Homer. Of course, these are not the only influences, as his interview suggests. But it is important to understand the nature of these poets in helping to shape Angelopoulos' approach to cinema, for their influence is perhaps even more significant than that of filmmakers who have meant a great deal to him, such as Welles, Ford, Dreyer, Ozu , Tarkovskij and, as David Bordwell so clearly explains, Antonioni. There is firstly the importance that the Greek tradition has always given to poetry. Aristotle said it well in Tbe Poetics when he described poetry as more important than history, for history merely states what happened while poetry concerns what was and is possible. And, of course, for the Greeks, Homer was their "Bible" and their encyclopedia: he was their culture. In more modern terms, the mood and focus of Angelopoulos' cinema parallel those of the poetry of Eliot and Seferis in depicting a decaying 20th century in which meaning, belief, individuality and culture appear fragmented, exhausted, discarded and disconnected. But these poets are also contemplative creators. This is a poetry that embraces the philosophical and the paradoxical, and thus the realm of the contemplative. It is no accident

2

that Seferis, the Greek poet whom Angelopoulos admires so much, is quite similar to Eliot in these respects. Seferis writes in his poem, "An Old Man on the River Bank": I want no more than to speak simply, to be granted this grace. Because we have burdened song with so much music that it is gradually sinking and we have adorned our art so much that its features have been eaten away by gold. and it is time to say our few words because tomorrow the soul sets sail.3 It is difficult to conceive of many filmmakers saying they are concerned in their films with the "soul" of their culture. But this is an apparent premise in so much of Angelopoulos' work, including his most recent film, Ulysses' Gaze, which begins with a quotation from Plato: "And the soul, if she is to know herself, must look into a soul" . The allusion is not merely to Plato, however, for the same line appears in Seferis' 24-part poem, "Mythical Story", which is constructed as a journey, much like that of Odysseus in the Odyssey, but set simultaneously in modern times and in a universal, mythical, timeless reality. Thus, in tone, style and content, Angelopoulos' cinema has exemplified the simplicity and unadorned art that Seferis calls for in his own poetry. Finally, similar to Seferis in much of his work, but particularly in "Mythical Story", Angelopoulos has cast his films as journeys. Angelopoulos is the cinematic poet searching not only for knowledge, but also for a kind of transcendence which "home" or Ithaca - Odysseus' longed-for goal - represents. II. The individual and the group A line of weary actors in threadbare coats stand clutching their suitcases outside a small-town train station during a cold winter morning in 1 939. They stand. They wait. They are silent. But, in voiceover, we hear the old accordion player, a member of these travelling players, say: "It was autumn, 1 939, and we had reached Aigion. We were tired. We had two days to rest. " With this scene, Theo Angelopoulos' third feature film, 7be Travelling Players, judged by many as one of the most important films ever made, ends. But the ending is really only the beginning. For this four-hour modern epic opens with the same shot in the same train station, except for the fact that the year is 1952. Thus, almost literally, Angelopoulos built into his cinematic evocation of Greek history from

3

1 939 to 1 952, mixed with Greek mythology and tragedy, an echo of one of his favourite poets, T S Eliot, who writes in "East Coker", "In my beginning is my end", a line that is quoted in his most recent film, Ulysses' Gaze. Similarly, we can say that Angelopoulos' films highlight both the individual and his or her relationship to a group or the Others. In this final shot of 7be Travelling Players, each actor - that is, each character - is completely his or her own individual. This is all the truer since we have followed the destinies of each throughout the film. However, we also sense them as a group, or sense that they are actors belonging to a troupe. But Angelopoulos goes against what we usually conceive to be an "individual" in his presentation of his characters. He uses the long shot when most directors would use a close-up; he shoots in long continuous takes, often with elaborate, slow tracking shots when most directors today would use a variation of swiftly edited shots (montage); he prefers a silent scene to one with dialogue; he chooses more often than not to have characters stand or sit completely motionless; and he presents us with such a minimal "story" that we cannot "get inside" the protagonists in a psychological sense as we do in most dramas and films that echo Aristotelian concerns for motivation, conflict and resolution. "I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope", is another line from Eliot's poem, and it could well be taken as Angelopoulos' guide to character presentation. As Fredric Jameson comments in an earlier version of his essay, the total effect of Angelopoulos' cinema is to "neutralize the categories of individualism and the individual body but also the individual character altogether" . It is this unique concept, Jameson argues, that makes Angelopoulos' early films particularly examples of "historical cinema", in which we experience "history" as a mixture of many forces in which the usual boundaries of fact and fiction, foreground and background, the individual and the group, interact and, finally, cease to have meaning as traditionally conceived. Thus, once more I suggest that Angelopoulos has steadfastly chosen to anchor his cinema not in motion, but in stillness, in an effort to have us experience and contemplate his images in a new way. In part, as Bordwell and Jameson make clear, this approach grows out of a "late modernism" (Jameson) or a special form of postmodernism. But only in part. For, ultimately, Angelopoulos' cinema is a cinema in a Greek landscape. His visual sense, for instance, owes as much to Byzantine iconography, in terms of a presentation and understanding of space, time and character, as to the modernist cinemas of Antonioni, Jancs6 and Ozu .

4

III. Angelopoulos' career Theo Angelopoulos was born in Athens in 1 93 6 . He is one of four children of Katerina and Spyros Angelopoulos, who himself was from a village in the Peloponnesian region of rural Greece. We should note that, as a "city boy" born of parents from the countryside, Angelopoulos is entirely typical of so many of his generation who were, in effect, first-generation urbanites with deep country roots. The difference, however, is that, while many Athenians have tried hard to forget or ignore their rural heritage, Angelopoulos has made a career­ long effort to explore it. He survived the hardships of the Second World War and the German Occupation, followed by the Greek Civil War 0 946-49), despite hunger and the political persecutions suffered by his father. He studied law at the University of Athens from 1 953 to 1 957, and then, after military service 0959-6 0), studied film and anthropology in Paris for the next few years, returning to Greece in 1 963 . Angelopoulos began working for a left-wing newspaper, Dimokratiki Allaghi, and began making short films in 1 9 66 . He finished E Ekpombi ( 1be Broadcast) in 1 968, and went on to make his first feature, Reconstruction, in 1970. The subject of the film was taken from a newspaper article about a village woman who murdered her husband after he returned from Germany, where he had been a guest worker for several years. Filmed in black and white for little money, in rural Greece near the Albanian border, and using non-professional actors, the film made it immediately clear that Angelopoulos was not following in the footsteps of commercial Greek cinema. Greek cinema flourished in the 1 950s and 1960s, focusing on two particular genres: light comedy and melodramas, centred usually around village characters who moved to the city in search of a better life - a narrative formula that reflected the changing demographics of the country itself, for, by 1 970, Athens had become a city of four million in a country with a total population of only eight million. Angelopoulos then completed a trilogy of films about Greek history from 1 93 6 to the late- 1970s: Meres Tou '36 (Days of'36, 1972), 1be Travelling Players 0975) and I Kinigi ( 1be Hunters, 1977). In all cases, as Georgakas points out in his essay, Angelopoulos portrayed an history viewed from the Left that Greeks had not seen onscreen befo re. 0 Megalexandros (Alexander the Great, 1 980) served as a postscript, or rather a prologue, to the historical trilogy, by focusing on Greek culture and history at lhe turn of the century, thus completing Angelopoulos' contemplation of the whole span of Greek history in the 20th century.

His next three features were dubbed by Angelopoulos as a "trilogy of silence". 4 Taxidi Sta Kithira ( Voyage to Cythera, 1983), as b oth Yvette Biro and Vasilis Rafalidis make clear, concerns th e contemporary echoes of the Greek Civil War, as an old Communist, Spyros, returns from exile in the Soviet Union to find that he no longer has a home. Similarly, the main figure in 0 Melissokomos (The Beekeeper, 1986), also named Spyros, is a retired schoolteacher who attempts to return to a home that has become anything but an Ithaca in the Homeric sense. Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist, 1988) takes on the Odyssey theme, with a voyage from the viewpoint of two children, Voula, a young girl, and Alexander, her even younger brother. Their odyssey is in search of a father whom they have never known, and who most likely does not exist. Angelopoulos' most recent films could be considered as a "Balkan duo". In both To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou ( The Suspended Step of the Stork, 1991) and Ulysses' Gaze, he has turned his attention to the interrelatedness of Greece to its neighbouring Balkan nations, and to the whole concept of the Balkans, both as they exist in their warring and very troubled present, and as reflected through echoes of the past. The Suspended Step of the Stork takes place on the Greek-Albanian border, while Ulysses' Gaze takes Angelopoulos and his main figure, simply referred to as "A" and played by Harvey Keitel, from Greece to Albania, and on to the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and, finally, into wartorn Bosnia. There is, however, yet another way of viewing Angelopoulos' career, as David Bordwell details in his essay, and which we have acknowledged in the organisation of our collection. Bordwell sees all the films made before Voyage to Cythera as examples of "political modernism", which concentrate on groups and were shot in a minimalist manner that aimed to block "empathy". Those made since Voyage to Cythera, Bordwell explains, are "more concentrated on the individual, delineating personal crises which express, as the emigrant author of The Suspended Step of the Stork puts it, fin de siecle melancholy". Having moved outside the territorial (but not the spiritual) borders of Greece in Ulysses' Gaze, Angelopoulos speaks in our interview of making a film in the United States. The theme would be familiar, of course: the desire for nostos ("home" , and thus "nostalgia") that Greeks in America feel. But not only Greeks. He wishes to look at those who have washed up on American shores, and to suggest that the "melting pot" concept of American culture is most likely far too simplistic a vision of what is actually going on. Angelopoulos' recent films have made us very aware that a century is ending. Angelopoulos should be still making films as the new

6

century begins, which just may suggest some of the new possibilities an old world can expect. IV. The essays This collection is meant to be representative, rather than exhaustive, in its commentary on and study of Angelopoulos' work. David Bordwell - well-known for his extensive theoretical contributions to the study of American cinema, film history, narrative, as well as Japanese cinema, Eisenstein, and the present state of "post-theory" in cinema studies - has also been a long-time admirer of Angelopoulos' work. As the opening essay of the anthology, this piece places Angelopoulos' films within a wide tradition of European cinema since the 1 960s. Bordwell sees the influences of modernism and minimalism practised by a variety of filmmakers, from Bertolucci to Godard, Fellini, Resnais, Pasolini and Rossellini, but especially by Antonioni. Furthermore, Bordwell notes that these influences suggest Angelopoulos is "more a synthesizer than a unique original", but goes on to say that many great artists such as Prokofiev and Modigliani (and Homer too, we might add) were "synthesizers" more than originals. Within such a context, Bordwell clearly explores the cinematic style which Angelopoulos has developed in both periods of his work, and the effect of "melancholy" (which I would call a form of "nostalgia") they produce. Bordwell concludes that Angelopoulos is "[o]ften majestic, sometimes mannered, almost always melancholic", and certainly a filmmaker who demonstrates that "cinematic modernism can still open our eyes". Dan Georgakas is a Greek-American writer, film critic, editor and author, as well as one of the founders of Cineaste magazine, which : over the past quarter of a century, has been the leading film journal in the United States with a political perspective. Georgakas thus writes as someone with dual cinematic citizenship. He understands the flow and detail of Greek history, culture, politics and cinema, and he is able to pull back and observe the broader importance of Angelopoulos' work, especially his chosen subject in this essay, 1be Travelling Players. In a fascinating examination of this film, which is a cornerstone to all of Angelopoulos' work, Georgakas is able to provide an extremely lucid pinpointing of the political aims and cinematic accomplishment of Angelopoulos in this film, in comparison with the "political cinema" of the French-Greek director, Costa-Gavras, best known for his fast­ paced, Hollywood-styled political thriller, Z ( 1 968) . Georgakas' essay brings many fresh insights to an English-language readership, as he notes, for instance, the similarity between the quest

7

for "a genuinely national cinema", that is paralleled in Greek music by composers and musicians attempting to forge a truly "Greek" sound based on elements of religious, folk and secular music of the past. He is also able to show how Angelopoulos plays with both folk drama elements and the ancient tragic myth of the Agamemnon cycle, especially the Electra story, to create a complex web of allusions and implications. On this note, he sees a basic patterning at play: "[t]he syndrome of betrayal and redemption lays over the lives of the travelling players of Greece" . Finally, Georgakas gives Angelopoulos credit for making good "on his promise to rescue ancient myth from the academics, and return it to the arena of popular entertainment". More people saw 1be Travelling Players when it came out in 1 975 in Greece than any other previous Greek film for a very simple reason: for the first time, Greeks were seeing onscreen a portrayal of the Greek Civil War told from the perspective of the Left. Georgakas' observations cast much light on how such an "engaged" film has played an important role in the ongoing dialogue of what it means to be Greek at the end of the 20th century. The essay by Vasilis Rafalidis not only represents a fully "Greek" perspective on Angelopoulos, but also helps to lead us towards an understanding of Angelopoulos' second major phase of filmmaking: the focus on the individual , as opposed to the group. Rafalidis is one of Greece's most respected author-critics, and has written not only for papers and periodicals, but also extended studies, including a book on the Balkans. A critic with a wide multicultural appreciation, Rafalidis frames his discussion of Voyage to Cythera within a context of European art, literature and cinema. He sees the parallels, for instance, between Baudelaire and Watteau and Angelopoulos, as he, Rafalidis, searches for the "centre" of this remarkable film. As in Georgakas, identity is a major theme here, for the old man in the film, Spyros, is seen as "a Greek of the periphery" - or, as he points out, "Spyros is a King Lear who has lost his kingdom in the Civil War" . Readers should appreciate that Rafalidis is firmly in the European tradition of writing criticism drawing from a wealth of European culture, ranging from classical to pop and the postmodern. Gerald O'Grady was responsible for organising the first retrospective of Angelopoulos' films in the United States, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1990. His piece on 1be Beekeeper helps us to understand how both Angelopoulos' art and his view of life itself "build" on images and segments, much as the bees in his main character's farm build their hives, by "tessellation" . That this approach leads to a cinema of contemplation is made clear in O 'Grady's closing paragraph, when he notes that Angelopoulos' films themselves can also be seen as part of a "tessellation" process, and

8

reflect more and more light "when one reflects upon them". Michael Wilmington, film critic at 7be Chicago Tribune and a contributor to numerous film journals, is appreciative of Angelopoulos' accomplishment throughout his entire career. He speaks of the effect of seeing an Angelopoulos film, and feeling that afterwards the world settled in a different rhythm. Wilmington surveys Angelopoulos' entire opus with much sensitivity, noting that "[t]hroughout, we are always aware of life on the edge, of the uncertainty and fragility of most human endeavour" . Few have expressed it so well. Yvette Biro, who came to the States from Hungary, where she was both a critic and a screenwriter, has long distinguished herself as a professor of screenwriting at New York University, and has written frequently on film for a variety of journals and newspapers, including 7be New York Times. As a Central European, she is perhaps particularly well-qualified to appreciate the clearly non-Hollywood approach to cinema that Angelopoulos' films demonstrate. Her focus is on Voyage to Cythera, which she sees as "a masterful presentation of the two worlds of reality and imagination, serving to confront them, shuffle them, and fuse them together in a dazzling display". This transitional film in Angelopoulos' career is an especially difficult one to write about. Yet, Biro teases out the stylistic as well as the political and historical implications of this film, which could be called Angelopoulos' Otto e mezzo (Blh). Biro concludes that Angelopoulos' shuffling of reality and imagination in this film within a dream within a film places the narrative in the "conditional" tense, thus fusing "a new sense of time". Fredric Jameson has for many years in an impressive series of books and essays helped to shape the American theoretical discourse on the interplay of literature, cinema, history and a political awareness of the production of artistic texts in relation to their cultures. His contribution began as a preface for this collection, but very soon grew into a full essay, as did his enthusiasm for discussing Angelopoulos' use of style and form as an expression of history and a form of "late modernism" . Jameson rightly identifies the significance of style as "the central category both of modernist production in all the arts, and also of the multiple ideologies with which the various modernisms have secured their hegemony over the institutions" . H e then suggests the ways in which Angelopoulos has been able, in his early "group-oriented" films and his present individual-centred works, to establish a cinema that is truly "historical", as opposed to the traditional narrative films that are merely placed within an historical period. For Jameson, this accomplishment has to do in part with Angelopoulos' presentation of materiality, his ability to neutralize comm odity fetishism, and his "non-synchronous" narrative structure,

9

among other characteristics. Finally, Jameson sees that Angelopoulos' latest film, Ulysses' Gaze, suggests a completely new phase in the director's career, one which affords "unexpected glimpses of the narrative forms of the future, an inconceivable high art yet to come of the epoch of globalization and transnational communication, and worldwide mass culture". Jameson frames our collection with a view to the future, for he suggests this new phase which Angelopoulos has entered, as his camera and characters wander the wartorn Balkans in Ulysses' Gaze, may well be the beginning of "an active prophecy of new and future forms". My interview with Angelopoulos which concludes the collection was made during the summer of 1 995, when he had just won the Grand Jury prize at Cannes, and was beginning to figure out which of over twenty international festivals, to which the film had been invited, he would attend. It was, in that sense, the perfect time to catch the filmmaker - between projects and after the exhausting two-year odyssey of filming Ulysses' Gaze. The interview allows the reader some insight into both Angelopoulos the artist and Angelopoulos the man, and, we should add, Angelopoulos the Greek. At the end of 7be Suspended Step of the Stork, the young television journalist returns to the border between Greece and Albania and sees a string of telephone poles, each with a man in a yellow raincoat beginning to rewire the broken communication lines that cross the border. The image is striking not only for its echoes of orthodox icons of the Crucifixion, but also as a suggestion of the hope for a future with communication beyond borders of any sort. We hope that this collection can serve a similar function. Notes

I have also written about Angelopoulos in The Films of Tbeo A ngelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). I thus see this present volume as a companion work which, taken together, offers a full range of coverage of Angelopoulos' cinema . Richard Corliss , "Cannes Goes Under", Time 12 June 1995: 68-70. 3

George Seferis in Four Greek Poets, translated and edited by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966): 62-63. Emphasis added. 4

Wolfram Schutte , "Land-Surveyor and Time-Traveller: The Greek Film Director Thea Angelopoulos" (published notes with the CD, Eleni Karaindrou: Music for Films [Munich: ECM Records, 1991)).

10

Modernism, minimalism, melancholy: Angelopoulos and visual style David Bordwell

I. I take Angelopoulos to be a modernist director - not only a modern one, and almost certainly not a postmodernist one (whatever that might be) . T�_ ulti��.!.t:_.!'.��?�S g�_r!��-'-
11

the influence of Marx, Freud and Brecht, he sought to explore representation without psychological identification; and a second phase, beginning with Voyage to Cythera, that was more emotional and existentialist, disenchanted with the cynicism of politics: "Art has become anthropocentric again and asks more questions for which it has no answers". 3 Many commentators have accepted and elaborated this period division . 4 I am not suggesting that Angelopoulos is cynical or opportunistic in helping us decipher to his work; this, as I have argued elsewhere, is virtually demanded of a creator working in the "art cinema" . 5 A cinephile in the Parisian mould, an eager exegete of his own work, Angelopoulos is also a modernist in creating a trade mark, a recognisable, self-conscious style which he carries from film to film. Like Bresson, Tati, Dreyer and many other directors of an older generation, Angelopoulos seems to "process" every script, passing the story action through a series of grids that result in an idiosyncratic string of images. Critics commonly point out that he relies again and again on long shots, long takes, temps morts and offscreen space, and he has obligingly discussed these techniques at length in his interviews. At the time of his early work, he claimed that the long takes and camera movements create a "dialectic" among different elements in the shot. 6 He thus encouraged a "Brechtian" characterisation of his style. Ten years later, however, asked if the shot of sudden rain in Voyage to Cythera was not aiming at a Brechtian distancing, he replied: "Yes, but not for such reasons, but because artificial rain is very beautiful! It is as beautiful as natural rain. " 7 In all this there is another assumption, one that I shall run \ somewhat against. Typically, we t� ink of_(l !]l..QQ�mi�LQ.�mr as _ \original and innovative. That An8�Jopqu los is disU!t{:1iY��� is no doubt. But no artist works wholly outside the norms and choices afforded by his milieu, and Angelopoulos' works seem to me important not only for their singularity, but also for the ways in which they blend significant tendencies at work in European cinema over the last 30 years. In what follows, therefore, I shall not be concerned with the films as unique wholes. I want instead to consider how Angelopoulos explores and extends stylistic options current in his milieu, bending them towards specific goals. Those goals - dedramatisation; a muted emotional expressivity; a subtle direction of the audience's attention; a concomitant awareness of the process of film viewing - form part of the modernist enterprise as I understand it. There are several advantages in situating Angelopoulos in the history of modernist film style. For one thing, we can come to a more precise understanding of his characteristic strategies. We can go ___

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beyond the standard litany of preferred devices to spot more fine­ grained features than have previously been discussed. In addition, we are in a position to connect such features within a broader artistic strategy. Such an analysis also helps distinguish him from the other directors who use the same general techniques, such as Jancs6. More broadly, a close look at Angelopoulos' stylistic antecedents and transformations sheds light on how a tradition may be revived to meet new demands. Arguably, his systematic expansion of certain stylistic premises has kept postwar modernism alive in the largely hostile climate of the 1 980s and 1 990s. If my strategy makes a fine director seem more a synthesizer than a unique original, I offer only this apology. Prokofiev and Poulenc, Modigliani and Balthus, are not as powerfully original as Stravinsky or Picasso; however, they are indispensable to understanding modernism in music and painting. Modernism is also a pluralism, and many of its worthiest creators reflect that diversity in their own work . And, of course, no work is sheerly original anyhow. Tracing how a work modifies its sources in prior practice is one duty of the critic who wants to understand change and continuity in history. 8 2. When I came t o France, i t was the epoch of Antonioni, of L'Avventura and La Notte. When I was at IDHEC, you'ld go every day to see a film by Antonioni. 9 A useful way to begin situating Angelopoulos' style historically is to recall that tradition of "dedramatisation" which emerged in European cinema after the end of the Second World War. Filmmakers explored ways to mute both plot and style, thereby marking the drama as a more serious, even realistic representation than that offered by Hollywood cinema. Rossellini, Bresson, Dreyer and several other directors working in the 1950s are important in the development of this trend, but most pertinent for Angelopoulos, I shall suggest, is Antonioni. Antonioni's black and white work harbours at least two distinct trends. His earliest features display long-take shooting with complex movements of figure and camera. In many scenes, the characters execute a leisurely ballet of foreground and background movement, as if the director had slowed down the choreography of Renoir's La Regie du jeu ( Tbe Rules of the Game, 1 939) (Figure 1 ) . From around II Grido ( Tbe Cry, 1 957), however, Antonioni starts to simplify his style. He uses less intricate camera movements, and relies somewhat more on cutting. 10 Static ensembles and distant views, occasionally

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seen in the earlier work, become more prominent. In the beginnin g of 1be Cry, for instance, Aida returns to Irma after seven years, an d Antonioni stages their reunion in a field in a very distant framing. This second strain brings dedramatisation vividly to the fore. From 1be Cry onwards, Antonioni explores a host of tactics for draining away the drama from charged situations. He virtually eliminates non­ diegetic music and point-of-view cutting. Close-ups and medium shots still remain important components of the scenes, but, more and more, Antonioni stages major actions in long shots of figures in landscapes or spacious interiors. Perhaps the most famous example is the bleak ending of L'Avventura 0 960), which reduces Sandra and Claudia to streaks of black in a blocked-out composition of sea and sky (Figure 2) . Antonioni likewise reduces scenes to silences and temps morts, stretches of dead time in which nothing of traditional dramatic moment is occurring. He also renders acting more impassive by means of a fairly muted performance style, long-held poses, and what I shall call "dorsality", the tendency to turn figures from the camera at moments of dramatic intensity (Figures 3-4). The result is the "inexpressive" shot that actually expresses - lassitude, anomie, suppressed pain, or emotional distances between the characters. With Blow-Up (19 66) and later films, Antonioni explores somewhat different stylistic options, but his earlier work constituted the paradigm case of "dedramatised" filmmaking for Angelopoulos' generation. Yet Antonioni's influence on younger directors was refracted through another impulse, one which we have come to call "political modernism" . From the mid- 1 960s, directors all over the world sought ways to put postwar modernist experimentation at the service of radical political critique. Many looked for models in 1 920s Soviet filmmaking, but filtered the montage aesthetic through the revival of disjunctive editing in the work of the Nouvelle Vague and Brazil's Cinema Novo. We have become quite familiar with the result, a mordant cinema of collage seen in Fernando E Solanas and Octavia Getino's La bora de los homos ( 1be Hour of the Furnaces, 1 968) and Dusan Makavejev's W.R.: Misterije organizma (W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism, 1971). But at least some filmmakers of politicised modernism turned to the "dedramatisation" tradition for models. For example, the Hungarian Miklos Jancs6, strongly influenced by Antonioni, began to exploit the long take with complex camera movement. From the Soviet montage tradition]ancs6 borrows the idea of a group protagonist, but he turns it to dedramatising ends. The dramaturgy of Szegenylegenyek(Tbe Round-Up, 1 9 65) and Csillagosok, katonti.k ( 1be Red and the White, 1 967) emphasises large-scale forces and moment-by-moment fluctuations in power. Moreover, the scenes

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are played out in very long takes with constantly moving figures and a ceaselessly panning and tracking camera. The situations are intrinsically charged with dramatic voltage - guards confronting prisoners; commanders randomly pulling prisoners for execution - but Jancs6 short-circuits the emotional effect: no non-diegetic music; figures who drift through the frame; characters seen at a distance or turned from us (Figure 5 ) ; and, above all, a camera more concerned with group dynamics than individual destiny, with the frame picking up and dropping characters in the course of a shot or of an entire film. Across the 1 960s, Jancs6 pushed steadily towards more complex choreography and shooting by expanding the number of figures, developing complex circular and serpentine patterns of movement (often motivated as dance), and exploiting the zoom lens and shifts of focus to create a plastic, constantly shrinking and expanding pictorial space. Although it sounds oxymoronic, Jancs6's version of dedramatisation is florid, even "maximalist" . This becomes clear with Meg ker a nep (Red Psalm, 1 971) and the films that follow, where the contending groups have become pure emblems of social forces, playing out symbolic rituals in an abstract space - cinematic pageantry enacting a Marxist reading of history. At the same period, however, other directors pursued a more austere approach. Inspired by a particular reading of Brecht's Verfremdungsefef kt, some took dedramatisation towards simplification and severity. Although Jancs6 mutes traditional dramatic values, he offers a robust kinetic spectacle in their place. The alternative tendency was resolutely anti-spectacular, offering a kind of minimalist political modernism. This tendency can be seen in Godard's "blackboard films" such as Vent d'est (Windjro'l')'l the East, 1 970), but it also eventually emerges in more orthodox features. One example is Chantal Akerman'sjeanne Die/man, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brnxelles (1 975). In its tracing of a few days in the life of a housewife who works prostitution into her daily schedule, the film dwells on mundane activities and temps morts. Through rigorous use of perpendicular framing and 90 ° and 1 80 ° cuts, Akerman muffies any drama implicit in the scenes, treating them instead as sober pictorial abstractions (Figure 6). Angelopoulos began his career just as the austere variant of political modernism was being launched. There is good reason to think that he helped crystallise it as a distinct trend during the mid- to late-1 970s. Over the next two decades, he synthesized and sustained the techniques and attitudes forged within this tendency, while integrating several lessons from a slightly older modernist tradition.

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3. It i s fairly evident that Angelopoulos extends many o f the dedramatising tactics we have seen in Antonioni. We find a comparable interest in landscape, a reluctance to use non-diegetic music (at least in the earliest films) and an insistence on stretches of dead time. The influence passes even to quite small-scale tactics, such as what we might call "3A dorsality" of the figures. In replacing the 3A frontal view characteristic of mainstream cinema with exactly opposite views from the rear, Antonioni minimises our access to character reaction. At one point early in Tbe Cry, the dialogue between Irma and Aldo is played with their backs to us in two 3A views (Figure 7) . The effect i s that o f an incomplete shot/reverse-shot sequence, withholding the "answering" shot that would present the characters frontally. In mainstream practice, and sometimes in Antonioni, such a 3A rear view is used only to start or end a shot, or to serve as a way station in the course of the action. Angelopoulos, however, insists on holding this relatively uninformative pose for a remarkably long time, as when in 0 Melissokomos ( Tbe Beekeeper, 1 98 6) the vagabond girl dances to the j ukebox in the roadside cafe (Figure 8) . Accordingly, frontal or profiled positions of the figures often serve as transitions to the 3A resting point. A noteworthy example occurs in 0 Tbiassos ( Tbe Travelling Players, 1 975). The conversation starts by letting the poses of Electra and Pylades favour the poet's dialogue and facial reactions (Figure 9), but, in the course of the scene, his reactions become more inaccessible as he goes to the window and presents yet another 3A back view (Figure 1 0) . These 3A views take o n particular saliency i n the context o f those long shots and extreme long shots which Angelopoulos favours. Again, it seems likely that Antonioni alerted directors to the dedramatising potential of the long shot. During the 1 970s, many directors began to play out scenes in fairly fixed camera positions from a great distance, without cutting to nearer and dearer views. The tendency was most evident in the avant-garde, such as "structural" films (for example, James Benning's 11 x 14 [1 977] and Klaus Wyborny's "neoprimitivist" works [Figure 1 1]). Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet explored the long-shot technique not only in Chronik der A nna Magdalena Bach ( Tbe Chronicle ofAnna Magdalena Bach, 1 967), whose pseudo-Baroque tableaux keep the camera at a considerable distance from the drama (Figure 12), but also in a series of landscape films such as Fortini/Cani 0 976). During the 1 970s, Marguerite Duras' India Song 0 975) played out highly melodramatic scenes in distant, oblique interiors accompanied by languorous offscreen tango tunes (Figure 13).

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Angelopoulos' long shots owe a great deal to this tendency. Even in interiors, the camera assumes a considerable distance from the action (Figure 14) , and the very occasional medium shots used in the early work all but vanish by the mid- 1 970s. It is true that sometimes he will track in to a closer view, as when he enlarges the strip of film in Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist, 1 988) , or the action of the vagabond girl in biting and kissing Spyros's hand at the snack wagon in 7be Beekeeper. In films so dominated by ensemble pieces and landscapes, forward camera movement creates a visual crescendo. But, on the whole, most of the memorable Angelopoulos shots, such as the final image of Reconstrnction, or the travelling players' pursuit of a chicken (Figure 1 5), are long-shot views. If Angelopoulos usually does not need to move his camera or his figures much closer to the viewer, it is because he unabashedly relies on the powers of cinema to present fine detail without sacrificing a large-scale image. To appreciate the full force of his compositions requires seeing them in 35mm projection. All films suffer by transfer to video, but Angelopoulos' films depend so crucially on fine-grained photographic rendition of immense spaces that much of their impact is lost in the smaller format. He is one of the last directors to design his shots specifically for the cinema screen. Legible detail becomes important through another means. Unlike Straub and Huillet in 7be Chronicle of A nna Magdalena Bach , Angelopoulos makes his long shots quite sparse. The frame is not literally empty - some human figures are probably present - but usually only a few sectors of space are activated, the rest being neutralized or serving to frame the action. Thanks to the diminutive scale, the comparative absence of figure movement (the characters walk slowly or stand in place), and a lack of information about the characters (reduced in size, seen from the rear, and often in 3,4 view), the image goes very still. It becomes a dead space which invites the viewer to linger over previous developments, to wait for something new to modify the stasis, or simply to contemplate a mood of expressive vacancy. Antonioni, of course, had suggested the possibilities of such compositions, as when, in I Vinti ( 7be Vanquished, 1 952), Claudio walks slowly past the construction site (Figure 1 6) . But Angelopoulos carried the idea much further. His very first feature film, Reconstrnction, makes eloquent use of the vacant shot. The rest stop on a bus trip is turned into a study in variants on 3,4 dorsality and "spotting" figures in a drab grey field (Figure 17). 7be Travelling Players is filled with such "empty" images, most notably the book­ ending shots of the troupe's arrival at the film's beginning and end (Figures 1 8- 1 9) . In 7be Beekeeper, the empty shot is often used to

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present Spyros tending his hives (Figure 20). A more stripped-down version occurs in Landscape in the Mist, when the two runaway children part from Orestes on the motorway; Angelopoulos' high angle gives each figure a penumbra of unfilled space (Figure 21). The empty shot also enforces a certain pace. If the viewer is fully to take in such distant images, they must be held on the screen for some time, and this has the effect of breaking the dramatic rhythm. Searching for gestures and tell-tale alignments of figures, the viewer must test a variety of ways in which to fill such vacant shots with meaning. The result, beyond the self-conscious pictorialism, is a suspension of dramatic progression which allows both detached contemplation and a sense of dry, understated emotion. The long shot, the 3.4 posture and the "empty" frame would quickly become mannered tics if Angelopoulos did not go further. He goes on to "preform" his figures, interiors and landscapes by means of a remarkably consistent set of dedramatised compositions. Here again we can see his synthesizing role. None of these images is unique to him; we can find parallels throughout 1 9 6 0s and 1 970s cinema. But Angelopoulos concentrates so single-mindedly upon them and explores them so imaginatively that they have come to be identified with his work, stamping every film as "by Angelopoulos " . They give each film a theme-and-variations structure; one image will come to be seen as a return to, or a deviation from, another image shown earlier in the film or seen elsewhere in the ceuvre. Moreover, these types of images can be combined, within a single sequence or even within a single shot, to explore their visual and dramatic possibilities. One type of image makes use of what the art historian Heinrich Wolfflin called "recessional" space Y Here, figures and architectural spaces create depth through diagonals that shoot from foreground to background. Combined with the empty frames and 3.4 poses, Angelopoulos' recessional staging creates one of his distinctive types of compositions, an image situating figures within a strongly perspectival landscape. When that landscape utilises central perspective, as it might in interiors or city streets or roadways, it can swerve our attention to the vanishing point. The rape of Voula in Landscape in the Mist becomes all the more shocking in that the diagonal recession of the truck and roadway keeps forcing our eye back to the truck-driver's pursuit (Figure 22), the vanishing point giving a kind of inevitability to the event. But central perspective is seldom this "deterministic" in Angelopoulos. He often creates a tension between a central vanishing point and a foreground, off-centre figure. This effect is marked in the declamations of Tbe Travelling Players (Figure 23), as well as in the handling of the border station in To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou ( Tbe

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Suspended Step of the Stork, 1 99 1 ) (Figure 24) . More often, the perspective i s less neatly centred. The endless corridors of the prison in Meres Tou 36 (Days of 36, 1 972), and of the hotel in I Kinigi ( 7be Hunters, 1 977) remind us that Angelopoulos can evoke a more oblique sort of depth. Angelopoulos uses recessional perspective to diminish our view of salient information, further "dedramatising" the film and obliging u s t o concentrate on very distant clues to the drama's progress. The spectator must strain to follow the tiniest wrinkles in the action. A prototypical example occurs in 7be Hunters. Giorgos is sitting in a tavern , with his back to us, and two burly men come to sit before him in the foreground (Figure 25). One says that the leftists are planning a coup. Angry, Yorgos rises and starts to sing a left-wing protest song as he threads his way into the distance (Figure 26). The camera arcs left, keeping him more or less centred as he uncertainly finishes the song, his back still to us (Figure 27) . Taken from a reverse angle, Yorgos' defiant singing, along with his advance to the camera, could make him heroic; but here his shrinking to a tiny silhouette and the weakening of his voice undercut his commitment, foreshadowing his eventual capitulation to the right-wing forces. Pictorially, the composition engages the viewer in a steadily intensifying act of visual concentration on what will become little more than a speck. Here lighting and central placement highlight Yorgos, but Angelopoulos also uses architecture to shape the frame space. Recessive diagonals can carve a locale into zones which different characters occupy. Antonioni explored this somewhat in his interiors, but, from the earliest scenes of Reconstruction, Angelopoulos has made it central to his handling of "empty" shots (Figure 28). This tactic is easily thematised as expressing division and incommunicability among characters, but I think that the perceptual dynamics of such shots are even more important, especially in the context of .t\ngelopoulos' distant framings. Gates, doors or other features can mark distant figures or incidents as important. A.'i the wedding guests of 7be Beekeeper leave the ceremony in a characteristically open shot, the wedding couple comes out in the far distance, framed in the gateway (Figure 29). Within interiors, Angelopoulos frequently creates recessive perspectives around doorways. In Recoristruction, a recurring use of the household's doorway measures the progress of the action: firstly, during the police interrogation of Eleni (Figure 30); later, during her lover's confession (Figure 3 1 ) ; and finally when Eleni and Christos demonstrate the killing (Figure 32). Days of 36 builds certain scenes as permutations of recessional views. The authorities constantly return to the cell in which Sophianos holds Kreezis hostage, allowing us the

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narrowest sliver of access (Figures 33-35). Here, obliquity becomes opacity. The zigzagging of vision executed in such recessional shots is akin to the wide-angle depth associated with the 1 940s and 1950s. Filmmakers around the world pursued the path laid down by Renoir, Welles and Wyler in staging significant actions on different planes along deep diagonals. Even Antonioni retained a "Wellesian" look for his closer views (Figure 36) . But Angelopoulos, starting his career after this technique had been thoroughly developed, avoids the close foregrounds, big heads and looming objects characteristic of this tradition. Instead, he sets the closest plane some distance from us, favouring the more distant framings reminiscent of the cinema prior to 1 9 1 5 . In the context of modern cinema, this physical distance from the foreground could be seen as sustaining an aesthetic distance between the viewer and the characters' situations. A kindred treatment of space can be found in other films of the 1 970s and 1 980s, such as India Song (Figure 37) and Godard's je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary, 1 984). During the 1 960s, however, wide-angle depth was contested by another strain of staging and shooting that, again following Wolfflin, I shall call "planimetric". 1 2 Here the background is resolutely perpendicular to the lens axis, and the figures stand frontally, in profile, or with their backs directly towards us. We can find early examples - even in Antonioni (Figure 38) - but the technique developed most evidently within the "New Waves" of the late-1 950s. As directors relied more and more on telephoto and zoom lenses, they gravitated towards a less volumetric, more self-consciously "modernist" image - flatter, obviously constructed, capable of generating disconcerting optical puzzles, and making little effort to seduce with the charms of "illusionist" depth (Figure 39) . Political modernists quickly picked up on the device: Godard's to-camera monologues in La Chinoise 0 9 6 7) became prototypes (Figure 40) . The new planimetric image was particularly suited to that ascetic strain I mentioned above; it is central to jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Figure 6 above), as well as to Fassbinder's most minimalist exercise, Katzelmacher 0 969) (Figure 4 1). Once more, Angelopoulos incorporates and elaborates possibilities circulating in his milieu . His first two features, Reconstruction and Days of 36, make little use of the planimetric composition, but in subsequent films it starts to become an alternative to recessional staging. Throughout 7be Travelling Players, characters are ranged in frieze-like compositions, either within the theatre (Figure 42) or within landscapes (Figure 43) . Several critics have pointed out that this tactic turns many locales into Brechtian tableaux, paralleling historical events

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with the performance of the players. 1 3 I want only to add that Angelopoulos was able to create this pattern by adapting and stringently pursuing a compositional option that was already available. His subsequent films employ the planimetric image to combine both frontal and profile views, or to create muted moments through dorsality (Figure 44) . He striates landscapes by spreading ribbons of figures parallel to the horizon, as in the breathtaking wedding ceremony at the riverside in 7bc Suspended Step of the Stork (Figures 45 and 4 6) . Also, the "clothes-line" effect of the planimetric image seems to encourage the camera to pan in order to explore all those parallel vectors running through the shot. In addition, apertures play no less important a role in the planimetric image than in the recessive one. In Landscape in the Mist, when Voula stands at the station doorway and speaks of darkness and light, track workers riding on their handcar are first seen as spectral blobs of yellow in the right window pane before they coast past the doorway (Figure 47). Although the recessional image and the planimetric one are often taken to be characteristic of rival styles, Angelopoulos uses both. In his work they form a broad pair of schemas which can be applied, pro forma, from film to film. We instantly recognise the Angelopoulos cafe shot (recessional, with oblique depth), the Angelopoulos roadside shot (recessional, often with central perspective) , the Angelopoulos beach or riverside shot (planimetric, with clothes-lined figures), and so on. Furthermore, a particular image may combine the two options through camera movement or internal development. One shot in 7be Hunters begins as a horizontal and frontal set-up (Figure 48); as Yannis moves, however, an arcing camera creates a recessive composition which puts the figures in 3,4 back views (Figure 49). Contrariwise, the stunning finale of 7be Suspended Step of the Stork shows the reporter starting off along the river as the linemen ascend the poles (Figure 50) . But then the camera arcs rightward to create a monumentally planimetric tableau as the reporter pauses at the river and the men pull the lines taut (Figure 5 1 ) . A dynamic diagonal has become a laminated landscape. 4. With some sense of Angelopoulos' salient principles of visual design, we can re-evaluate some received wisdom about his technique. The long take, for instance, can now be seen as creating, sustaining or blending empty shots and 3,4 views, recessional and planimetric compositions. Even when the plan-sequence does not merge two time periods within the shot, as in 7be Travelling Players and 7be Hunters, it does serve to confine us to only certain types of images; very soon we learn that we will not get cut-in close-ups or shot/reverse-shots,

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and that we must work with the comparatively distant view. Similarly, the temps morts compel us to concentrate on the minute details and gradual changes that constitute the action. The commitment to long takes, distant views, sparse frames and temps morts places an enormous weight upon the unfolding shot. Camera movement is the most obvious accessory here. Present in virtually every shot Angelopoulos makes, camera movement is almost always locally motivated. Someone is walking or driving, and the camera follows by panning or tracking. The camera may move a little more quickly than its subject, but the figure's movement nevertheless supplies an initial impetus for the unfolding of space. In the course of the movement, the camera may drop the first character, pick up another figure, and follow that figure for a time. In all, this tactic allows Angelopoulos to keep the shot alive, to quicken our visual interest while also linking or developing his characteristic compositions, as in 1be Suspended Step ofthe Stork example already mentioned (Figures 50-5 1 ) . Moreover, since w e cannot see what i s offscreen, camera movement offers a chance to arouse and foil expectations . In 1be Beekeeper, for example, the camera leaves Spyros at a table and follows a waiter crossing the road, in the process picking up the vagabond girl with her new lover. We start to wonder when she will notice the offscreen Spyros. By the time she does, we lose her and follow the waiter as he recrosses the street with Spyros's drink . . . only to find that Spyros has left. Of course, in real life, the waiter would have seen that Spyros was gone well before setting out across the road; here, postponing his realisation allows us to keep assuming that offscreen space is as it was. Springing such surprises is a fairly traditional use of camera movement. More distinctive, I think, is the way in which Angelopoulos' camera movements participate in a larger dynamic of opening and filling space at a tempo which allows us to form anticipations about how the blocking will develop. Thanks to the long take and dead intervals, Angelopoulos prolongs the very process of staging, leaving us plenty of time to recognise that we are forming expectations about where the character or camera will go next. If Antonioni slows down Renoir, Angelopoulos slows down Antonioni. Since the early years of cinema, directors have commonly left a vacant spot in the frame and then filled it, thereby creating a sense of a completed composition. Angelopoulos lays this technique bare by very overtly opening gaps which he will then slowly fill, delaying the moment when the shot clicks into place. In a cafe scene in 1be Suspended Step of the Stork, the reporter meets the young bride. The camera follows him through the crowd (Figure 52), but, suddenly and

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implausibly, a wide stretch of floor space opens to allow us an unimpeded view of the bride in the background (Figure 53) . We are given several moments to speculate on who will move next, but then the camera edges slightly leftward, clearing still more room for the couple; eventually, she rises and comes to the dead centre of the frame (Figure 54) . Even without camera movement, simply filling a gap can develop and climax the long take. In one episode of Tbe Hunters, the police fan out across a street, but charitably leave a slot which will serve as a miniature window through which we can see the approach of the peace demonstrators (Figure 55), the arrival of the car that will snatch Yannis (Figure 56), and then the aftermath of the clash, with the police dispersing and the dead victim lying in the street at the centre of the shot's perspective (Figure 57) . It is as if the entire arc of the action were known in advance; watch this space, the shot implies from the outset, and you will see what will happen. We study the distant view; we probe those figures turned from us; we scan the horizontal stretch or wait for action at a vanishing point; we form expectations about the trajectory of the camera or the characters. Our patience is often rewarded at the close of a shot. The visual climax may be quite muted; it may be somewhat striking, as in this scene from Tbe Hunters; or it may be nothing short of flamboyant, as in linemen stretched out like notes on a staff ( Tbe Suspended Step of the Stork, Figure 51 ) , or a gigantic hand rising from the bay to float over the city (Landscape in the Mist) . In all cases, the strategy of building a long take to a moment of heightened expressivity, in the absence of a drama which can command our attention and emotional investment along mainstream lines, has its source in a modernist aesthetic. Angelopoulos has adapted and blended salient technique's of two traditions of European cinema in order to sustain that refined awareness of the viewer's own act of apprehension which was the hallmark of modernism in many of its manifestations. 5. To what ends? Accepting the two-phase periodization o f his work, we can note that in the films before Voyage to Cythera, all the techniques we have examined accord with the goals of a "political modernism" . By concentrating on groups, and by staging and shooting in the "minimalist" manner, Angelopoulos blocks empathy. This leads to a critical detachment which in turn invites us to consider the larger historical forces at work in a given situation. Similarly, the late work is more concentrated on the individual, delineating personal crises which express, as the emigrant author of Tbe Suspended Step of the Stork puts it, fin de siecle melancholy. This tendency towards

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portrayir -; psychological crises can also be seen in Angelopoulos' new reliance m major stars such as Mastroianni, Moreau and Keitel, on non-diegetic music, and on a more self-conscious spectacle. Again, the techniques we have considered would support this construal of the late films. We might consider Angelopoulos to be offering us an updated version of "Antoniennui" . I think the two-part periodization holds good, but it is worth pointing out that Angelopoulos' later work has not relinquished political critique. Far more than Antonioni did, he tackles concrete political issues of his moment: the death of Marxism ( Voyage to Cythera), the desperate flow of populations across European borders (Landscape in the Mist; 7be Suspended Step of the Stork), and the possibility of a national politics based on honour ( 7be Suspended Step of the Stork) . One cannot conceive of the Antonioni of the 1 950s making a film about Algeria or the Berlin Wall, but To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ( Ulysses' Gaze, 1 995) shows a continuing desire to bear witness to political crisis. Conversely, even in his "Brechtian" days, Angelopoulos gave his work a strong emotional overlay. Straub and Huillet, crucially influenced by Bresson, achieve a discomfiting emotional neutrality throughout their work, but Angelopoulos' 1 970s films, operating under the aegis of Antonioni, are pervaded by solitude, bleakness and futility. In both Nicht vers6hnt, oder es h ilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht (Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules, 1965) and 7be Travelling Players, cycles of national history are played out in a complicated and disorienting flashback structure, but the dedramatisation is achieved in radically different ways: in the one, disorienting cuts, close-ups of non-actors stiffly reciting monologues, and temps morts that refuse to be read as expressing an atmosphere; in the other, long takes, distant declamations, and stillnesses pervaded by oppression and muted despair. Across Angelopoulos' career, the weight of emphasis has shifted, but he has always combined political critique with a pessimistic tone. In both phases, Angelopoulos exemplifies the ways in which a filmmaking tradition can renew itself in the contemporary moment. He pushes certain insights of Antonioni to new limits, encouraged by the model of others (Godard, the minimalist radicals) and by aesthetic currents of his period (Brechtianism particularly) . Similarly, he fuses distinct stylistic options available in his milieu - the re�essional, deeply perspectival shot and the planimetric, "mugshot" framing - into an expressive whole. That he can receive such renown today suggests that, for many viewers, the postwar tradition has not exhausted itself, that it can endow our world of snack bars, video clips and ethnic wars with an astringent, contemplative beauty. At a moment when

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European cinema, both popular and elitist, seems to be breathing its last, Angelopoulos' work is particularly important. Often majestic, sometimes mannered, almost always melancholic, Angelopoulos demonstrates that, contrary to what the prophets of postmodernity keep telling us, cinematic modernism can still open our eyes. •

•

I am grateful to Gabrielle Claes and the staff of the Cinematheque Royale de Belgique for their assistance in my research. I also thank Kristin Thompson, Noel Carroll, and Panayotta Mini for helpful comments on this essay. Notes See Jacques Gerstenkorn, "L'art des equilibres: entretien avec Thea Angelopoulos sur Voyage a Cythere" , in Michel Esteve (ed) , Theo A ngelopoulos (Etudes cinematographiques 142-145 (1985]): 5-6. 2

Translated from the French: " Le voyage a Cythere evoquait le silence de l'histoire , L 'apiculteur Ie silence de ]'amour et Paysage dans le brouillard Ie silence de Dieu." "Entretien", in Michel Ciment and Helene Tierchant, Theo A ngelopoulos (Paris: Edilig, 1989): 145. 3 Translated from the · French: "L'art est redevenu anthropocentrique et pose plus de questions qu'il n'offre de reponses." Quoted in Michel Grodent, " 'Pomme fanee' : autour du ' Voyage a Cythere"', Revue beige du cinema 11 (spring 1985): 59. 4

The most crisp and concise discussion of the two phases I know ha� been offered by James Quandt in "Landscape in the Mist" , in Fabiano Canosa , George Kaloyeropoulos and Gerald O'Grady (eds), 1beo A ngelopoulos (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990): 25. 5 See my Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985): 228-233. 6

"De Forminx Story au Voyage des comediens", in Ciment and Tierchant:

55. 7

Translated from the French: "Oui, pas pour ces raisons, mais parce que c'est tees beau Ia pluie artificielle! Elle est aussi belle que Ia pluie naturelle ." Gerstenkorn: 12.

8

I should indicate that I have not been able to see Angelopoulos' short films and his 1980 feature, A lexander the Great. My generalisations here may thus not apply to these works.

9

Translated from the French: "Quane! je suis venu en France, c'etait i'epoque d'Antonioni, de L 'avventura et de La nuit. Quane! j'etais a l' IDHEC,

25

on allait chaque jour voir un film d'Antonioni" . Voyage des comediens" : 51.

"De Forminx Story au

10

The average shot length of Tbe Vanquished is a remarkable 43 seconds, and the shots in Le A miche ( Tbe Girl Friends, 1955) run on an average of 26 seconds . Tbe Cry 0957) has an average shot length of 22 seconds, about that of Cronaca di un amore ( Chronicle of a Love, 1950). Thereafter, the average starts to drop steadily, with L 'A vventura 0960) having an average of 20 seconds, and La Notte (1961) about 16. 5 seconds. 11 Heinrich Wolffiin, Principles of A tt History: Tbe Problem of the Development of Style in Later A tt, translated by M D Hottinger (New York: Dover Publications, 1950): 75-82. 12 1

Ibid.

3 See, for example, Susan Tarr and Hans Proppe, " Tbe Traveling Players: A Modern Greek Masterpiece" , in Canosa, Kaloyeropoulos and O'Grady (eds) : 12-13; and Isabelle Jordan, "Pour un cinema epique" , Positif 174 (October 1975): 15-22.

26

Fig. 2: L'Avventura

Fig. I : Le Amiche

Fig. 4: L'Avventura

Fig. 5: The Confrontation

Fig. 6: jeanne Die/man, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1 080 Bruxelles

Fig. 7: The Cry

Fig. 8: The Beekeeper

Fig. 9: The Travelling Players

Fig. I 0: The Travelling Players

Fig. I I : Dallas Texas - After the Gold Rush

Fig. 1 2 : The Chronick ofAnna Magtlakna Bach

Fig. 1 3 : India Song

Fig. 1 4 : Voyage to Cythera

Fig. 1 5 : The Travelling Players

Fig. 16: The Vanquished

Fig. 1 7 : Reconstruction

Fig. 1 8: The Travelling Players

Fig. 1 9 : The Travelling Players

Fig. 20: The Beekeeper

Fig. 2 1 : Landscape in the Mist

Fig. 23: The Travelling Players

Fig. 24: The Suspended Step ofthe Stork

Fig. 2 5 : The Hunters

Fig. 27: The Hunters

Fig. 28: Reconstruction

Fig. 29: The Beekeeper

Fig. 30: Reconstruction

Fig. 3 1 : Reconstruction

Fig. 32: Reconstruction

Fig. 33: Days of'36

Fig. 34: Days of'36

Fig. 35: Days of'36

Fig. 36: La Notu

Fig. 37: India Song

Fig. 38: The Vanquished

Fig. 39: Barrier

Fig. 40: La Chinoist

Fig. 4 1 : Katzelmacher

Fig. 42: The Travelling Players

Fig. 43: The Travelling Players

Fig. 44: The Suspended Step ofthe Stork

Fig. 45: The Suspended Step of the Stork

Fig. 46: The Suspended Step ofthe Stork

Fig. 47: Landscape in the Mist

Fig. 48: The Hunters

Fig. 49: The Hunters

Fig. 50: The Suspended Step ofthe Stork

Fig. 5 1 : The Suspended Step of the Stork

Fig. 52: The Suspended Step ofthe Stork

Fig. 53: Tht Suspended Step ofth< Stork

Fig. 54: The Suspended Step ofth< Stork

Fig. 5 5 : The Hunters

Fig. 56: The Hunters

Fig. 57: Tht Hunters

Angelopoulos, Greek history and Tbe Travelling Players

Dan Georgakas

Among the fiercest theoretical debates that raged in the 1 960s among leftist film critics was how political issues could best be presented onscreen. One school of thought favoured having radical content wedded to popular formats, as this would provide access to the largest possible audience. Rather than having problematic cinematic styles jostle for attention with radical content, the popular format would seamlessly serve it. Purely entertainment genres, in effect, would be hijacked for political discourse. Opposing this strategy was the view that radical content could only be faithfully served by a format that rejected the conventions of dominant media as resolutely as it rejected its ideology. Working-class audiences, in particular, needed to learn new ways of seeing, not appeased with the pap of familiar commercial genres. Formats must be understood to be a kind of content in and of themselves. Nor must it be assumed that popular audiences were unable, much less unwilling, to respond to innovative film formats. Two Greek-born directors, Costa-Gavras and Theodore Angelopoulos, came to personify these different approaches to political film. Costa-Gavras scored his first international success with the 1 968 release of Z, a politica1 thriller based on the assassination of a Greek Member of Parliament in 1963. Costa-Gavras subsequently has made films about political turmoil in Europe, South America and the Middle East. He has featured international stars from the onset of his career, and he has been financed by major film institutions in France and the United States. Angelopoulos first came to serious international attention with the 1 975 release of 0 1b iassos ( 1be Travelling Players) , a film whose themes are directly related to the events depicted in Z. All Angelopoulos' films have been made in Greece with the immediate plots related to Greek or Balkan themes. He did not begin to use international stars until 1 986 , and his financing has always been tenuous. Just as Z has come to exemplify the political film which exploits commercial genres, 1be Travelling Players has become emblematic of the political film made by an auteur who rejects mainstream conventions. Although 1be Travelling Players focuses intently on the Greece of

27

the Second World War era, its larger theme is Greek national identity. Ever since the genesis of the modern Greek state in the revolution begun in 1 82 1 , Greece has been subjected to treaties, boundaries and rulers imposed by foreign powers. Forces hostile to Greece have maintained that the 400 years of Ottoman occupation, and even the Byzantine Empire which preceded the Ottomans, severed Greece from its classic roots. Nevertheless, humble Greek peasants routinely name their children Plato, Aphrodite, Xenophon and Ath ena. Ancient myths and concepts are employed by Greeks to explain the nature of the universe as readily as are Enlightenment logic or Christian Gospel. This connection of modern Greeks to all their ancestors is a theme as central to the artistic conception of Tbe Travelling Players as its immediate political concerns. Angelopoulos began to develop his theories about cinema while studying film in France. Born in 1 93 6 to a family of merchants, he had studied law at the University of Athens from 1 953 to 1 957. After completing the military service compulsory for all Greek males, he moved to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne in 1 96 1 and at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) in 1 9 62 . Angelopoulos has stated that h e was far more influenced by literature and literary theory than by French film. 1 He has also stated that he has always been enamoured of Hollywood genre films, a love that is certainly not immediately visible in his work. Pressed on this particular point, Angelopoulos asserts that he responded to the democratic ethos in American film and to the theatricality of the Hollywood musical. Angelopoulos returned to Greece in 1 964, where for three years he was a film critic for the leftist newspaper, Dimokratiki A llaghi. This was a turbulent era in Greek politics. The assassination of Gregory Lambrakis, the martyr depicted in Z, had been traced to high-ranking police officials in Thessalonfki working in league with the Greek monarchy. Greek cities were rocked with the first massive street demonstrations since the civil war of 1 946-49. The conservative Prime Minister, Constantine Karamanlis, resigned, and a reform tide that would have culminated in the election of a centre-left government was abruptly checked on 21 April 1 967, when a junta of Greek colonels staged a coup d'etat. Cultural repression became a hallmark of the colonels' rule from the first day. They imprisoned leftist poets such as Yiannis Ritsos, and forced leading musicians such as Mikis Theodorakis into hiding. They also banned the plays of Aristophanes as seditious, and outlawed an earthy style of bouzouki music as inappropriate in what they termed the new Greece of Christian Greeks. This focus on music and literature was a pre-emptive strike against the two art forms historically associated with political rebellion in Greece. Due to the circumstance

28

that film did not have such an association, the colonels paid less attention to cinema. Although Dimokratiki Allaghi was shut down, Angelopoulos was not arrested. At the informal meetings of filmmakers and then at film school sessions he attended, the key topic soon became how to make films that could pass the censor while retaining political bite. As the seven-year rule of the colonels progressed, film circles became the centre for cultural dissent in much the same way that samizdat culture had been a focus for dissent in the Soviet Union. Working in this ambience, Angelopoulos made his first feature film, A naparastasis (Reconstruction, 1 970) . Shot in stark black and white, the film deals with the murder of a returned guest worker by his wife and her lover. A number of restagings and retellings of the tale leave the details of motivation and the actual slayer in doubt, but allow no doubt about the decaying social fabric of Greek village life. The film won awards at the 1 970 Thessaloniki Film Festival, and received some notice at the Berlin and Mannheirn festivals. Showing increasing political boldness, Angelopoulos spent the next two years making Meres Tou 36 (Days of 36, 1 972), his first feature in colour. The plot concerns a prisoner charged with murdering a trade union leader. The killer is visited in prison by a Member of Parliament with whom he has a homosexual relationship. Using a smuggled gun, the prisoner takes the politician hostage, creating chaos within the prison. Only the dullest mind could ignore the parallel to a junta which had taken a nation and its government hostage, but the film was based on an actual event during the dictatorship of General Metaxas, and the authorities allowed it to be screened. The film dominated at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and won a major award at Berlin. With the power of the junta visibly waning and his popular domestic audience growing, Angelopoulos decided his next film would offer a direct challenge to the junta and the cultural current from which it had emerged. Permission to film was gained by showing the authorities a cleansed script and shooting began in what proved to be the fmal days of the junta. The film was completed under the new caretaker government headed by the returned Karamanlis, which was nearly as hostile to its political perspective as the junta would have been. Whose Greek history is this anyway? The new film, 1be Travelling Players, was to examine the monarcho­ political power elite that had thwarted Greek democracy since at least 1 93 6. Angelopoulos' views constituted a fundamental revision of

29

"official" Greek history, in which the Left in general, and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) in particular, were depicted as moral threats to Greek democracy. Key elements in the revision concerned the nature of the Greek resistance to the Nazi Occupation and the civil war which followed. Angelopoulos contended that the partisan forces led by a coalition of Republican military officers and Communists had been genuine patriots. Whatever they had accomplished had been done independently for national advancement, since the Soviet Union had not been in direct contact with them, much less able to render assistance. In contrast, the monarchist army had sat out the war in the Middle East, and had served as a pawn for political intrigues. The civil war had not been the result of a Communist bid for total power, but a conflict generated by the vicious persecution of partisan fighters by a conservative government under first British, then American tutelage. Throughout the 1 950s, Greece had remained an authoritarian state and had failed to recover from the war, unllike the rest of Europe. Contributing to Greek underdevelopment was the continued servility of its governments to foreign powers. Thus, 1be Travelling Players would continue the investigation begun in Days of 36. Further exploration of the period would be undertaken in I Kinigi ( 1be Hunters, 1 977) and 0 Megalexandros (Alexander the Great, 1 980). This cinematic tetralogy constituted a massive 1 21/z-hour rethinking of contemporary Greek history, and at its core was the tale told in 1be Travelling Players. The story-line focuses on an acting company that tours a sentimental melodrama throughout rural Greece. The individual fates of the actors mirror the experiences of the nation in the years between 1 939 and 1952. But other questions compete with the storytelling. Do the classical myths still apply to Greek daily life? In how many different ways can cinema reconstruct history? Can viewers be made aware of the artificial nature of the reconstruction of historical events, while simultaneously accepting them as valid? How might one present action, spectacle and tragedy while cultivating reason? How can natural time be best utilised to render historical time? Also at issue was the viability of Greek culture. American economic and military might were dominant in the Mediterranean. Did it necessarily follow that American culture must also dominate? For Angelopoulos, the natural cultural battlefield was cinema. Greece had been too poor to have a viable national industry before 1 940, and, in the postwar era, censorship had stymied the natural development of a dynamic national art. By the mid-1 970s, Hollywood's domination of world cinema was evident everywhere. The national cinemas of major film-producing nations such as England, France, Italy and Germany

30

were in crisis. Greece's relatively weak film tradition might prove an advantage in the cultural arena. As the nation struggled to overthrow its military dictators, and thus defy the junta's American supporters, there might be an unprecedented opportunity to challenge an American cinema which provided 80% of films exhibited in Greece. The starting-point for Angelopoulos' cultural resistance to Americanization was to analyze the dominant elements in Hollywood features and seek viable alternatives. If Hollywood extolled rapid cuts and furious pacing, one needed to consider the possibilities inherent in the long take, languid pacing and the tableau . If Hollywood thrived on the close-up and the star system, one needed to investigate the advantages of the long shot and the de-emphasis of individual performance. If Hollywood laboured to have the audience forget the presence of the camera in order to be emotionally seduced, it might be useful to call attention to the camera and to finds means occasionally to distance audiences from their emotional responses. None of these ideas was exclusive to Angelopoulos, and he certainly understood that one could not create a style by simply reversing Hollywood techniques, but rejection of Hollywood conventions seemed the logical place where the assertion of national culture might begin. The quest for a genuinely national cinema had been preceded by a similar movement among Greek musicians. Undaunted by the worldwide triumph of American music in the 1 950s, Manos Hadjidakis had experimented with rembetiko, a soulful style of bouzouki music usually described as Greek urban blues. Just as American jazz had its origins in the brothels of New Orleans, rembetiko was rooted in the Greek drug culture associated with some of the refugees from Asi ;:t Minor. Following the lead of Hadjidakis, Mikis Theodorakis had melded the bouzouki sound with Greek folk songs, Byzantine church music, and the rebel ballads of the revolution of 1 82 1 . 2 An international audience for bouzouki began to form when Hadjidakis wrote the score for Stella , the 1 955 Michael Cacoyannis film that launched Melina Mercouri as an international film star. In the 1 960s, bouzouki enjoyed a worldwide fad status in the wake of the fabulously successful Never On Sunday 0 959), again starring Mercouri. Theodorakis' music was the artistic centrepiece of Zorba the Greek 0 964). As leader of the Lambrakis Youth Movement in Greece, his music was a natural choice for use in Z, but Costa-Gavras also featured Greek music in films such as Etat de siege (State of Siege, 1 973) and Missing 0982), which were not bound by Greek plots. If the cutting edge of contemporary Greek music could hold its own on the world stage, particularly given its association with internationally popular films, Angelopoulos believed a genuine Greek cinema might

31

prove equally successfuJ . 3 80 takes 1be Travelling Players may be thought of as a meditation with three dimensions: history, myth and aesthetics. The viewer is constantly invited to alternate between emotional engagement and intellectual analysis. The principals witness history, experience history, and even attempt to create history, but their lives also reflect the lore of ancient myths and popular melodrama. A certain intellectual distance arises from the onset by the circumstance that the major personae are actors, often seen performing on a stage or getting ready to perform. These actors live and die as flesh-and-blood individuals in a distinct time period, but their fates roughly parallel the legends associated with the ancient House of Atreus. Their 20th-century plebeian lives carry an ancient aristocratic aura. These ancient moderns will attempt to act out Golfo the Shepherdess, a tale of unrequited love rooted in the legends of 1 9th-century Greece, but the real world will invade their lives on stage just as the mythical world will haunt their world offstage. The action begins in 1952, as the troupe assembles for a performance in the town of Aegion. A man about whom we know little begins to wander through the streets. He observes preparations for a campaign speech for former Field Marshal Papagos, now running for civilian office. He hears a familiar tune and begins to head towards its origins. By the time he reaches the far end of the street, he has arrived at a 1 939 rally for General Metaxas. This shifting of time within one long take is not meant to be cynical, but economically and unequivocally to nail down the political linkage of a pre-war military regime with a postwar military regime. In a similar scene, a group of Fascists marches away from a 1 946 New Year's dance in full-throated song to arrive in 1952. Police beating strikers in one time period finish the task in another. The long take as a means of spanning time periods is just one of many ways in which the technique is used. Most often, the long take will meticulously search a courtyard or rural landscape, sometimes in a full 360 ° pan. The viewer must share with the director the responsibility of what to look for, how long to look, and whether to return to a specific place for a second look. Long takes with little action in them often follow emotional scenes. Angelopoulos candidly admits that they may be considered dead time or down time he has provided for the viewer to think about the events depicted to that point. Other long takes feature an immobile camera. Different objects or characters will come into the restricted field of vision, rarely neatly

32

framed, rarely completing a coherent sequence within view. Much as a soldier participating in a great battle only knows a small sector of conflict directly, the viewer is aware of unseen sounds and events, sometimes seeming nearby, sometimes distant. Such scenes may be expressionistic, as when flags of different nations tangle with one another to indicate the contending forces, domestic and foreign, of war and civil war. Yet another use of the long take involves direct discourse to the camera eye. During a train ride in the 1 940s, for instance, the leader of the troupe relates the Disaster of 1 922, the year that Greece attempted to regain Constantinople and liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor from Turkish rule. He tells us, the unseen viewers of the film, how the Great Powers first encouraged and then abandoned the Greek offensive. He speaks of the awful massacres, of how 1 ¥.! million Greeks were forever banished from their homes in Anatolia, and how Smyrna, the intellectual and economic hub of the diaspora, was put to the torch. The address takes a full nine minutes of screen time. In another direct address, a woman wipes off the make-believe blood used in her rape scene and speaks to us of the Battle of Athens in 1 944 . She explains how the British troops under the command of General Scobie worked in league with right-wing groups and Nazi collaborators to ward off the partisan attempt to set up a government of national unity in the capital. A third direct address occurs in 1950, when a Communist, returned from exile, relates his experiences. The camerawork of Giorgos Arvanitis is critical to Angelopoulos' purposes. Nearly two-thirds of the film consists of exterior shots filmed in the sombre light of wintry dawns and twilights. With this strategy, Arvanitis and Angelopoulos have taken on the myth of Greece'� eternal sun, the touristic Greece usually painted in charming Mediterranean blue. Rather than "travel poster" Greece, we are shown shabby homes, rundown country inns, collapsing fa�ades, barren stone walls, and rutted alleyways curving into unexpected times and places. The cradle of democracy is exposed as a place where tyranny has deep roots. The fabled islands are revealed to have also served as places of confinement, torture and execution . Greece is a land which has known hunger. In the Second World War, 1 0% of the population would be lost. A reviewer in The New York Times has observed: "The wartime famine is declared in a tiny scene. A solitary chicken is shown on a snow-covered slope; the members of the troupe advance upon it in black, crab-like profile. He has filmed hunger. " 4 Close-ups are used sparingly and, more often than not, the actors speak flatly. Whatever emotion is generated will not come from performance values. History is observed at a distance without background music, insightful dialogue or impressive costume. Yvette

33

Biro has observed that in 7be Travelling Players emotions arise from the actual terrain of a nation whose tragedies are not mythic. Angelopoulos has conveyed incredible dramatic weight to everyday objects and sounds: footsteps, stones, whispers, moans, the rain. Asked if this was his objective, Angelopoulos responded that he wanted viewers to hear the dialogue that springs up between elements that appear, disappear and reappear. 5 Writing in Cineaste, Peter Pappas has commented on still another aspect of the film's cinematography, stating that it seems painted, rather than filmed: [11 h e individual frame invariably develops either into a tableau or a portrait, where color, space, and perspective - not only visual but historical - are inexorably blended to create an unrelenting sequence of aesthetically and morally massive images. The camera, under Angelopoulos's direction, assumes the psychological dimension of a painter's brush. 6 As a result of Angelopoulos' passion for exploring all aspects of the long take, a film which covers thirteen years of detailed history in a real time span of 240 minutes requires only 80 individual scenes or takes. Angelopoulos contends that this is a true wooing of the senses, rather than the usual Hollywoodian assault. He further argues that his distancing devices foster the viewer's intellectual engagement, rather than insisting on the director's views. He readily admits that he has set the terms for this engagement, but he believes his cinematic choices maximise the viewer's independence. Golfo becomes Electra

The travelling players traverse a bleak Greek countryside offering Golfo the Shepherdess on makeshift stages of every description. Their costumes and props are sufficiently simple to be stuffed into a few trunks. Their only set is an amateurish canvas painting, featuring three sheep, a stream and a hill . Against this backdrop is to be told the tale of Golfo's unrequited love for Tasso. An old man playing an accordion precedes the first act of each performance. He warns one and all that we are about to witness happenings "strange and terrible" . Despite the truth of this verbal overture i n regard t o the film a s a whole, we will see little of the actual play unfold. It will commence four times, only to be interrupted by something happening in the world beyond the footlights. Murder interrupts one performance and falling bombs another. Perhaps, as Pappas has suggested, Angelopoulos refuses us entrance to this pastoral idyll to remind us

34

that its Greece only existed in fiction ? Nor can it be entirely coincidental that the first Greek feature film was Kostas Bachatoris' Golfo ( 1 9 1 2) , a cinematic adaptation of the most popular of all Greek plays. This is a new Greek cinema, and Golfo is useful only as a reminder that nostalgia for a Greece that never was cannot substitute for history. The players also embody another theatrical tradition, the legends associated with the ancient House of Atreus. As told in the Orestia of Aeschylus, the bloodletting associated with the royal house chronicles a national movement away from tyranny and private justice to one of democratic law. Agamemnon is murdered by his adulterous wife, Clytemnestra. She, in turn, is murdered by her son, Orestes, who avenges his father with the aid of his sister, Electra. Royal murder could not go unavenged, nor could this matricide. By the ancient rules of the Furies, both murders, whatever their justifications, are a threat to the very notion of order. Punishment must surely follow the crime, or society will collapse. Orestes turns to the younger Olympian gods to intervene. Athena, goddess of wisdom, comes forth with a solution. The Furies will be given a new home in her own city, but they will exchange their black robes of vengeance for the red robes of mercy. Absolution of Orestes will be their first demonstration of the new morality. The body politic, the polis, will henceforth be ruled by reason, law and mercy. In his own quest for the rule of law, Angelopoulos gives the legend a modern reading. Although only Orestes will be identified onscreen by name, in the script and acting credits the travelling players are given ancient names. The leader of the troupe is Agamemnon. His wife is named Clytemnestra, and her lover, another member of the troupe, is Aegisthus. Among the younger players are Agamemnon's middle daughter, Electra, his son, Orestes, and his youngest daughter, Chrysothemis. Pylades, Orestes' best friend, is also in the troupe, as is another friend identified only as "The Poet" . The bloodletting among them will be as awesome as that of their namesakes, and the justice which emerges more symbolic than real . 8 The family epic of the Golfo/ Oresteia players touches every critical event of Greek life from 1 939 to 1952. While this history is well­ known to Greeks, even when their interpretations differ, they are much less familiar to non-Greeks. When asked how the non-Greek audiences could relate to this obscure history, Angelopoulos insisted that it does not matter how well the viewer knows modern Greek history. He has related the events so that those who know the history may view it as a specific chronicle, while those who do not may view it as generic or even fictional history. In similar fashion, if one knows the myths surrounding the House of Atreus or the plot of Golfo, there

35

are nuances which those not familiar with them will not share, but perceiving them as generic archetypes is just as valid. Angelopoulos is adamant that these planes of perception are truly coequal. None of them is privileged in the sense of being deeper, better or more sophisticated. His purpose was to create a film that could meet different needs of different viewers. One prime audience was the Greek nation. Angelopoulos wanted Greeks to come to grips with their history, to think anew about specific events. They needed all the historical detail contained in the film. Other audiences could be relatively indifferent to this authenticity. What was crucial for them was to understand the paradigms being examined, for they would need to relate the paradigms to other nations, times and places. The mythical elements were deliberately vague. The mere sounding of ancient names was a sufficient skeleton upon which to grasp that this was not an entirely new tale. Another manner of looking at the planes of perception is to consider one as Aristotlean and the other as Platonic. One could work from the film's particular elements to its universals, or one could use the radar of the universal to consider the particulars. A thumbnail sketch of recent Greek history is provided in the footnotes for those who wish to test Angelopoulos' theory on the relevance of knowing the historic details. 9 The syndrome of betrayal and redemption lays over the lives of the travelling players of Greece. Agamemnon considers it natural to aid those resisting the Nazis, but he is betrayed to them by Aegisthus and Clytemnestra who had earlier supported the Greek dictator, General Metaxas. Despite this act of collaboration, the members of the troupe, now nominally led by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, are almost executed by the Nazis. They are saved only when an offscreen raid scatters the Germans. Electra, determined to avenge the death of her father, sends word of what has happened to Orestes, who has joined the Communist guerrilla forces in the mountains. In due course, Orestes is able to return to the troupe. He and Electra gun down Aegisthus and Clytemnestra while the couple are performing Golfo . An unseen audience applauds. Is this a Greek chorus signalling the proper response to viewers, or is it the applause of the unlettered peasants who think that this is just another episode in their beloved melodrama? Orestes returns to battle. He will fight through to the v�ry end of the civil war. Captured and tortured by the monarchists, he is executed when he will not sign a document renouncing past beliefs. At a sombre burial scene as his body is lowered into the earth, Electra begins to applaud. The handful gathered around also applaud, partly shamed by their own behaviour, partly in admiration of the

36

indomitable Orestes. Individual and mythic sorrow is transcended in a moment of national repentance. Other members of the troupe will experience all the travails of the times. Pylades and The Poet become partisans. The group briefly disbands but, after the war, Electra reunites them. She marries Pylades, who has survived the war. The Poet joins them, and the accordion player returns. Missing from the new troupe is Chrysothemis, who has inherited her mother's willingness to serve the powerful. Early in the war, she prostituted herself to a German sympathiser to obtain olive oil. Later in the war, she chooses to frolic and cohabitat with British troops. Finally, she weds an American soldier, their union culminating in a grotesque wedding feast. Her son, disgusted by her marriage, joins Electra. He takes the role formally played by Orestes, and he is a true reincarnation, as, like Orestes, he is dedicated to what is proper in private and public life. The troupe, now purified of traitors and collaborators but still imbued with classical identities, will return to the countryside. They will try again to perform Golfo. Angelopoulos has made good on his promise to rescue ancient myth from the academics, and return it to the arena of popular entertainment. Mock feasts appear elsewhere in the film. On New Year's Eve, 1 94 5 , ten male Fascists, wearing hats reminiscent of American gangsters, dance with one another. Robust Communist partisans crash their party with women companions. A confrontation takes place which includes a fearsome exchange of partisan songs. This sequence is less homophobic in its nuance than a contrast between a genuine community and an inbred sect. A similar battle of songs and dances occurs when a British officer forces the troupe to perform Golfo at a seaside outpost. His troops respond to the Greek play with rousing_ renditions of "Roll Out the Barrel" and "Tipperary" . An unseen sniper cuts short their revelry with a single shot. Angelopoulos has stated that such scenes were inspired by Hollywood! : "What I liked in the Hollywood musical was the freedom to be very stylized and to take off from daily life into something else. The American musical moved from a sense of reality to a theatrical one, like Gene Kelly in Singin ' in the Rain . " 1 0 This movement from theatre to reality, and back again, is the hallmark of 1be Travelling Players. Each of the 80 takes moves us through several levels of understanding. Irony and parody contend with naturalism and tragedy. We are ancients and we are modems. We are the children of 1 9th-century fantasies. The days of our lives and the days of legends blend. Events are, were, will be. Thus, we end magically in the autumn of 1939, where we began. The troupe, now well-known to us in many dimensions, gathers for a photograph . We think of the school yearbook or a family album. These actors are

37

going to play Golfo for us. The old accordionist will again warn us of happenings strange and terrible about to unfold. An offscreen voice informs us: "We arrived at Aegion. We were tired. We had not slept for two days". Aesthetic and political triumphs Tbe Travelling Players was an artistic and political triumph of the first magnitude. It sold more tickets in Greece than any previous Greek film, took six prizes at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and was heralded as the first gem of a new Greek cinema. Internationally, the film won more than a dozen prizes at major festivals, including awards at Cannes, Berlin, Taormina, London and Brussels. Art-house audiences throughout Europe flocked to see the film, and critics elevated Angelopoulos to the relatively exclusive category of world­ class director. Examination of Angelopoulos' aesthetic roots was exhaustive. His long takes were compared to those of Jancs6, his distancing devices to Brecht, his use of off-camera action to Bergman, his pacing to Antonioni, his surreal humour to Fellini, and his sense of epic history to Bertolucci. Literary critics made comparisons to Joyce and Proust. Some of these influences were real enough; a few existed only in the imagination of critics. More significant than specific influences was that Angelopoulos was neither a film nor a literary nail Fully conversant with the full range of modernist techniques in film and literature, he had shaped a unique blend that could only be termed "Angelopoulian" . The only major Western nation where Tb e Travelling Players failed to make a substantial critical impact was the United States. After the briefest of moments on the festival circuit, it was virtually impossible to see the film. Continuing screenings and interest in the film were concentrated mainly in the Greek-American community and amongst phil hellenes. Although his continued recognition by European critics sparked some interest among film academics, a full awareness of the scope of his accomplishment did not develop until a 1 990 retrospective mounted by the Museum of Modern Art. Since that event, Angelopoulos' work has been presented at the prestigious New York Film Festival, and Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist, 1 988) was nominated for a 1 993 Academy Award® in the best foreign film category. The political impact of Tbe Travelling Players in Greece was unprecedented. The perspective offered by Angelopoulos reflected the popular orientation of the generation which overthrew the junta in 1 974, and led to the 1 980 election of Andreas Papandreou as Greece's

38

first Socialist Prime Minister. Subsequent Greek history sometimes seemed to borrow from the parody, myth and irony of Tbe Travelling Players. Constantine Karamanlis, the authoritarian right-wing leader of the 1 950s, exchanged his vengeful black robes for the red robes of mercy and justice. Returned as the caretaker Prime Minister in 1 974, he decriminalized the Communist Party, normalised Greek political and cultural life, and certified the election in which his party was defeated. Andreas Papandreou, son of the man whom the British forces had installed in power after the battle of Athens, and then the leader whose expected election had brought the junta to power in the first place, associated his party with the Second International , and engaged in a leftist foreign policy that greatly annoyed the United States and Britain. And, in the kind of twist found often in the cinema of Angelopoulos, a corruption-ridden Papandreou would be ousted in 1 988 by a previously unimaginable alliance of right-wing and left-wing forces including the Communist Party. Angelopoulos' meditation on Greek history did not abate. If Tbe Travelling Players focuses on a group of actors making a journey that constituted a search for national identity, it was also a personal search for identity and values in contemporary Greece. With Tbe Hunters, Angelopoulos updated the story to New Year's Eve of 1 977. A bourgeois hunting party stumbles upon the body of a guerrilla killed during the civil war three decades earlier, and they are horrified to discover that it is still warm! Once more employing manipulation of time and the long take, Angelopoulos tries to define what is still warm in the legacy of the Greek Left. He is particularly hostile to the monarchy, and returns several times to a sequence of barges draped in red banners that tranquilly float across a lake in an embodiment of Communist ideals. In A le:xander the Great, Angelopoulos pushes his search back to the turn of the century. Concurrent conflicts are analyzed. The film's apparent centre is the struggle of indigenous populist rebels against a monarchist elite under foreign domination, but, as the film unfolds, the focus shifts to the struggle within the populist forces between authoritarian militarists and anarchist communards. Some of the leftists who had cheered Tbe Hunters and Tbe Travelling Players felt betrayed. They correctly regarded the film's narrative as commentary on problems within the Greek Left before and after the resistance. The majority of critics applauded the film for taking on a discourse impossible in previous cultural and political climates. The critique of revolutionary commandism at the centre of the film could not have been acceptable as a criticism from within the movement if Alexander the Great had not been preceded by Tbe Hunters and Tbe Travelling Players. International audiences who were not familiar with all the

39

Greek particulars easily understood the film as a leftist assault on the Stalinist personality types that had wrecked so much havoc for the greater part of a century. Angelopoulos' work evolved in new directions in the 1 980s. Shorter in length and less dense in conception, they often focused on individual characters. Voyages within a person's perceptions reflected societal voyages. With 0 Melissokomos ( 1be Beekeeper, 1 986), Angelopoulos used his first international star, Marcello Mastroianni. Characteristically, Angelopoulos had the Italian star speak his lines in Greek. In his most recent films, To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou ( 1be Suspended Step of the Stork, 1991) and To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ( Ulysses' Gaze, 1 995), Angelopoulos' subject-matter has moved to Greece's northern borders and the wider world of the Balkans. Some of the new works were highly problematic. Most critics felt that the balance between individual style and accessibility that had characterised 1be Travelling Players was never repeated quite as successfully. They judged some of the new films as having very imaginative and inventive segments, while ultimately proving unsatisfying as complete works of art. Aestheticians accused Angelopoulos of sometimes lapsing into mannerisms, and some political critics felt he was more concerned with cinematic effects than with social change. Despite these criticisms, each new Angelopoulos' film has been eagerly anticipated as a work guaranteed to embody artistic integrity and political daring. Angelopoulos has been adamant about doing his work only in Greece. The liability of a minuscule national industry has been transformed into the asset of low production costs, an intimate support staff, and absolute independence. As European national cinemas have collapsed, Angelopoulos has continued to cultivate a national identity that is neither isolating nor insulating. Angelopoulos persists in the view that Greek national culture can be a lens through which to observe all human concerns, much as Joyce used Irish culture. Consequently, as the 20th century draws to a close, Angelopoulos has emerged as a European director devoted to individual vision and national culture. His influence on Greek cinema is immeasurable. As was said in the United States after the work of Ernest Hemingway began to be published, half the directors in Greece have tried to imitate Angelopoulos, and the other half have tried not to. Notes Most of the ideas attributed to Angelopoulos derive from my two-hour interview with the director in 1990 at .the time of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. I have also drawn on an interview by Giorgis

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Fotopoulos in Tbe Greek A merican 1 1 March 1 989, a special supplement on Greek cinema with considerable material on Angelopoulos. George Giannaris, Mikis Tbeodorakis: Music and Social Change (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1 972) deals with these developments in Greek music. 3

Dan Georgakas, "Greece" , in William Luhr (ed) , World Cinema Since 1945 (New York: The Ungar Publishing Company, 1987) : 273-286.

4

Richard Eder, "0 Thiassos (The Travelling Players)" , Tbe New York Times 10 April 1976: 22: 1 . Yvette Bir6, " History Becomes Electra " , Village Voice 1 9 April 1 983: 54.

6

Peter Pappas, " Culture, History and Cinema: A Review of Tbe Travelling Players" , Cineaste 7: 4 (winter 197 6/77) : 38. Three insightful reviews of the film which appeared in England are: John Coleman, " Have Camera , Will Travel" , New Statesman 10 September 1 976: 349; Dilys Powell, Tbe Su nday Times 1 2 September 197 6 ; David Robinson, Tbe Times 1 9 November 1975. 7

Pappas (36-37) is particularly strong in explicating the Golfo theme.

8

The Orestes theme is examined thoroughly in Andrew Horton, "Theodor Angelopoulos and the New Greek Cinema " , Film Criticism 6: 1 (autumn 1981): 10-20. I have also benefited from Andrew Horton, Tbe Films of Tbeo A ngelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1 997) : 102-126. 9 The Greek monarchy was restored by a military coup in 1 935. One year later, General Metaxas established a dictatorship based on the monarchy. Among the major justifications given for the coup was the need to destabilise the growing influence of the Greek Communist Party. Metaxas succeeded in jailing or exiling most Communist leaders. In 1 940, Mussolini asked Greece for free passage of his armies travelling to fight in Africa. Popular resistance exploded, and huge signs written in stone were placed in the Greek mountains spelling out "OXI" ("no") . Mussolini attacked Greece only to have his armies thrown back into Albania in the first Fascist defeat of the Second World War. The Germans took up the attack the following spring, and established control in all major cities and most islands. Metaxas died of natural causes, the Greek king went into exile in Britain, and the remnants of the regular army regrouped in the Middle East. Their movements were under the control of the Allies and they did not fight in Greece until the Second World War had ended. In Greece, partisan bands began to form; some were rightist, some centrist, some leftist. The most important of the groups and by far the largest, growing to more than 50 000 armed troops, was the National Liberation Front (EAM-ELAS). This group was headed by a coalition of Republican army officers, hostile to the Metaxas legacy, and Greek Communists. By the end of the war they had liberated most of Greece. The major political issue was the nature of the postwar government. Would Communists be allowed to participate? In 1 944, EAM-ELAS attempted to take control of Athens and came within a few streets of success. They were held off by British forces which allied

41

themselves with various forces fearing an EAM-ELAS government. A major aftermath of the struggle was the return of the King and his army. EAM-ELAS agreed to disband under the condition that the pre-war repression would not be resumed. The majority of EAM-ELAS disarmed and disbanded: in the years which followed, those who did not proved to have justifiable fears. Many of the partisans who had stayed in Greece to fight the Nazis were oppressed in an ever-increasing cycle of violence reminiscent of the Metaxas period. Many former partisans went into exile, while others returned to the mountains for what became a civil war. Unlike the resistance period, the new guerrilla leaders were exclusively Communist. For more than 40 years, there has been a debate on whether the civil war was forced on them or provoked . During the early years of the war, the Communists operated successfully in small groups throughout the country. Britain soon informed the United States that it could not afford to finance the royalist forces and the United States stepped in with what is known as the Truman Doctrine. The Communist forces regrouped in the north in 1 948 to form regular battlefronts. This was largely in response to the Soviet desire to put pressure on Yugoslavia, which had just broken with the Soviet block. The Greek Communists , however, had received considerable strategic aid from Tito. They could not possibly satisfy both Tito and the Soviets, and this break in their foreign support helped contribute to their defeat. During this same period, the United States refurbished the Greek royalist army. This included providing napalm bombs for use in the mountain fighting, the first time such bombs had ever been used in Europe. The Communists were defeated. Although many rebels were killed, most were forced into exile in Soviet nations or were captured. The captured Communists, as well as EAM-ELAS partisans seized earlier as a precautionary measure, were imprisoned on harsh island camps where most remained for three to five years, but a few were still being held as late as the 1 960s. Even after released, these fighters and their families faced difficulties. Their children often could not get college scholarships, government jobs , or even obtain a driver's licence. Throughout the 1950s, anyone who took a dissident position on a political issue risked being identified with the defeated guerrillas. The Communist Party was banned during this period, but a substitute United Democratic Left Party which took part in elections drew the 1 0% vote which the Communists had typically drawn whenever legal. The junta which seized power in 1 967 maintained that the turmoil of 1 963-67 was like that Metaxas had had to deal with. Among their first acts was to reopen the camps of the 1 950s and reimprison many aged leftists and their families. This period of resistance and civil war has been intensely studied, and has frequently been the major topic at academic meetings. An excellent overview of the issues is presented in John 0 Iatrides (ed) , Greece in the 1940s: A Nation in Crisis (Hanover; London: University Press of New England, 1981). The volume was authored by members of the Modern Greek Studies Association. 10

Andrew Horton, "National Culture and Individual Vision : An Interview with Theodoros Angelopoulos " , Cineaste 19: 2-3 0 993): 30.

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A tour of the graveyard of Greek ideals: Voyage to Cythera

Vasitis Rafalidis

The voyage to Cythera is a journey which never takes place - because Cythera does not exist. More than a geographical region, Cythera is Antoine Watteau's mythical place of "ineffable happiness", the space of Charles Baudelaire's "difficult happiness" . 1 The "Embarquement pour Cythere" ("Embarkation for Cythera"), the most famous ship ever painted, which Watteau "built" with his brush to suit the needs of his "erotic festivals" , this highest peak of Rococo, was just another of the many celebrations of the rapidly upward-rising French middle class of the early 1 8th century. The years from 1717, in which this literally and metaphorically mythical painting was first exhibited, to 1 789 are the years in which the fite galante of Watteau began to become so monotonously repeated in gardens and parks, and prepared to displace the royal "erotic festivals" from the palace of Keramikos passing by the Bastille. Watteau had every reason to be ridiculously optimistic: the middle class had not yet taken over power, and was lively and high-spirited because it had started to dream of its embarkation for Cythera. However, in the middle of the 1 9th century, Baudelaire, who longed as few did for this beautiful journey, discovered that all the ships for Cythera had sunk. The "invitation to a voyage" is nothing more than the ironic, poetic "reading" of Watteau's famous painting, which was well-known to this outstanding poet and art critic, the first to realise that Cythera exists only as a synonym for Utopia. And that is why he recommended, for compensation, "that we should always be drunk with wine, with poetry or with virtue, according to our preference" 2 - without being able to detach itself from his turbulent mind, in spite of all this, this great dream instilled by Watteau , a dream that quickly grew pale: "island of feasting hearts and secret joys!" 3 Baudelaire the "decadent" would attempt his own journey to Cythera on opium, inaugurating a new epoch in poetic "journeys" which still continues. We are already a long way from 1 789, and an even longer way from 1717, the year in which Watteau brought, on his famous ship from Cythera, more than 40 cupids who surround the delighted travellers. (Studies have shown that the "Embarkation for

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Cythera" has a faulty title, because the theme is definitely landing, and not setting off. Whether it is a voyage that will begin or one that has ended, what is important is that Watteau never doubts its purpose and success.) The voyage to Cythera was attempted by two Frenchmen, each in his own way and with the tools of his own art. The same journey, this time from Greece, is planned in Greece by a Greek filmmaker, Thea Angelopoulos, who knows the French well and the Greeks even better, but it will never be undertaken because, as we have said, Cythera does not exist. But those who now dream of a journey to Greece are the Greeks who wonder where this mythical land can be: is it certain that the country we live in is Greece? And what if it is Zululand with another name? If Cythera is a Greek island according to the geographers, and if Cythera is only a myth, according to the poets, then a Greece with a mythical Cythera might very likely be a mythical country: in other words, it may not exist. And so, quite unexpectedly, besides Watteau and Baudelaire comes Borges with his reversible labyrinthine spaces, where one can never discern the borders between reality and fantasy. Anyway, is there any serious meaning in these borders? In Angelopoulos' film, Cythera exists exactly because it is mythical: Greek history is so distressingly and incredibly existent here that this very incredibility is what transfers it automatically into the realm of unreality. Thus, a "voyage to Cythera" is, at this stage, a journey to Hades, where the dogs continue to guard the entrance. Angelopoulos' Taxidi Sta Kithira ( Voyage to Cythera , 1 983) invites one to a descent into the Hades of Greek history, where all the "Greek ideals" lie buried. Of course, no one is obliged to follow the poetic tour of this "non-place" . However, this journey to the myth through history and t o history through mythology might have a very practical result: to teach you to discriminate between myth and fact, so that when you say "long live Greece" , you do at least know what thing you are talking about, because very frequently indeed we happen to address the wish "long live" to a corpse. I have said that in Voyage to Cythera no such voyage takes place. However, a most remarkable journey takes place in Greek history. Before we confront this historic film ("historic" with a double meaning: it refers to History, and it is from now on included in the history of cinema), we must take note of the geopolitical terms which render this voyage historically impossible and cinematographically paradoxical . Naturally, what little we are about to say is by no means prerequisite for the understanding of the film. Because, as is always the case with Angelopoulos, History does not exist as an alignment of events, but

44

as a meditation upon historical facts which have become mythical to suit the needs of myth-making, which is so far removed from realism without being far removed from fact. Angelopoulos was never a realist in the current use of the word, not even in A naparastasis (Reconstruction, 1 970). The Voyage to Cythera, therefore, is a journey to the dark side of Greek history, the side that is usually invisible to historians who collect historical events in the same spirit in which others collect stamps. Angelopoulos is no collector of stamps displayed on celluloid. He is a man deeply involved in his country's history. That is exactly why his historical films Meres Tou 36 (Days of 36, 1 972), 0 Tb iassos ( Tbe Travelling Players, 1975), I Kinigi ( Tbe Hunters, 1977), 0 Mega/exandros (Alexander the Great, 1980) , Voyage to Cythera ­ seem so far removed from the methodology of historical manuals and scientific historical works, although they are certainly not lacking in strict historical proof which is hidden behind the aesthetic event, which it firmly supports without subverting it. Angelopoulos' films are the best examples we know of the approach to History by an art which refuses the mockery of a reconstruction of events long gone which were not recorded on the spot by a camera. We must not let it escape us that, in Reconstruction, the judicial reconstruction of the crime never actually takes place, to avoid the camera from deceptively taking the place of the eyewitness. Besides, apart from the instance of Mishima's suicide in front of the television camera, no would-be suicide or other criminal has ever called the television crew to stand as irrefutable witnesses of their act. This is a habit only of the "officials" . But history continues to be written behind the parades, behind the receptions, behind the forced diplomati<;: smiles. This is the dark side behind history that Angelopoulos tries to capture, and, for this hidden side, it is impossible to have incontestable proof. But the fact that we have not seen the other side of the moon does not prove that it does not exist. Before we follow Angelopoulos on his journey to the hidden side of Greece's history of the last 35 years, we should do well to cast a brief glance at the symbolic recapitulation of the history of Greece, the history of the island of Cythera, known also by its popular name, Tsirigho. Cythera is at the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese, south-west of Cape Malea. And yet it belongs administratively to Attica! This land­ administrative paradox happens to be grafted to another: Cythera, as land topography, as architecture and also as culture, belongs to the Cycladic islands. However, it is the sixth of the Ionian isles (the seventh is the even more distant Anticythera). So Cythera belongs to the Ionian isles, belongs to the Aegean islands, belongs to Attica could it perhaps belong to the Peloponnese? Cythera belongs -

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wherever you place it by making a decision or an official declaration. Cythera belongs to everywhere, except to itself. Just like Greece. Cythera is a non-place. (In Greek, "non-place" is "u-topos", a "utopia" with such a confused history that no historian has managed to sort it out adequately, just like the "Cytherian" Greek history.) Cythera has been a Phoenician colony, a Minoan colony, a Mycena:an colony, a Spartan colony and an Athenian colony. And later, a Frankish, Venetian, Turkish, French, and finally an English colony. In 1 863, it became a nee-Hellenic "colony". In other words, Cythera is the colony, the almost platonic idea of a colony. That is why the English, French and Portuguese have always dreamed of Cythera. It was a convenient place by reason of not being owned like Greece. Indeed, from the time when the Phoenicians brought to Cythera the goddess Astarte, who was there baptised Greek and given the name Aphrodite, and particularly from the time when the notorious temple of Heavenly Aphrodite was built there, all the world heard that Cythera offered pleasures of infinite variety. Consequently, a voyage to Cythera meant a visit to the crowded centre of hedonistic pleasure. This was persistently the dream of the poets, at least those who lived before the 1 9th century: because later, things became difficult for the poets as well. For the Goncourt brothers, Watteau's "Embarkation to Cythera" "is Love, but poetic love, a love that dreams and meditates, a modern love with its nostalgias and its garland of melancholy" 4 . Angelopoulos' Voyage to Cytbera is almost the same thing: a love entangled in History and by History of two old people, dreamy, reflective, nostalgic, melancholy. This love requires a place to exist in . And Greece is no longer a place for existing, nor yet for dreaming, nor for being in love. Greece, like Cythera, is a place where myths always flourish and people always suffer. Greece is like a circle with many perimeters and no centre. Such a circle is called vicious. The main body of Greeks inhabited or inhabit the perimeter: Ionia (Angelopoulos' references to Ionia are continuous), the Black Sea, Danubian sovereignties, Cyprus, Odessa, Egypt, Taskent and today's Germany, Australia, Canada, and so on. The "metropolis" is a space of shadows, and, of its inhabitant Greeks, half feel like immigrants and the other half feel like emigrants in their very own fatherland, which is in a state of continual internal occupation by birds of prey. It is not only class hatred that divides the indigenous Greeks into different camps. It is also the atavistic feeling that this soil is not at all "ours and yours", as the nee-patriotic sonnet insists on naively and inaccurately expressing it. It is soil belonging to a foreign land to be

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conquered: the unfair sharing of the Turkish estates which started in 1 830 is still incomplete, and the "Western spirit" , in the South Balkan variation of it, is always alive here. The "kleftes" (Greek guerrilla fighters against Turkish occupation), who made this into a state, driving out other kleftes (thieves) coming from elsewhere, became robbers between 1 840 and 1 940, carrying on in this way the struggle for freedom, which still continues. We are always under the internal occupation of the "kotzambasides" . (See Alexander the Great for the robbers, the kotzambasides and the great Greek vision of complete emancipation.) The old kleftes, who became legally recognised due to the fortunate outcome of their struggle, and the more recent robbers who were legally recognised only in the popular conscience and in popular writing, later developed historically into "robber gangsters" or "Communist-gangsters" , or simply "gangsters", who to this day continue to terrorise, ever since they came and wedged themselves, utterly troublesome, into the dreams of happiness which the Marshall Aid plan, the fiscal consequence of Truman's political scheme, created for the kotzambasides. In Days of '36, Angelopoulos showed with admirable clarity and lucidity the extent of the shamelessness of the kotzambasides, in bow­ ties or not, where the real gangsters (without quotation marks) were preparing General Metaxas' good order prompted by Eutaxias' bad order, since he had not realised that a cucumber is one thing, and a zucchini is another. As a consequence, the vegetables became prematurely mixed up in the Russian (that is, English) salad, already being prepared by the kotzambasides in their kitchen, also known by the nickname of "Parliament". In 1be Travelling Players, the whole cast of Greek history is on stage. But it is in fact the kotzambasides who steal the show, chiefly on account of the good staging done by the British Lieutenant-General Scobie. Here, the "gangsters" limit themselves, unfortunately, to the excellent satirical ditties of this type, "Scobie's pants are full of knots and if the knots are undone, Scobie's great politics will show", which is quite a revolutionary version of the "White Jazz" of a Glen Miller boogie-woogie. So, if they had sung less and fought more that December (with the forces of EAM-ELAS, which were kept outside Athens), certainly Theo Angelopoulos would not have shot Voyage to Cythera . And that gain in History would have constituted a great loss in cinema. So, it is an ill wind that blows no good - although, in this case, the "good" is in the sphere of aesthetics, not politics, which is what we would prefer, naturally. But that is what art exists for: to console us for a loss by supplying a gain. And people who have gained, as a general rule, do not create art. They are content to enjoy

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their winnings and, in the case that concerns us, to enjoy what they receive from the American Marshall Aid plan. So, therefore, this country is permanently inhabited by "Greeks" and by Greeks: for the Right, Greeks are all those who declared themselves Greeks and those who made an "admission of repentance" for their "previous sinful and unpatriotic life". For the Left, Greeks are all those who live in this country and all those who have a right to live in the state created by the kleftes. Old man Spyros (Manos Katakis) is, in right-wing terminology, a non-Greek who has lived in Taskent since 1949. That is to say he is a Greek of the periphery (or of the margin, if one prefers an expression with a vague meaning) who, when he comes to Greece on leave, finds out that Greece does not exist. Not even the Greek sea exists. There are only the neutral international waters, and in them is a raft (for him it is a coffin), which carries his body and his dream to a "non-place" , which is an extension and continuation of another " non-place" , which, under normal circumstances, could be his fatherland. Spyros is a King Lear who has lost his kingdom in the Civil War, a Don Quixote who believed that his lance was an effective weapon in the battle with the windmill of History, and an Odysseus who returns home after 30 years to find a daydreaming Penelope (Dora Volanaki) and a confused Telemachus (Julio Brozi) . But the suitors have sold out Ithaca long before, with the result that a voyage to Cythera is to the great legend of a dead "happiness for all", which was buried in 1 949 in his village cemetery and in the cemeteries of all the villages throughout Greece. Ithaca no longer exists - similar to the way it is in Nikos Kazantzakis' 1be Odyssey: A Modern Sequel 0 938) . The difference i s that in Voyage to Cytbera, this anti-odyssey, Odysseus does not leave because he wants to: he is driven away. A modern epic is an impossibility in our time. All the heroes have died, and those who survive are unwelcome in the place from which they once drew their strength. Voyage to Cytbera is an elegy for Odysseus lost in the ocean, never to reach land again, because land no longer exists. Only Cythera exists, that is the myth of the happiness dreamed of by Watteau at a peak period of the middle class, which, here in Greece, was late in experiencing the jete galante, only because of the "loans" which still continue. Greece continues to be a foreign country to all - for th e Right, because they have never managed to acquire a "national conscience" (they have never even acquired a conscience); because national consciences are not created by Marshall Aid plans. For the Left, because only in the last two years have they begun to shed the feeling of being immigrants with a temporary passport (anyone who wanted

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to could take it away from them) in their very own country. Greece continues to be a "country for settlement", where at present everything is temporary and uncertain. We must, therefore, conquer Greece so that we Greeks can acquire a fatherland. It is impossible for us to live and die permanently on a raft floating in international waters. The voyage to Cythera must somehow be made, no matter how many boats are sunk on the way. Utopia is meant to be lived, and Cythera is on the map. Therefore it must also exist in our lives. Voyage to Cythera, like Angelopoulos' other films, is a film which seeks our national roots. Not in Byzantium (Angelopoulos is a serious artist), nor on Mount Athas (Angelopoulos is not a joker) . He is searching for our ethnic origins on a map recently charted where the word "Hellas" is printed - not, however, as is suitable for accurate maps, the word "Hellene", whose ideological and semantic content should be defined with great clarity. So, before we learn what "Greece" means (war songs have nothing to teach us about this) , we must find out what "Greek" means. Old man Spyros, rebel, exiled, stubborn, romantic, unsold. Old Spyros who continues to resist in a time of general passivity. Old man Spyros who refuses to "sell the snow" for a skiing centre in his village. Old man Spyros who continues to be a "threat to public order" (read: to the private purse). Old Spyros who finds again in his old haunts the old habits of lawlessness (he has not forgotten the "language of the outlaw"). Old Spyros who continues to dance in the cemeteries and to greet his dead comrades. Old Spyros the seed from which other trees might some day grow at the edge of the cemetery. Old man Spyros, unwanted in his country - he is The Greek. Yet, in Greece, there are always "hunters", who hunt in the snow. But the snow is not for sale; we know that already. It is there for them to hide the dream, which the descendants of the kotzambasides will always find in front of them, every time they go out to hunt. In every hole where the snow melts, the mysterious corpse of the Rebel will forever be discovered, so that panic will be kept alive, and hope too. The "ghost" of Velouchiotis wanders everywhere, and this ghost is very real. The hunters of the present (the "authority") did not find a corpse in the snow. Because, in Voyage to Cythera , there are no corpses and no snow. There is only water, and a living man, Spyros, who comes from the ocean and returns to the ocean. For Spyros, the ocean is not a grave, it is a cradle. Perhaps, in some other film of Angelopoulos, fishermen will find his corpse. It will again be the same mysterious corpse shown in The Hunters. The Spyros of the Voyage to Cythera and the Rebel in The Hunters are two versions of the same legend. Only now the myth is serious and mournful, as befits the death of

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every brave man and the death of every "vision" . Because, in the film, two deaths are constantly crossing each other: a biological and historical one which is imminent and is "helped along" by the authorities, and a symbolic one which has already occurred: Spyros' son, Alexandros (Julio Brozi) is the Alexander at the end of Alexander the Great, who left that film to find refuge in this one. He is also the little orphan of Reconstruction who grew up to become a director. But how can you be a creator in a country that exists only for the kotzambasides and their supporters? What meaning can there be in creating for the Greeks, when they, being foreigners themselves, regard you as a foreigner in your own land, which you nevertheless know and love as few do? For the barbaric point in question, there are two solutions: either you retreat to the periphery, like so many worthy people in this non-place, or you engage in a battle, here in your own place, to the end, ready to face a fate proportionate to that of Spyros. Alexander (that is, Angelopoulos) chose the second solution: obstinately resisting the dunces; he believes in the existence of Cythera and in the possibility of a voyage there. All the Hunters (and the devil only knows how many are hunting him) can never manage to strangle his vision. Because a "director in crisis" who manages to incorporate his personal crisis into the "national crisis" must definitely be a great director. It is not easy at all to join the two coordinates, the historic and the existential, into one resultant. And I do not think that there is another parallel in the history of world cinema. Let us hope that there will be many in this non-place who will understand that here we are dealing with the first national Greek film. I very much want to be optimistic. Because I also believe that a voyage to Cythera is always possible, for the future. *

*

*

Translated from the modern Greek by Poppy Apostolidis. This essay originally appeared in Greek in Vasilis Rafalidis, Kinimatografika Tbemata, 1984-85, volume 2 (Athens: Aigokeros, 1 985): 1 9-28.

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Tessellations and honeycombs: The Beekeeper Gerald O 'Grady

My house is constructed according to the rigorous laws of architecture; and Euclid himself learned much by admiring the geometry of its cells. (The Bee in 7be A rabian Nights) 1 In the compound eye of insects a picture of surroundings results from the fact that each individual ommatidium [photoreceptor] projects a point of the image in its line of sight. Since the axes of the ommatidia diverge slightly, and very regularly, these image points combine like stones in a mosaic to form a complete picture of the surroundings. (Karl von Frisch) 2 When history is what it should be, it is an elaboration of cinema. It is not content to install itself in the successive facts and to view the moral landscape that may be perceived from here; but for this series of static images, each enclosed within itself, history substitutes the image of a movement . . . The true historical reality is not the datum, the fact, the thing, but the evolution formed when these materials melt and fluidity. (Jose Ortega y Gasset) 3 0 Melissokomos ( 7be Beekeeper, 1 986) concerns Spyros, a teacher who, on the occasion of his daughter's wedding party, gives up his position, his wife, his home and his city to take up again the career of his father and of his grandfather. As he travels across Greece from north to south, to the town in which he was born and first learned to tend the bees, like a bee returning to its hive after searching for food, he visits his old friends and his parental home, relighting and reliving his history in his memory. Having given up his wife, Ann a , and his daughter, he meets a young and promiscuous hitchhiker, who leaves and rejoins him at various points on his voyage. She is without memory, is unconcerned with the past, and seems to represent a new amnesiac generation which flits between the blinking lights of motor vehicles, petrol stations, fast-food restaurants and traffic signs along the dark, wet, glistening roadways of contemporary Greece.

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Angelopoulos keeps us aware of his central image from the initial sound, in which Spyros is remembering instructing his young daughter about the dance of the bees, until the last sounds of their buzzings, as he is stung to death on the side of a hill overlooking his native town. He does this by interpolating short, almost verite scenes of Spyros tending the bees, scenes from the past, as he makes his way through a present to which he finds it increasingly difficult to relate. This overlapping of memory and desire, this documenting of the ever­ recurring interaction between recalling and projecting which is the basic structure of our interior life as humans, is only the outline for a set of images which resonate, reverberate and ricochet off each other as he builds his honeycomb of meaning. His opening shot is of a long, empty table covered with a white cloth and set up in a paved mosaic courtyard outside his home in the north. A cold rain descends upon it, further deteriorating the shrivelled rose petals scattered on top of it. When the next shot appears, we realise that the rain has driven the ceremony inside, but now there is a voiceover to that image which overlaps with the next shot. Spyros is remembering a dialogue between him and his daughter when she was a child, and it merges the mating of the queen bee with the mating of his daughter, the issue of his own mating, and transforms all three through their commingling: Listen: doesn't it sound like a song? It's the virgins who want to be queens beating against the doors of their waxed prisons, trying to break them down, but the guards stand watch and patch them up again. Why not let them out? Only the queen is allowed out, the others they keep in reserve in case something happens to the queen. Soon the drones will be going for water. They're waiting for the queen. She'll come and all together they'll dance and she'll choose one, only one, and they'll dance high up in the air, and that's the queen's dance. But it is the long take of the image, the .long white table, almost coextensive with the white rectangle of the film frame, which enters our own memories, to be resurrected and given a new life when Spyros stops to visit an old comrade, injured during the 1 948 Civil War, who dances, in a highly stylised shot, with his back to us, framed in front of a body of water, as if before a screen. Again, further south, when Spyros visits "The Pantheon", the abandoned film house of his home town, the young hitchhiker, who has rejoined him, dances before the motion-picture screen in the same position after they have

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failed to connect sexually when sleeping on the blankets in front of it. The death of cinema is only a symptom of a decaying culture. Then, in the final sequence, after Spyros overturns his boxes of honeycombs and is stung to death, the camera pans upwards to make a frame of white sky with the bees dancing in front of it. All these images are like tiles on a roof overlapping each other to support a developing structure of significance, or tessellations merging together to create a mosaic of meaning. It is the making and merging of multiple metaphors which is characteristic of Angelopoulos' cinema: I start to write scenes, but without proceeding from beginning to end. An image will come to mind and I construct a scene around it that will be found at the end of the film; another at the middle, etc. I cannot think of another way to conceive of a film except by starting with the images. 4 Angelopoulos was surely aware of Godard's famous statement that films have beginnings, middles and ends, but not necessarily in that order. If we return once again to the opening sequence of the wedding, and watch Spyros and his wife moving through the house, walking down a staircase, we become aware that it resembles a beehive; that, as Spyros travels south, at the hotels and motels at which he stops his movements are choreographed and photographed to maintain this metaphor; and that when, near the end, he places his boxes of honeycombs on a hillside overlooking his home town, the camera is placed to pick up the box-like buildings in the background, transforming the town into a beehive. Again, in that very opening sequence, Anna accidentally shatters a tray of wine glasses as s he comes down the stairs at the wedding feast; at one of the towns in which Spyros stops as he moves south, he smashes the window of a restaurant in which the hitchhiker is drinking with her young friends; at the end, he knocks over his boxes and destroys the honey. The wine, which fuels friendship in several scenes, and the petrol for which he frequently stops in order to keep his truck moving, are just like the honey which the bee travels to manufacture. We are meant to understand all of them as maintaining life. Spyros' auditory recall of the story of the queen bee's dance which accompanies the first sequence is soon followed by the image of his daughter dancing with her guests; later, the first time that Spyros stops to fuel his truck, the hitchhiker enters the adjacent coffee-house and dances solo before a jukebox, full of waxed records and shaped like a beehive; later still, when she rejoins Spyros in his home town, she dances in front of a truck which is selling soda pop, its cans stocked

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to look like the cells of a beehive. The soda pop reminds us of wine and the truck of petrol, and of the honey: she licks his fingers in this scene. All of these nourish the culture, the civilisation which Spyros has committed his life to building. This one shot both reinforces and extends, and both deepens and widens, our understanding of the film's central issue. Spyros had taken his daughter in his arms in that opening sequence of the film, but it would be wrong to interpret this as an indication of an incestuous desire. Rather, it is meant to indicate a more abstract, generalised attraction of male and female at a biological level, like that of the bees. In a later scene, we learn that, when they were young, Spyros and his comrades from the days of the Greek Civil War all loved Anna ; one of them says: "I remember her at the first school dance. She shone like a star. " This impulse extends itself to Spyros' attraction to the young hitchhiker. This introduces another overlapping set of tiles. Just as Anna was desired by a soldier, and Spyros' daughter has married a soldier, the young hitchhiker is pursued by soldiers throughout the voyage south. Through these new tessellations, Angelopoulos seems to be transposing the women into a symbol of his country, Greece, and to be indicating that, during Spyros' lifetime, its fate has been to be always caressed by the military. We then notice still another tier of tiles: there are several very deliberate shots of army trucks, covered in canvas, carrying troops through the various towns, as ominous as some of the opening images in Bergman's Tystnaden ( 7be Silence, 1 963); there is Spyros' own canvas-covered truck, transporting his troops of dancing bees, and looking like an army truck; it also carries the troops, the actors, in this film. Through the most subtle Brechtian distancing techniques, and, in the hotel and film house scenes, the dressing-up and making-up of Spyros and the hitchhiker, Angelopoulos has indicated that these persons are players of life. The difference between them and the characters of 0 7b iassos ( 7be Travelling Players, 1 975) is that the formers' performance is interrupted not on stage, but in front of a movie screen. His film begins to overlap with his others. Angelopoulos recently told Michel Ciment: "I think that my Beekeeper will lead to my next film"; 5 more than any other filmmaker, each of his works not only is the outgrowth of his last and the root of his next, but also reverberates through his whole work. In his imaginative essay on Angelopoulos, "Culture, History, and Cinema", Peter Pappas illustrated this tendency on a micro level within one film: History literally flows in front of one's eyes as, in one shot, the spectator is transported back and forth through the historical

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process. For example, the actors enter a town during the 1952 election campaign and walk to the town's square, arriving there in 1 939; a group of fascists marches away from a 1 946 New Year's dance, singing a martial air as it advances, and at the end of its procession arrives in 1952; a tricycle turns a corner and a Mercedes, bedecked with swastikas, drives into the picture, introducing us to the German Occupation in 1 942. History becomes a unity .. .It becomes meaningful only because of its total resonance, only to the extent that it is understood as one complete, inviolable tapestry, as the singular tableau of human experience. 6 It is no surprise, therefore, that Angelopoulos told a recent interviewer, Constantine Themelis: I was thinking of a few lines by Seferis: 'It was falling into the dream as I was exiting the dream/thus our life was joined and it will be very difficult to separate again. ' I was thinking of this in relation to what I do, which remains the most essential, if you wish, joy beyond anything else ? There is no question that 7be Beekeeper is about death . Just as the cinema that he loved is dying, and his Civil War comrade is dying, and the beekeepers he travelled with are dying out, and the colonies of the bees are dying, Spyros himself is dying. Some reviewers and critics have written of his death as suicide, but I think it nothing of the sort. When he overturns the boxes of honey-bees and is stung to death, he is acting with the frustration of a man who has dedicated h.is life to cultivating the beehives - human culture and civilisation, and he feels that this history, which he lived through, is now forgotten. He does not imagine or think that he will die, but his striking out is a deep signifier of an interior death which he has already suffered. As he lies on the ground in his final moments of life, Angelopoulos' camera comes in on a close-up of his hand tapping the ground as if trying to communicate through a vibrating dance like his bees, and on his finger is his wedding ring, an indication that he has mated with the queen bee and there has been progeny. He has also built honeycombs his whole life, returning to where he was born, and has spent his life teaching, building the beehive of culture. I have barely sketched one hexagon of an infinite honeycomb of images in the film. When D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson wrote his great masterpiece, On Growth and Form in 1 9 1 7, he began his second volume: "We pass from the solitary cell to cells in contact with one another - to what we may call in the first instance 'cell aggregation,'

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through which we shall be led ultimately to the study of complex tissue" . 8 He later described the bees' cell, quoting Pappas the Alexandrine, cited from T L Heath's History of Greek Mathematics: There being, then, three figures which of themselves can fill up the space round a point, namely the triangle, the square, and hexagon, the bees have wisely selected for their structure that which contains most angles, suggesting indeed that it could hold more honey than either of the other two. 9 Angelopoulos' many angles of incidence reflect more and more light at each successive moment of his films, and even more and more enlightenment when one reflects upon them. Notes Translated from the French: "Ma maison est construite selon les lois d' une severe architecture; et Euclidos lui-meme s'instruirait en admirant Ia geometrie des ses alveoles. " J C Mardrus (ed) , Le livre des mille nuits et une nuit, traduction litterale et complete des textes arabes (Paris: Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1 904) : XV, 1 73. 2

Karl von Frisch, Tbe Dance Language and Orientation ofBees, translated by Leigh E Chadwick (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press; 1 967) : 478. 3

Jose Ortega y Gasset, "On Point of View in the Arts", translated by Paul Snodgrass and Joseph Frank, in Tbe Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on A rt, Culture, and Literature (Princeton, N): Princeton University Press, 1 968): 1 07. 4

Translated from the French: "Puis je commence a ecrire des scenes, mais sans aller du debut jusqu'a Ia fin. Une image peut me venir a !'esprit autour de laquelle je construirai une scene qui se trouvera a Ia fin du film, puis je pense a une autre image qui se trouvera au milieu, etc . . . Mais je ne peux pas penser, en effet, a un autre moyen de concevoir un film que de partir d'images" . Michel Ciment, "Entretien avec theo angelopoulos (sur alexandre le grand)'' , Positi/ 250 (January 1 982): 13-14. Translated from the French: "Je pense done que de l'Apicu/teur sortira mon prochain film". Michel Ciment, "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos sur l'Apiculteur', Positi/ 3 1 5 (May 1 987) : 4. 6

Peter Pappas, "Culture, History and Cinema : A Review of Tbe Travelling Players'', Cineaste 7: 4 (winter 1 976/77) : 38. Emphasis in original.

7

Quoted in Constantine A Themelis, "An Artist Has No Biography. His Biography is His Work: An Interview", Periodiko 39 (August 1 989) . 8

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, edited by John Tyler Bonner (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961): 88. 9

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Ibid: 1 08- 109.

Theo Angelopoulos: landscapes, players, mist Michael Wilmington

I remember when I saw [Dreyer's] Ordet. I was delirious for three days . I was in shock: As if I were sick but happily sick. After Ordet, my eyes . . . [It was just as] when I first heard Vivaldi's 'Concerto for Two Mandolins' . How can such a perfection exist? (Theo Angelopoulos) 1 A lyrical road movie about the odyssey of two children across a dreamy and desolate modern topography, Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist, 1 988) may remind us at times of sources as various as Antonioni, Mizoguchi or Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar (Balthazar, 1 966), but this shattering film quickly generates its own pure and powerful tone. The realm it opens up is both real and surreal. Petrol stations, cafes, a brutal rape in the back of a truck - all these evoke the here-and-now. A bizarre snowfall appearing as if by magic; a seaside street; a vision of a helicopter; and a giant hand these suggest fantasy, memory, the past. Like many great film poets, Angelopoulos lets images, feelings and ideas overwhelm his story. In Landscape in the Mist, two children Voula (Tania Palaiologou), 14, and Alexandros (Michalis Zeke), 5 , have been deceived by their mother into believing that their absent father is "away" in Germany. When they flee to the border to "join" him sneaking into trains, hitchhiking in vans and lorries, and suffering poverty, rape and exploitation, they are taking a dangerous leap of faith, an eerie plunge into liberation and danger. In a way, it is a search for order in a chaotic world, a search for a God whom the world tells them is gone, or perhaps a simple quest for some affirmation masking their own sad or sordid origins. Angelopoulos' co-writer on Landscape in the Mist and his three other most recent films is Tonino Guerra, Antonioni's usual script collaborator. And, although we can see the gorgeous austerity of Antonioni in Landscape in the Mist , and also in 0 Melissokomos ( 7be Beekeeper, 1 986) and To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou ( 7be Suspended Step of the Stork, 1991), it seems fused also to the child's eye approach of the early neo-realists: Rossellini in Paisa (Paisan, 1 946) and De Sica in Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1 948). Much of Landscape

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in the Mist is shot under a sky that seems impenetrable or overcast: grey, autumnally cold, sometimes thick with driving rain or that sudden ecstatic snowfall. The film unwinds on vast plains that stretch around the tiny figures of the children , as they make their hard and lonely way. And, since Angelopoulos, here as always, tends to shoot in extremely long takes - staggeringly well-choreographed and executed, and translucently shot by cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis - all the characters begin to seem like figures in the landscape. Throughout, we are always aware of life on the edge, of the uncertainty and fragility of most human endeavour. The children, standing outside a boisterous nocturnal wedding celebration, tearfully watch the last shuddering agonies of a dying horse. They are preyed upon by people they meet. And their only real benefactor is a buoyant young motorcyclist (Stratos Tzortzoglou) about to be drafted: named Orestes, he is a van driver for a failing, itinerant theatre troupe, the "Travelling Players", themselves returning from Angelopoulos' 1 975 film. Landscape in the Mist has scenes that leave the viewer almost glassy-eyed with wonder. A joyous but tormenting dance of unrequited love is enacted to rock 'n' roll on a windy beach . Border guards sweep murky grounds with a searchlight, and fire into the darkness. A hair-raising rape scene takes place offscreen as cars whiz past an ominous parked truck. A huge stone hand, a remnant of past Greek glories, is lifted from the ocean and vanishes, helicopter-borne, into the sky. Being Greek, I am part of Greek cinema, but not in the provincial, localised sense. And, as far as style is concerned, there is no meeting point . . . O f all Angelopoulos' films, Landscape in the Mist may be the "bridge" film, the one that can guide outsiders most compellingly into his sometimes seemingly hermetic, special world. Without that bridge, for Americans at least, Angelopoulos may be still one of the cinema's great mysteries - a filmmaker, such as Tarkovskij, Mizoguchi or Ozu, who spins out much of his career away from American cinemas until he is finally discovered and, almost paralysingly, burst on us full-force. Why is he still obscure? Or even controversial? Angelopoulos has directed two of the most beautiful and profound films of our time, Landscape in the Mist and 0 Tbiassos ( Tbe Travelling Players, 1 9 75) , yet they are still little-known and little-seen. How many Americans have even heard of his other films, despite a string of awards that includes both the Gold and Silver Lions at Venice, and numerous other major prizes and citations? The accolades from his fellow

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filmmakers tend to be equally intense. Akira Kurosawa, speaking of Angelopoulos' 0 Megalexandros (Alexander the Great, 1 980) , said that it was "so powerful, the viewer cannot break away from the screen" , and describes his own reaction as "the pleasure o f cinema i n the most absolute sense of the term". There are reasons why some major American critics and most distributors remain resistant to Angelopoulos. There is something intransigent about his style, and his sheer individuality might be described as a provocation of sorts. Even in Greece, land of poetry and birthplace of myth, Angelopoulos' voice is unique. Compared to occasional or would-be movie lyricists such as Michael Cacoyannis (who has shared Arvanitis as cinematographer) or Nikos Koundouros (Young Aphrodite), his view seems authentic; their work, by comparison, seems more forced, thin or calculated. It is Angelopoulos' Greece - like Ozu's Japan, Renoir's France, Tarkovskij's Russia or Ford's America - that seems a dominant cinematic terrain, a vision altering the way we perceive his country, its past and dreams. Look, I don't know how younger filmmakers relate to cinema . . . but for us, for my generation the 'rats of the Cinematheque' and for me personally, it was not a relation that was either personal or one of simple expression. I would say it was something more . . . It was a feverish symbiosis. Angelopoulos pursued his vocation abroad, in Paris, as one of the movie fanatics who haunted Henri Langlois' Cinematheque. (Later he was expelled from film school after a year, for arguing with professors.) His political education, he says, came from being struck in the face by a policeman's club in 1964, while a crowd demonstrating for Papandreau was being dispersed: "This incident, I think, was . . . decisive in my working for a left-wing paper and [staying in] Greece". So his sensibility, like many students in the 1 960s, was formed partly in response to political violence and government excesses. This was the decade when both movie mania and student rebellion, often hand-in-hand, spread like a fever from country to country. He began under the authoritarian Greek Colonels at the time of Z 0 968), and, like his counterparts in Eastern Europe, Russia, Portugal and Franco's Spain, he had to work in a kind of subversive code, sending messages, in his first three films, right over the censor's heads. But, like any cineaste/cinephile, such as Godard, Scorsese, Bertolucci, Fassbinder or Oshima, his revolutionary departures actually all had precedents.

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The American genres from my youth which influenced me they stayed inside me subterraneously - were the American musical, the films of Minnelli and Stanley Donen, and the American gangster movie in its golden age: with Billy Wilder, Huston and Hawks. Much like the leftist Hollywood directors of the 1 940s, A naparastasis (Reconstruction , 1 970), Angelopoulos' first feature film, turns on an Ossessione-style of crime of passion, unravelled by a team of investigators and a film crew headed by Angelopoulos himself. This homage to film noir reveals two key obsessions at once: the Greek land and the crimes buried in it. This crime is tied to the landscape, the bleak village of Vista in Epirus. Ruminate on that land, the film suggests, and you will discover tragedies below - like the husband's corpse in Reconstruction, buried under a garden row of onions. In Meres Tou 36 (Days of 36, 1972), he fully discovers and develops the unique style of all his later films: a way of recording horror by staring at masked images, making the audience aware of what it is not shown. Days of 36 recreates an historical stand-off that helped lead to Greece's Metaxas dictatorship. In a prison, a gay drug peddler involved with a Conservative minister kidnapped the minister and held him hostage after his own arrest for the murder of a left­ wing trade syndicalist. Ordinarily, in a film by, for example, Oliver Stone, we would expect to be taken into the cell or council rooms, and be kept intimately abreast of plots and counter-plots. But, in Days of 36, we always seem to be stuck on the periphery: down a corridor: above a courtyard; outside a locked door; at the edge of a conference in which meanings and intentions are obscured; or off in a field somewhere, following characters who speak laconically or not at all. Everything is cryptic and indirect, and breathes with menace. The Greek dictatorship is embodied in the formal structure of Days of 36. Imposed silence was one of the conditions under which we worked .. .If I tried to express myself more clearly, I would have been censored, so I made the film in such a way that the spectator realises that censorship is involved. In Z, Costa-Gavras flings a stormy 'Taccuse" in the Colonels' faces (from the safety of Algeria and France). Angelopoulos, under their heel, pretends to avert his eyes, steeps us in a melancholic, meditative mood (oppression's ennui), shows us brutal events from a distance: abortive prison yard revolts and escapes, all in a blazing light, hot yellows, chalky whites. Normal dramatic confrontations are smudged.

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Repression, as he explains, becomes a dramatic tool throughout the narration, suggesting levels unshown. This is the key to Angelopoulos' method - together with his adoration for Murnau , Mizoguchi, Antonioni, Welles, Dreyer - and he kept it even after his original stimulus (Fascism) changed. Look at the world very closely, he suggests. Fixate, meditate, examine every clue. Try to guess what is really going on. In Days of :36, he gives us, as directly as possible, the dilemma of discourse in a country where free speech is dangerous or forbidden. His silence is eloquent. That is what he became: the director of eloquent silence, the director who, instead of concentrating on his characters, seems to turn instead to the landscape around them. In his early films, people seem less individuals than groups, less groups than figures of the earth, lost in what surrpunds them - the land, the sky, the sea. In Reconstntction, the landscape is already almost a hero/ villain. From Days of :36 to Alexander the Great, it is protagonist or antagonist. Then, in his "trilogy", it recedes again, becomes a background, one which dominates its players. All his later films spring from a meditation on the land. All bend under the unspoken weight of a terrible past. This early indirection survives into his later, more "psychological" films: Taxidi Sta Kithira ( Voyage to Cythera, 1983), 7be Beekeeper ( 1 986) , Landscape in the Mist (1 988) . In Landscape in the Mist, he heightens the impact of an annihilating rape sequence by again denying us witness: holding his camera on the closed rear of the truck where the rape takes place - the world proceeding heedlessly around it - so that, under the vast sky, by the under-populated road, the barren field, our helplessness becomes as terrible as any violence. No more so, of course, than what happens, mostly offscreen, to Greece, the world. Greek people have grown up caressing dead stones. I've tried to bring mythology down from the heights and directly to the people. 7be Travelling Players - perhaps the greatest unseen film of the 1 970s (at least in America) - takes place during the years 1 939-5 2. Its plan is epic (Brecht crossed with Aeschylus and Mizoguchi) : to reveal the period's political history while focusing on a group of itinerant actors who spend those fourteen years wandering through provinces, ctttes and villages, performing, in increasingly threadbare circumstances, a popular Greek folk tale, Perisiadis' Golfo the Shepherdess. The actors, whose names and personae all stem from the " House of Atreus", are of varying political hues - from active

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collaborators with the Nazis CAegisthus), to opportunists (Chrysothemis) , to centrist Greek patriots (Agamemnon), to the apolitical (Clytemnestra) , to left-wing idealists (Electra) , to Communist guerrillas (Orestes) . And they fill these roles as much as they do the mythic ones of wandering general , faithless wife, betrayer or vengeful son. We remember them afterwards, again, more as a troupe than as individuals - and, as they travel amid the constant wartime convulsions, they begin, unconsciously, to enact parallels to Aeschylus' tragic cycle. They are Greek actors apparently unfamiliar with the great Greek dramas - one of the alienation devices which tends to infuriate Angelopoulos' detractors - and history, mythic patterns and tracking shots enslave them equally. So does time, which keeps looping in on itself, extending and distending excruciatingly. And the silky blue nights and bleak autumnal days caught by Arvanitis, a master of super-real lighting, are so clear, cold and shadowless that they heighten the enigmas. 7be Travelling Players is, notoriously, a four-hour film that contains only 80 separate shots - about one shot every three minutes. There is little dialogue apart from the stage scenes. Instead, in long, moving, often wordless tableaux, repeated with a hypnotic force and rhythm, we watch street battles from alleys, parades or demonstrations from the side of a road, a disarming army from a courtyard and, periodically (the film's leitmotif) theatrical performances from the pit or wings, as they are stopped, hectored, harassed or violently interrupted. 7be 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 - and, by implication, a movie that cannot be shot. It is about the world that lies just outside the vantage point of the drama, thwarting it or changing it. It is also about the transcendence of time. Events continuously flow into each other. We walk down a street during a 1 9 5 2 election campaign, and finish it on a square in 1 939, where an impending visit by propaganda minister Goebbels is announced. Continually, the style of unbroken camera takes allows the film to slide from one epoch to another: a group of reactionary hoods emerge from a dance hall in 1 946 , march rowdily down the streets and, only minutes later, join a Conservative election rally in 1 9 5 2 . The film finishes when the (much different) troupe arrives at the same village in 1 939, pressed or bent, at least in our minds, under the weight of their own future. This spectacularly oblique form was partially an act of subterfuge. Even the parallels with Aeschylus may be something of a ruse. (A rationale for a frankly subversive film?) There are three "act" divisions

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in which three characters, Agamemnon, Electra and Pylades, tell us of crucial offscreen events: the 1922 Asia Minor Greek defeat by the Turks; the 1 944 betrayal of the postwar coalition; and the later mass imprisonment of Greek radicals. But these scenes are all shot after the Colonels fell, and are almost all we get of direct address. For the rest, we are forced, like detectives, to piece together the truth from the tableaux-scenes that are always shown whole, while situating ourselves in the "dead spaces and time" (as Angelopoulos calls them) of those agonisingly, beautifully protracted pans and tracking shots. I deny that I have been influenced by jancs6! Plan sequence has existed throughout cinema history - in Murnau's films, for example . . .I draw techniques from everything I've seen . . .I continue to love - and I am speaking from memory, since it is quite some time since I have seen them - very much the films of Murnau , Mizoguchi, Antonioni. More recently: Tarkovskij's Stalker, Godard's Every Man for Himself And, of course, Ordet. But the only specific influences I acknowledge are Orson Welles, for his use of plan-sequence and deep focus, and Mizoguchi, for his use of time and off-camera space. Once he discovered his method, Angelopoulos, like any grand obsessive, took it to extremes. Throughout 1be Travelling Players, we can almost feel his excitement in the shots: their strangeness, their rightness. It matters little whether he came to write effectively the dialogue scenes he ultimately threw away. What matters is the way his new style releases so many scenes of astonishing beauty and power: the players' starved, snowy circle around the chicken; the panoply of post-liberation banners in an Athens square, which are suddenly put to rout; the grotesquely interrupted seaside wedding feast; the last weary burst of applause by the players around Orestes' grave. The film, in a way, is like a cataract, bursting and pouring forth from a seemingly barren rocky hillside. Everywhere we sense the weight of oppression; everywhere we can feel it breaking down, disintegrating. Forced away from the straightforward drama of characters - putting the drama of interrupted events and opaque characters - putting us at the same time into a kind of direct communion with the land itself: a land that is social determinant and eternal witness. The form gives 1be Travelling Players its uniqueness; history and contemporary reference give it bite and intensity; style gives it beauty. Perhaps people may understand why Angelopoulos' films are so thrilling if I state that the films from Days of 36 on are composed, almost wall-to-wall, of the great virtuoso scenes that, in almost any

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other movie, would be discussed afterwards as legendary tours de force - the ballroom scene in 7be Magnificent Ambersons ( 1 942); the car bomb track in Touch of Evil (1 958); the ballroom dances in Madame De . . . ( 7be Earrings of Madame De . , 1 953); the ghostly seductions in Ugetsu Monogatari 0 953); the battles in Andrej Rublev ( 1 966), even perhaps the (partly Angelopoulos-inspired) opening studio introduction of 7be Player (1 992) - all taken one after another, without any slackening of intensity. .

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My films are very much about the problems of power - and they are political only insofar as (those) problems are political . Under the Colonels, there was a clear antithesis; there was more cohesion among the people who resisted, and more coherence on the left, whereas now it is scattered and in disarray . . . 7be Travelling Players, a film begun under a dictatorship and completed under a new government, had to be smuggled into Cannes, where it won the Critics' Prize. Angelopoulos' next film, I Kinigi ( 7be Hunters, 1 977) , is filmed in the same chronologically omnivorous, ultra-theatrical epic mode; of all Angelopoulos' films, it is the one I like the least. The director based it on a news item that would also inspire his sixth feature, Voyage to Cythera : the corpse of a Greek partisan, wh o had been hiking his way home in 1 949, was discovered decades later, frozen in the mountains. Within this incident, Angelopoulos finds a framework to put Greece's Right, symbolically, on trial. In 7be Hunters, the corpse is discovered by a hunting party, a group of the ruling elite: when they disinter it, they find the partisan's wounds bleeding afresh. The rest of the film consists of stylised tableaux in which the hunters are faced with their recreated sins. Finally, they dream their own execution by modern partisans and with it - so they vainly hope - their collective guilt. Perhaps I feel colder towards 7be Hunters even though it contains almost as many remarkable scenes as Days of 36 or 7be Travelling Players because of a feeling of strain in the film. Where the alleged "obscurities" in 7be Travelling Players come partly from the existential pressure of the moment, here they seem more academically contrived. In his previous films, Angelopoulos is battling deviously against external constraints. In 7be Hunters, he is shadow­ boxing, imposing censorship rather than circumventing it. In a way, he has become his own Fascist. (Or perhaps, misinterpreting Greek politics, I only think he is. ) But this unsettling evolution seems even clearer in his next film, Alexander the Great (1 980) . -

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However, even if we are alienated - even if, temporarily, we may side with critics who find his work maddeningly pretentious or stylistically obsessive - we can sympathise with his situation. A genius, after all, annoys you more profoundly than an ordinary journeyman, because his very brilliance compels your attention. In 1be Travelling Players, Angelopoulos perfects an extraordinary style, creates a revolutionary masterpiece . Then the exterior impetus alters. What does he do with his new language, when the enemies who helped him create it have been defeated? A lexander the Great is the tale of a mythical Greek bandit who begins as a liberator and ends as a tyrant - and during its shooting, Angelopoulos claims, he became a tyrant himself: alienating the cast and crew to such an extent that they took to writing slogans attacking him on the walls of the Macedonian mountain village commandeered for the shoot. The film is an extremely lush work, ravishingly shot by Arvanitis. But it can also seem oppressive, even suffocating in its intensity. Angelopoulos pushes some scenes, especially the musical ones, to the edge of real pain . And since the film's leading actor, Omero Antonutti, insists that Alexander is autobiographical, and Angelopoulos seems to agree, it is no surprise that he later indicted h imself. In his very next work, Voyage to Cythera, he creates a plainly self-referential character, another film director obsessed with Greece and the political past - and names him Alexander. [Seeing a mountain village for the first time] was a discovery . . . o f another Greece which I did not know. I came across an interior space - which can be called an inside Greece - which was unknown to most people of my generation, people born and raised in the city. Today, except perhaps for professional geographers, I am one of the most extremely travelled Greeks . . . not just city by city, but village by village .. . It was a true discovery for me. By this time, Angelopoulos has plainly decided to modify the cryptic mode invented for 1be Travelling Players. Working in a failed bourgeois society instead of a brutal Fascist state, he will confront malaise directly. He will tell stories that are almost as artificial, symbol­ laden, politically rich and compact. But he will disguise them further as conventional dramas, psychological art films that follow doomed or alienated protagonists through lyricised modern landscapes. This is the mode of Bergman, Truffaut, early Godard and Antonioni. Now Angelopoulos will bury his artifice in the film. Not a device to disorient or mystify his oppressors, it becomes part of a more private poetry of longing and despair. With the exception of the

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opening of Voyage to Cytbera the film-outside-the-film (afteiWards, Alexander will become the "son" of Cythera's main character) - he tells more seemingly straightfoiWard, chronologically undisturbing yarns. In the poignant Voyage to Cytbera , his central character is a leftist exile returned from Russia after the political amnesty. This man, beautifully played by the dying actor, Manos Katakis, discovers that he is still at war with his own culture and countryside. The story, however, is something which the director, Alexander, imagines. Later, he recedes back off-camera, a tyrant no longer, at one with his tale. -

A film is a significant human adventure. The significance is to be found in whether, from an external adventure, it manages to become transformed into an internal one . . . Voyage to Cytbera is about an old man, representative o f the country's leftist past, who cannot become reconciled to the country's present. 1be Beekeeper is about another alienated ex-leftist, also trapped between the past (his father's profession) and the present (a sexy young hitchhiker he picks up while travelling the roads) . Landscape in the Mist is about two illegitimate children, a girl and boy, innocent explorers in a dangerous world (like the children of jeux interdits [Forbidden Games, 1 9 5 2] or Bicycle Th ieves) , who have been comforted for years by their mother's lie - that their father is in Germany - and who try to find him "across the border" . Along the way, they run into the 1be Travelling Players, out of time, almost in the throes of dissolution, declaiming on a desolate beach. The central current in all three films is similar. The present has become unbearable; the past is a betrayal or myth; the future is an enigma that may be fatal. But is this recurring pattern the cul-de-sac it seems: the expression/ excretion of a colossal downer? Perhaps not - and not simply because the fates we see are more individual than universal. A weird escape hatch exists in all three films: film itself. Voyage to Cythera takes place inside a filmmaker's head. The beekeeper's joyless couplings are staged before an abandoned movie screen. And the misty landscape towards which the children flee may be contained in a scrap of film they find in the street during their journey. Angelopoulos, perhaps, cannot bring himself, in these films, to total disillusionment over a world that, for all its folly, warfare, bloodshed, treachery, disappointment and catastrophe, can still produce these images (plan­ sequence) , images which, like all the other "rats" of the Cinematheque, he remembered so long and loved so well.

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Whatever I have done , whatever has managed to come out into the light, is me . This is what counts, independently of recognition, awards, honours . . . I n Angelopoulos' two most recent films , the world becomes more terrifying, the solace of film more intense and perhaps more fragile. In 1be Sw.pended Step of the Stork, the title refers to a one-legged stance from which you can either progress or retreat. Set in a town near the Greek-Turkish border, the picture - perhaps too symbolically - traces the dilemma of a journalist who believes a vanished politician, an inspirational national figure who succumbed to despair, has resurfaced as a nearly anonymous refugee. Three veterans of La Notte ( 1be Night, 1 9 6 1 ) are reunited here - Guerra, Mastroianni and Moreau . But the mood remains pure Angelopoulos, even at the end, when a wedding scene staged on opposite river banks forces him, for what seems a wrenching change, to use crosscutting. The people, the soldiers and the lovers here seem lost under a cold sky : figures in a landscape who only delude themselves that they are masters of the earth and of their destiny . Ulysses' Gaze 0 995), Grand Jury prize-winner at Cannes, finally dramatises the central crisis and question : how can a filmmaker keep his/her passion for cinema in a world exploding in chaos , madness, injustice and bloodshed? Here, in a mesmerising union of realism and artifice, encapsulating most of his obsessions and themes, Angelopoulos follows the journey of filmmaker "A" (Harvey Keitel, replacing the late Gian Maria Volante) as he tracks three long-missing reels of film by Greece's pioneering Manakis brothers right to the heart of darkness: a damaged film archive in Sarajevo, at the height of the Serbian siege . As always, Angelopoulos and Arvanitis create magic (making a talisman of a stone head of Lenin, transported on a barge) . As always, their landscapes resonate with sadness and longing, everything trapped in the gaze of hero, wanderer, filmmaker, bystander and victim alike. In a better time and place - at least for foreign-language films on American screens - Theo Angelopoulos would not have gone so grotesquely unrecognised here for the quarter century of his filmmaking career. To recount the fate of his films at hands of distributors and critics, films which can rarely be seen even by audiences predisposed towards them, is almost maddening. Angelopoulos has perhaps been a victim of both bad international timing and his own intransigent perfectionism. Landscape in the Mist, especially is, like 1be Travelling Players, a poetic summation of its maker's strengths, fears and desires at a particular place and a particular time .

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These two films give us the world crystallised in an image or sound: the hand rising from the sea, or the accordion that starts the performance (a show we know will always be cut short) . In Greece, Irene Papas once said that one of the beauties of the country's poetry is that everyone knows and speaks it: commoners as well as literati. Angelopoulos, uncommonly, finds his own poetry in corruption, betrayal and witness. And in loss and pain: in children estranged from their father, in a country estranged from its heritage, in love's paralysis, art's frustrations, the mists of death - above all, in the rich and resonant silence around him, the silence of history, the land, of the mountains, ocean and sky, all perceived with the fixed or travelling gaze through which, like Conrad, he finally makes us see. Note All the Angelopoulos quotes are from interviews by Constantine A Themelis and Tony Mitchell, cited in the New York Museum of Modem Art retrospective brochure.

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The empire of the journey in Voyage to Cythera Yvette Biro

"In the beginning was the journey", says the modern Greek poet George Seferis, and we understand how it became Angelopoulos' favourite quote . Eight years after his much-acclaimed 0 7biassos ( 7be Travelling Players, 1 975), a new sense of the journey imbues and shapes Taxidi Sta Kithira ( Voyage to Cythera , 1 983), deepening the metaphor of human striving. Since displacement is never mere spatial or geographical change, Angelopoulos' wanderers explore the drama of passing time, following the tragic rhythm of purpose , passion and perception. The journey gains metaphysical meaning, transcending past and present, dreams and imagination. And its scene becomes the interior world of his hero, at once both closed and vulnerably open to absorb the exterior. Angelopoulos developed a vigorously personal, consistent vision and style through the continuity of his films. Restrained, ceremonious in rhythm, with richly layered structures , his films express the intricate truth of his characters' struggles. The powerful elements of the composition fully reflect the weight of his characters' quests . Such a narrative arc is deliberately fragmented, admitting the inevitable doubts and leaps of thought, the "non-coherence" of things, as Angelopoulos has phrased it. A kind of "ricercar" , as it is called in music, articulates the form that seeks to capture the restless tension of his traveller, descending with him into the "labyrinth of solitude" . The title, Voyage to Cythera, immediately suggests the direction of his exploration . Cythera, in Greek mythology, is the isle of dreams where one can dedicate oneself to happiness (or the search for it) ; it thus represents all that the imagination creates. But, for "homo politicus" - as we all, of course, are - the imaginary journey cannot be a romantic idyll: it brings with it specific responsibilities, forebodings and failures . And so, even though Angelopoulos' accent has shifted, and the decor has changed from his previous films, he has not really departed from his earlier path . The structure of Voyage to Cythera is a masterful presentation of the two worlds of reality and imagination, serving to confront them, shuffle them, and fuse them together in a dazzling display: At the first level of the narrative, the hero is a director, Alexandros, whose

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journey takes him through the twisting and tortuous path of creating a film . Internal anxiety and uncertainty drive him on. His principal preoccupation consists in asking himself how to give form to the shapeless , to choose from amongst the endless alternatives which the world offers . But Angelopoulos does not restrict his Otto e mezzo (81h) to this particular conflict; he does not reduce the drama to a single dilemma. Guided by the journey metaphor, he displays the story, places it in time, and incites us to travel magically. He unveils the pitfalls of certainty and doubt and calls upon us to live a new adventure . We are thus on the move, replete with fresh horses, we are always on the move. One morning, no different from any other morning, our director-hero wakes up and goes to work at the dream factory: among the flashy movie sets, during performing familiar routines amidst the armada of collaborators who rehearse and profane the fragility of the vision. But already I am " losing the rhythm" - as Alexandros says more than once during the film - and I must stop to note that the opening is more finely woven than I have suggested. The first image, like a hint of a vague and far-away tune, awakens a memory from Alexandros' past during the German occupation of Greece in the Second World War: a child - the hero himself as a child, or is it already his imagination which confuses the past and dreams? - taunts a German soldier with the foolhardy impudence of the innocent, and then runs away at full speed through a silent labyrinth of deserted streets and leprous walls . It is a startling fragment whose enigmatic concentration introduces the always-present historical sensibility of Angelopoulos . The events of the film never unfold in a foggy poetic abstraction . So it is under the double sign of imagination and daily life that the opening of Voyage to Cythera is offered to our gaze . The film proposes to reveal the physical and geographic roots of artistic inspiration. We witness a decisive moment: Alexandros is mesmerised by the face of an old man he notices by chance . This glimpse sets him on the path to the film within Angelopoulos' film - a hypothetical, virtual film. Once he has entered upon this path, he experiences a sort of vertigo, which we also come to share. The moment is elusive, and the transition so subtly accomplished that we realise it only after the fact, when we are already caught up too, and, like him, uncertain of the very delicate boundary between the world of reality and the world of the imaginary. This interpenetration is the essence of Angelopoulos: for him, the two realities have exactly the same weight and the same quality. The creative work is also the life of the creator; it has a continuous physical reality of its own. Imagination is not a holiday excursion, it is not a separate realm reserved for illuminations which

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are above or outside physical reality; it is inextricably linked with the unerasable presence of an intruding reality whose richness is ever­ present. The film which Alexandros is making is also the story of a particular journey leading us from the past to the present, from one unknown figure to another. The beginning and the end of the film­ within-the-film have a disconcerting open-ended structure, but the journey is rooted in a concrete historical and socio-psychological reality. This journey has nothing metaphysical in it: it is a painful human destiny, cruelly determined by the long wars, including the Greek Civil War of 1 946-49, as well as by the short truces of our century. We follow the coming home to Greece of an old exiled man. Having spent his youth in the resistance and as a partisan in the Second World War, he was forced into exile at the close of the Greek Civil War in 1950. After more than 30 years , he attempts to return home (a general amnesty was declared during the 1 970s, after the fall of the military dictatorship of 1967-75) . How does one build a bridge to span 30 years of silence? Will one find again a common language for reunion? Will one find sufficient reserves of feeling and thought to mend the torn fabric of continuity? His encounters do not bode well. The gap is too large to be easily bridged. Ties with family, old neighbours, and relations with authorities threaten to rupture . Too much political history has passed by in his absence . He finds himself a stranger in his own land. One could say that there is nothing surprising in this, that it is almost to be expected. But what is at stake is not the result, it is the experience, the pitiless process that obliges us to live out the · inevitable. One of the fatal characteristics of the voyage is that the traveller cannot determine his itinerary. Crushed by the burden of this incessant tension, he must experience the painful sensation of feeling himself a stranger, and endure merciless harassment by the authorities . To be deprived of his rights in every domain is the fate of our Ulysses . He has no more right t o his country, nor to his abandoned land and home in Greek Macedonia, nor even to his own death, which is imposed upon him from without, by the judgment of others, as a punishment. Why is the verdict so harsh? Is it due to the sin of infidelity, because he veered from the road that the others in Greece followed? We are probably closer to the truth if we say that this fate illustrates the implacable social reality of our times, that human beings are no longer in control of their own lives . We lose this power if we belong to the flock , but we can also lose it if we struggle for a new order. The terrible irony is that it is through his desire to serve the people

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that the old man ends up alienated from them. The portrait of this aging hero is exceptionally powerful . The lean and wizened old man (played by the great Greek actor, Manos Katakis, who died shortly after the end of filming) executes his task with an imperturbable seriousness. From the first moment, we have the impression that he mechanically obeys the secret and heartless dictates of his destiny. He is incapable of being warm and open. "I have never seen him laugh, not once", says his daughter, no doubt because the uprooting of exile brings with it a sullen coldness , added to the frustrated rigidity acquired so often by political activists . The exile's forceful character, hardened by wars, has become austere indifference, arid self-centredness. Ideals, feelings, familial love, the sweetness of a known landscape - they have all eluded him. He is left with a few sparse memories, snatches of melody sung with an old buddy, his modest suitcase and a violin. Perhaps the meanings of these symbols are too obvious . Fortunately, Angelopoulos does not insist on their meaning, does not burden them with a superfluous underlining. The objects accompany the hero like the recurrent adjectives of the ancient epic poems, and their presence simply serves as a reminder of the impossibility of integration, the physical reality of exclusion. The paradox of the old man's journey is that he never arrives . Obviously he wants to rest, to find his home again, but he is unable to come to rest before the complete rejection he finally receives . Staying o n the move proves to be an unrelenting necessity. H e must keep going, always keep going. At first, it is because he wants to see everything; his curiosity propels him. He wants to rediscover the decor of the past, the old house in the village, the land, the mountains where he spent his years in the resistance. Then he must move on because he is forced to by the authorities. He must respect the imposed stops. He seems then to float between heaven and earth, in a no man's land, on a more than symbolic raft where he awaits a fate stripped of all hope . But the story of the old man is only the core of another, or perhaps it represents its skin. A fugue is hidden in a fugue - one emerges from the other, reality and poetry subtly overlap. For instance, in the film within the film, Alexandros, the director-hero, ' plays the part of the old man's son. One does not have to be a stubborn Freudian to foresee the inevitable drama simmering in the accusatory relationship of the father and his son. The relentless portrayal is striking. Despite his tragic lot, the old exile is unable to inspire compassion and indulgence from his own kin . "You are a fossil" , says a neighbour, who cannot forgive him for having always sown unrest, "You don't exist. Long past are the times where you

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would ride through the mountains with your gun. You are a fossil" . The odious judgment seems painfully true, for his hands are empty, and he will leave nothing of value as his legacy. The accusation is valid not only for the present, but also for the past, and for all the time in-between. What in him is worthy of respect? His stubbornness , his dubious courage which made him abandon his family and his home with no hesitation? When people see the sad shadow of his former self, they pass their bitter judgment. "You 've never thought of others " , says his daughter. "You and your generation. You fought a revolution , you joined the partisans, and you took off'' . He who left does not have the right to come back so easily. "Why did you come back?" , he is asked, and the old man can offer no answer. The leftist, the resistance fighter, has become an anachronistic being, on the fringe of real life. If the subject of the film within the film is the farewell to the father, indeed to the generation of the Second World War and Greek Civil War fathers glorified for so long, this farewell is doubly upsetting. Beyond the theme of separation, the film is about the tragic poverty of that which is passed from father to son. Alexandros is particularly troubled because the loss does not seem to bother him . His loss consists in not really feeling, or at least not showing, any sense of loss. Why did Alexandros make a hero out of the father? Because we can, after all , perceive a deep affinity between the two . He does not content himself with settling a score with "the other" , with him who is different: he also has to come face-to-face with that which resembles himself, even though this resemblance makes him uncomfortable. The marginal character of the exile makes Alexandros see what is marginal in himself. Doubtless, the old man cut himself off from life, but did not a similar process happen to the generation of the son, this generation of lost illusions which is the generation of Alexandros? Furthermore, the shadowiness, the need to isolate, the arid solitude - are not these inherent in the fate of the artist? Moreover, what became of his great ideals? Where is Cythera, the isle of happiness? Finally, all that is left for him is to explain and understand powerlessness. And so the two extreme poles confront each other: the powerlessness of the father and the struggle of the artist, his son, to name it. With the father's death, the artist's journey does reach an end. For creating, like departing, is also a process of dying a little . The emotional journey of the film is that of the inevitable progression of grief. The voyage of Alexandros does not take him closer to clarity, but rather towards darker regions, through three different circles. The first circle is the story of the embarkation, Alexandros leaving his daily environment, the second one is the

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creation of the dreamed hero, the meeting with the unknown father in the classic situations and conflicts of the film within the film; and the last circle focuses on the relationship between the artist and the old man. The voyage is an act of self-criticism, the analysis of Alexandros' creative power, and a vision , a meditation on the surrounding world. As the artist's reflection on the story begins to dominate, the shadows of solitude , anguish and numerous deceptions are also projected. In the journey of the hero in Voyage to Cythera, the entire tragedy of all human undertaking is implied: the need to depart from the known, the desire to understand the unknown, the dark - the challenge of freedom, "the passion for the possible", in the words of Ricceur, and the prize, the curse, and the burden of freedom. But, under this classic horizontal structure, or rather inside it, we might discover another structural concept that orders the rich material. As we have seen, imagination and reality mix, reflect each other. In the film which Alexandros makes, he is present as a son, but his lover, an actress, also appears as his sister. Reality intervenes in all fiction. Inspiration digs for its treasure from the well of real life, fiction is the modified face of reality. The presence of reality within fiction results in a specific quality and a stimulating difference. The introduction of real-life characters , with its slight but unrelenting distancing, creates an incomparable effect. The keeping up of this oscillation, this ambiguity loaded with meaning, is Angelopoulos' originality. Because nothing would be easier than merely reversing the common hierarchy and, instead, giving free rein to the interior realm of the imagination. We have seen it abused in countless films with flashbacks and dream sequences . But Angelopoulos refuses any hierarchy, any rigid delineation. What unfolds under our gaze does not take place in the past tense usually used in stories, but the could-be (or will-be) , intriguing and undefined, colours the action . The journey remains open thanks to the uncommon play of the conditional and the future, and to a slight lag between the two . One wonderful example is when the old man and his family go for dinner in the abandoned and closed-up house of his ancestral Macedonian village . Plates already filled with soup, laid neatly on an already set table, provoke a touch of the unreal, a disturbance, which reminds us of the presence of imagination, of the work of fiction. The subtle fissures in the story suggest the unreal. By using the conditional , Angelopoulos thus creates a new sense of time, different from that of his earlier films . The overlapping of different layers of time, the free manipulation of time, have always dominated his ecriture. But, in Voyage to Cythera, a new complexity enriches the dual texture of the story. On one side, the action unfolds according to a clear and easy-to-follow chronology; however, this

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horizontal development does not prevent another movement. This one is vertical , representing the subjective time of imagination or, rather, the atemporality of the imaginary. In 1be Travelling Players, memory and history, historical consciousness, whether individual or collective, are intertwined amidst significant social and political turning-points. Here, the historicity of time, the fusion of past and present, cease; we watch the destruction of the walls which separate the is and the could-be, the is and the will-be. For example, the meals are prepared and offered to the protagonists, but they are never actually eaten. We have the sensation of entering a musical space in which the constellation of instants has as much importance as the design of the melody. The rhythm is called upon to express the wanderings of the interior journey. It is not by chance that, twice during his peregrination, Alexandros wonders if he has not lost the rhythm . "One, two, three . . . ", he counts - is he trying to measure with steps the pulse of the film in progress? He seems to control the precision of his creative gestures, in order to find his own cadence again - the right beat, "the key of his interior harmony". As in the other films of Angelopoulos, this time also the rhythmic accent is accompanied by deliberate restraint. Tension or anguish do not give rise to a fast pace : on the contrary. He takes ample time to linger on stretched-out moments , to elaborate their calligraphy. When, for instance, the old man addresses the ghost of death, proudly reminding him of how many times he could cheat him, the camera moves around the hero in a vertiginous spiral, embracing with a shivering aura the mysterious dialogue. No other director takes such a calculated risk with the danger of slowness . But this ritenuto is an organic part of his composition; it is responsible for evoking the painful sensation of unresolvedness, of breaking time , inciting us to concentration. The new direction of Angelopoulos' journey required new techniques and a slightly different ecriture. The use of plan-sequence is certainly his major stylistic feature , but it undertakes new functions, foremost that of blurring the boundaries between fantasy images - i . e . subjective vision and objective events . Not only does h e make imperceptible the jump from reality to imagination - such as in the first scene in which the potential would-be film protagonist (the old man selling lavender) and the "real" or "recalled" father figure fuse ­ but he also keeps these lines between reality and imagination ambiguous throughout the story. Is it by accident that, when we first meet the disembarking old Spyros, we only see his reflection in the harbour water, suggesting to what extent he is but a shadow, not a real existence . We move from one reality to another without really being fully sure that we have done so.

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In Tbe Travelling Players, the tension of the plan-sequence came from the fact that the continuity seems to us both threatened and threatening at the same time . At each instant, the field of vision is subjected to unexpected incursions; the aggression of politics and history come through in the images in an unforeseeable manner, according to the murderous whim of the arbitrary. Despite the vulnerability of the image, Angelopoulos could create an incredibly powerful visual-emotional sovereignty thanks to the autonomy of Arvanitis' subtle camera, and to the relationship between the camera and space. With its severe and taut order, Angelopoulos' composition radiates an incomparable dignity and beauty. In Voyage to Cythera, this strict discipline, the rhetorical value as such of the plan-sequence, and the "pride" of the omnipresent camera, seem to be slightly mitigated. The geometrical layout of the frame is also less stringent. The camera is more personal , more supple; because there is greater intimacy, the composition exhibits a more tender rigour, if those two terms can be linked. But Angelopoulos would never stress psychological drama. He will always remain at a distance with his camera, placing his characters in the landscape, insisting on their solitude. Yet his often-mentioned frontal presentation becomes less theatrical, since the depth of the image breaks up the placement, cutting the frame horizontally. The context of the preceding films gave rise to the lucidity of distance for each object; in Voyage to Cythera, a rapprochement begins to take shape . It is precisely through this greater suppleness and softer continuity that the expressive force and depth of feeling reveal themselves . However, this fluidity is created in a highly sophisticated way. Angelopoulos refers to the peculiar travelling mode of shooting used by Kurosawa which he wanted to apply in a way to this film . There are two important parts in which such strong articulations occur in the continuity. In the scene of the old man dancing, Angelopoulos uses a very exaggerated zoom, moving from 25mm to 2 50mm and thus obviously calling attention to the shot itself: thus the interpretive camera seeks a forceful dramatic impact. The other example offers a different interference. When, in the end, between two shots of Spyros' wife crying out, "I want to go with him " , indicating her passionate desire to join her husband, Angelopoulos slips into a montage of three short shots: the harbour, the girl , and the magician. He is thus willing to create a completely unreal effect. Avoiding the danger of naturalism, Angelopoulos needed to stress the passage from the real to the imaginary, the oneiric or magic character of creation. The finer and silkier musical texture is accentuated by the fact that dialogue is consciously neglected. The long silences, and the dialogue reduced to snatches of words, emphasise the visual aspect of the work

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of the imagination and the metaphorical power of pictorial language. "Let the words travel in space" , says Angelopoulos , in order to explore their musical energy . What little is said is often repeated as the variations of a musical theme . They return as motifs, like the significant worlds of "It is me" , or the weird mumbling of the folk tune , "Rotten Apples" . These interior rhymes represent not only a structural principle, but also something about the work of the unconscious - the work of creation. The forms are imposed on us; having once given its configuration to a sensation, they become independent and real ; thus, they continue irresistibly to articulate the chaotic contents of conscience. When, at the end, the "sister" repeats precisely the words of the actress we heard at the beginning of the film, we receive a suggestive glimpse into their identity . The repetitions dissolve, circle and give rise to the illusion of possession. If we recognise something, we therefore understand it, and thus it becomes ours. In Voyage to Cytbera, the tighter structure that tends to organise and enclose imposes itself on the entire composition with more force than before. From the clashing movement in the first images, we arrive at the hero's absolute immobility in the last sequence . Between the two lies the requiem, with its pain , loss and acceptance. We look with the eyes of the mesmerised, paralysed Alexandros as the drifting raft, with not only Ulysses, the father, but also Penelope, the mother humiliated and grief-stricken, floats away. It is the filmmaker's farewell to his illusions, but also to his creation. In Voyage to Cytbera , poetry and reality, fantasy and a rude history, shape the tableau that becomes at once a confession and an interrogation, an elegy and a pamphlet. With this melancholic and solitary end, the story has arrived full circle. Cythera is not an island, but the voyage itself.

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Theo Angelopoulos: the past as history, the future as form. Fredric jameson

The late modernist is presumably one who manages to invent a new style after stylistic innovation has been pronounced exhausted. Angelopoulos was therefore surely that in his earlier works . To Vlemma Tou Odyssea ( Ulysses' Gaze, 1 995) now returns to the three­ hour format he has not deployed since 0 Mega/exandros (Alexander the Great, 1 980), yet it is not for all that a fully-fledged return to his older national-modern production . Rather, the new film consummates a kind of transnational spatiality that he seems only to have found in his path after the "break", the end of his earlier period (somewhere between 1 980 and 1 983 , when the first of his " new" or "later" films appeared, Taxidi Sta Kithira [ Voyage to Cythera]), a spatiality indeed which would not have been fully perceptible to anyone before the 1 980s and the final triumph of the transnationals. Nevertheless , there can be few cases of so decisive an emergence of a new and fully realised career after an enormously successful earlier one, whose themes and forms it reproduces at some utterly different level with utterly different consequences - in some ways less successfully, in others amounting to a whole new breakthrough . This "second Angelopoulos" might well recall the end of the first great filmic modernism (as in Antonioni) , were it not for spatial features uncharacteristic of any of the modernisms, including his own earlier style, aspects of which did, however, position him favourably for the new take-off. Style is indeed in many ways the key to the distinction we are trying to formulate here : for it is the central category both of modernist production in all the arts, and also of the multiple ideologies with which the various modernisms have secured their hegemony over the institutions . As a basic marker for modernism, the emergence of "style" spells the end of the "realist" period ("realism" scarcely being the same kind of category as "modernism", and useful only for a crude, rule-of-thumb periodization in a context such as ours) , 1 during which what we would now think of as essentially stylistic features had been grasped as the aberrations and personal tics , and lovable or detestable deviations of individual authors (Balzacian or Dickensian grimaces, Hugolian excesses) from still existing

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rhetorical and conventional norms - which is not to exclude the posthumous, ex-post facto transformation of this or that idiosyncratic "realist" · into an early modernist or precursor of the modern, after the setting in place of aesthetic modernity, as witness the fortunes of Flaubert, 2 or perhaps, in the filmic domain , the transformation of H itchcock into the greatest of auteurs . By the same token , therefore, the eclipse of style - the feeling that new styles are no longer available or possible, and that the fundamental telos of the modern, its "progress" from one innovation to the next, has been abruptly severed - is a fundamental sign of the supercession of the modern by something now often called the "postmodern" (even though here also, a selected group of auteurs idiosyncratic even within the modernist canon as such - Raymond Roussel or Gertrude Stein, for example - can be co-opted without much effort into some emergent postmodern one) . But "style" needs to be defined in such a way that it can be used methodologically in two directions alternatively: one face turned towards the form, the other towards content: the notion of style must, in other words, offer an articulated account of what used to be called techniques and formal characteristics, which can then in a second move be reversed, like James' well-known carpet, in such a way as to reveal the unified "figure" of what is often called a "world view" (or a philosophy or an ideology - something similar to what Hegel or Marx called the "content of the form", or what Mark Scharer termed, paradigmatically for the American New Criticism, "technique as discovery"). 3 Thus, all consequent analysts of "style" in the narrower linguistic sense of this word - from Leo Spitzer to Jean-Paul Sartre himself - have had to build on the peculiarly amphibious nature of this phenomenon, which, as I have said, yokes two distinct types of methodologies, and demands the deployment of two distinct and incommensurable "approaches", such that the essays in question tend to begin with technical and empirical accounts of the characteristic and purely stylistic features of an author, only to shift gears at the essay's climax, in order to stage the deeper "meaning" of such features in terms of world view, "philosophy" or ideology. Thus, a peculiar use of the system of tenses (as in Proust's reading of Flaubert) , 4 or an idiosyncratic combination of temporal perspectives (as in Sartre's reading of Faulkner) , 5 will then be interpreted as expressing some equally unique or idiosyncratic new experience of the world itself. The "end" of style, therefore, the very "end of the modern" as such, the feeling that there can only be a limited or finite number of such bundles of stylistic features (and thus a limited and equally finite number of the "world views" to which they allegedly correspond) may look like a matter of common sense : yet, its appearance as a

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widespread consensus expresses the disillusionment that marks the end of modernism as such (and as a sub-period of the capitalist mode of production) , 6 and this in the area of film fully as much as for the other arts or media. Yet, the doctrine of the "semi-autonomy" of the various levels7 warns us that the media and the various arts also develop at their own relatively independent temporalities: this is not exactly to be thought of as a cyclical process, whereby each art fatally encounters the stages of realism, modernism and postmodernism in its turn. Nevertheless, an analogous progression can be observed: relatively early in the century for literature (with the appropriate modifications for the various national situations themselves), where modernism rapidly develops in the periods immediately before and after the First World War; later on, in painting, where the virtual climax of the modern and the last " style" as such - Abstract Expressionism in the United States8 - flourishes during the twilight years of many of the great literary modernists, in the 1 950s. In film, meanwhile, what corresponds to something like a "modernist" moment must be assigned to a still later chronological stretch: this is the moment of the emergence of the great auteurs in the late- 1 950s and early 1 960s, along with the emergence, in film theory and thus in the aesthetic of the "modern" generally, of the ideology of the auteur itself, which now functions in much the same way as the concept of "style" in more narrowly literary or verbal analysis . The end of the studio system or, in other words, of " Hollywood" in some more narrowly institutional sense, the coming of the big screen and of an obligatory Technicolor format, the development of an international or film-festival culture as well, and the onset of a fundamental rivalry with televised forms of visual entertainment - such are some of the historical developments which mark the appearance (after Welles) of the great sound-film auteurs such as Bergman and Fellini, simultaneously with the excitement of new cinema from the "margins" - Kurosawa, Ray, Wajda - along with the retroactive promotion of Hitchcock, and then an extraordinary exfoliation of several generations of new "styles" from Antonioni to Tarkovskij , and Chabrol or Truffaut to Kubrick. This context is what might well entitle us to range Angelopoulos' early production among the last or latest of the great modernist works : for, his first great film, A naparastasis (Reconstruction) , based on Aeschylus' Agamemnon, catches the last great wave of 1 960s films in 1 970, while the last one of this first period, Alexander the Great, belatedly coincides with a worldwide change in cultural temperature with the emergent Reagan era in 1 980. It seems possible to argue that these films, stubbornly cleaving to their own national situations like analogous works in the neighbouring Arab world, reflect the non-synchronous trickling of the

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new situation of globalization into the Mediterranean basin (with the signal exception of Italy) and alert us to the distinctive political history of Greece as that also inscribes its differences in an aesthetic which , u nlike those of Cacoyannis or Costa-Gavras, still wishes to privilege the local over the international. This "non-synchronicity" of the filmic apparatus with respect to the neighbouring histories of literature or painting also offers the possibility of a handy objectification and externalization of the various "techniques" which make up style as such . Here, in other words, the presence of the machine - the camera apparatus and its adjuncts allows an easy separation of subject and object, filmmaker/auteur and ftlmic technology, such that, alongside the phenomenological accounts of this or that filmic "world" and "world-view" of the work in question, we can far more empirically enumerate the "techniques" and the technical innovations (in camerawork, film stock, sound technology and the like) which make an essay on film style a very different matter to the equivalent attempt to wrestle with the undecideabilities of literature or linguistic practices. Now we can at best distinguish between the historical determination of the earliest uses of this or that technique and the more general legitimation in the eyes of the larger public of its deployment as "signs" of this or that filmic auteur's style. By the same token, it is the very objectivity, the autonomy and mechanical nature of just such features, that makes it clearer why, in the ftlmic area, their number should be finite, and thus why modernist innovation as such should necessarily be expected to grind to a halt. Indeed, in a famous passage, David Bordwell has evoked just such an end of the modern in terms of a generalised co-optation by Hollywood of everything henceforth usable and exploitable in the pantheon of filmic-modernist stylistic innovation. 9 This is why "style" can so often look like a relatively simple recipe: so that when we enumerate a certain number of the classic features of Angelopoulos' style, we risk not only reducing the unique pleasures of his work among an enlightened public to a formula, but also suggesting that it suffices to combine and apply this or that set of "techniques" for a distinctive cinema of the highest quality to emerge. Yet, in order to dispel this kind of misconception, we would also have to talk about the historicity of such techniques - their timing in the development of the cinematic apparatus generally - as well as the way in which they can be said to be rooted in the dynamics of social life, and to correspond to dimensions of the social content which had not yet found expression in the arts as such - a dialectical assignment which a foreigner and a non-specialist can scarcely be expected to carry out with any degree of plausibility. But we can at least mention a few of those characteristic features

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familiar to anyone sufficiently fortunate to have been exposed to this filmic life's work , and thereby to have developed a perhaps exasperated fascination with it. The unique temporality of these films will clearly come first for everyone, as well as the sovereign authority with which Angelopoulos banishes all the conventional habits and taboos of normal filmic or narrative time, without for all that appearing to espouse this or that "objectivist" ideology of real time and documentary fashion or verisimilitude (something as conventional, in its various forms, as the fictional conventions themselves) . Indeed, in this work, a remarkable living realism is attained in which, at least for one more long moment, the traditional opposition between the fictive and the real or documentary seems to have been suspended or neutralized: we do not need to decide between the invented story-line and the real buildings, the real actors . Perhaps it is the distended temporality itself which allows for this realism of the interstices, between the scripted sequence of narrative events. Yet, surely the stillness of the camera (like the equally artificial tricks of a kinesthetic camera in rapid varieties of movement) must, over the long run, come to seem mannered here, as the distant protagonists approach it without haste, with an intolerable leisureliness, carrying their suitcases and making their way step-by-step through the space of the narrow city streets, as if that slowness and that movement were an event in itself. Stanley Aronowitz . once suggested that for an American public, programmed to ever more rapid editing, and avid of fresh and violent new sensations, a brutal defamiliarization by way of Ozu's deliberate slow-motion temporalities might constitute the most effective ftlmic cultural politics . 1 0 Nevertheless, Brechtian distanciation posits a certain split between the manner and the reality, between the representation and the referent, which may make more sense in terms of literature or stage drama than in the seemingly definitive records offered by the photogram. It is at any rate through just such distance that style itself, as the manner of the presentation, enters, and threatens at once to become the mark of a mere wilful subjectivity. So it is that Angelopoulos' slow movements through space scarcely betray the more idiosyncratic and arbitrary motivations we feel in spite of ourselves when negotiating the immense slow-motion matinees and receptions of a Proust, over hundreds of pages, or those tortuous syntactic thickets wherein Faulkner breathlessly immobilises this or that visionary instant of arrested time. The objectivity of the camera apparatus, as it intervenes between the subjectivities of filmmaker and public, surely counts for something in this resistance to mere style: but it has not saved the countless types of cinematographic practice that have been reified and gone into the

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film history books as so many styles or mannerisms , whether constituted by the narrative "techniques" of an Eisenstein or a Hitchcock, or the collages and static montages of a Godard. Perhaps , in this sense , Bazin was right after all; and the sense of realism - now defined precisely as the absence of subjective style - can only be attained by the deep shot and the surrender of eventfulness to its contents, rather than to the machine that records them. Yet, in Angelopoulos, one sometimes has the implausible feeling that the camera is more than a mere technological relay, but rather that its material autonomy between the subjectivities is a positive source of intelligence and tact. Not some mere inert recipient, it examines the scene with its own curiosity, non-human yet thoughtful: enumerating the contents of the shot before it without movement - for that pause is itself now the sign of intelligence - it then slowly pans in the appropriate direction, following one character down the staircase, for example, it then quietly and without ostentation moves back up in order to secure a better observation point on the balcony above. Yet, this is not Angelopoulos himself drawing back to observe, nor even his cameraman , Giorgos Arvanitis: it is the intelligent machine which works on its own , wishing to delve, to know more; capable also of patience and of waiting; knowing some temporality of its own, a third temporality, as it were, neither that of auteur nor of character, which has that rare capacity to sit out the time of the world until , at length, events germinate, and slowly and unexpectedly things begin to happen at last - it is the time of the ancient Greek physis, so richly pondered in modern times by Heidegger, in which things come into being and return out of it according to their own internal rhythms or nature itself.U Yet, this is also art: a snowy waste, immense upon the wid� screen, from which minute dark figures slowly appear - scattered widely yet horizontally, advancing as over a great distance. The camera bides its time , as though knowing full well how laborious it must be for the hunters' boots to make progress through the snowfall; yet also certain in its motionlessness that an event also waits in the womb of time . We ourselves, imperfect human spectators, a restless modern audience , are less certain of the moment in which the transition begins, in which a leisurely approach - for the more restless, intolerable - gives way to the qu ickened pace with which , unevenly, some sighting it before others, the hunters begin to converge on a small dark spot on the lower part of the wide screen that no one had noticed before, the unsynchronised gait of a collectivity that degenerates into an outright run for it. The viewer of I Kinigi ( 1be Hunters, 1 977) already knows that this dark place on the snow will become magnified into the dead body of a partisan in full regalia, in

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this pacified Greece where even live partisans have not been sighted for twenty years: an extraordinary allegory for the persistence of guilt, the unresolved and undissolved inner crypt or corpse of mourning which has seemed to so many so suddenly to be one of the essential theoretical issues of our equally unexpectedly transitional age . 1 2 Indeed, perhaps the very possibility o f allegorical structure - leaving aside the ingenuity of the device on which the plot itself, as the exploration of the allegorical consequences, is made to depend - also has something to do with the waxing and waning of diegetic time, which thereby becomes a political , as well as a formal , issue . B u t , for the moment, I prefer t o stress the form itself, the bravura gesture with which this extraordinary set-piece is laid in place as an opening: its length comparable only to those vast musical blocks of wildly varying connotations - an Italianate recitative, full of exaggerated self-dramatisation; the vulgar drone of a hurdy-gurdy; pastoral modes and cowbells; the terribilita of a Beethoven-like urgency and premonition of tragic conflict - which Mahler juxtaposes as the imme nsely enlarged steps in a musical argument ("this lace made of rope" , as Cocteau described his own plays) . Angelopoulos' set-pieces and the gestural, dramatic value of their emplacement are of the same virtuoso type; as with the other great moderns, they demand us to invent a new kind of reception or reading - in this case, an enlargement of our perception of narrative time, of what we can retain of its now outsized ·structure . Yet, as with all aesthetic and formal innovation, it is the properties of the content alone that enable such construction (or such revolutions in perception) , which spring from the confluence of the history of the medium and its development with what a given political and social life offers in the way of events and situations , emotions and linguistic expression, temporalities themselves along with specific bodies , specific spaces across which the eye can travel. It is in this Greece alone, therefore, that this camera can patiently lie in wait for its subjects. It knows these narrow streets, these stone buildings, so tirelessly and well; but it is never bored by them, since, beyond being a simple place, they stand for matter itself, materiality - this is, as in Bazin or Kracauer, an ontology of stone and rain, depth, the tangible and the resistant. We are told that Angelopoulos spent months travelling around Greece in order to collect the walls and the houses, the cafes, the squares he would arrange within the framework of 0 1b iassos ( 1be Travelling Players, 1 975); image is too subjective a term for the weight and solidity of these constructs, or for the texture of the walls themselves, and the cobblestones . One thinks of an emblematic scene from the opening of Reconstrnction, in which a bus founders momentarily in the mud. The lumbering machine is already itself a

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stand-in for the camera, its movement over the unpaved roads already serves to register the unevenness and contingency of matter itself; yet, now matter claims its own due, and the efforts of the passengers to free its tyres are something like an allegory of the spectators themselves: longing in some contradictory fashion both to mire themselves in the ultimate reality of matter itself, to sink into the image as into the transcendental signified, and also to move on, to shake off this slow motion and be released again to the time of acts and events. It is indeed no accident that the primary theoreticians of a realism in cinema, mentioned above, both bring a quasi-religious ideology to their works, for the redemption of matter (Kracauer) is materialist and religious all at once, foreshadowed by the emphasis of various Christian traditions on the sacredness of the creation of the physical , and of others on the resurrection of the flesh . This is not to unmask sham materialisms as secret forms of religious idealism, but rather perhaps the other way around, to identify a certain kind of impulse, traditionally thought of as a religious one, as constituting in reality that extreme of passion needed to love the material world in all its materiality and thereby to transfigure it with a rapt attention which only the camera can give. Yet, these films are also very much in motion , in movement; and it is movement that often poses the greatest problems for any theory or description of ontology, which one tends rather to associate with contemplation (as one also does the "image" as a concept) . Angelopoulos, however, has solved this problem, and it is not the lateral solution of so many of Bazin's or Kracauer's favourite films, where the narrative, in passing, allows us to surprise, for one long moment still, the empty courtyard or the wide field, the suddenly meaningful landscape . Here space, the radiating streets of the small town, the roads up into the mountains, are also stages of time and sequences of approach , an event which is virtually the central one in this cinematography: the movement of human beings walking towards the camera, sometimes running, sometimes (which is the same thing) moving away from us as spectators. Thus everything is in movement here, despite the fixity affected by the camera apparatus ; but what, now, are the elements of this kinesthesia, what of the material bodies of this filmic materialism (to distinguish it somewhat more radically from the Bazinian realism)? Ironically, in a distant, wellnigh forgotten aftermath of the ancient Greek sculptural aesthetic of limbs and drapes (there is a classical temple in Alexander the Great - visited by the foreigners - but I cannot remember any classical members or friezes in this profoundly historicist work which eschews the cheaply traditional or easily canonical, save for the ancient fragment of the

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ur-Balkan film in Ulysses' Gaze!), the human forms in Angelopoulos (even in the famous stripteases) have nothing of classical beauty about them. Stiffness; ugly, used dark clothing; the awkward suitcases which are virtual prostheses; the women's black dresses; the men's drab suits; the weary gait; overcoats; the occasional shared umbrella; the steamer case which two people support between them - none of this is propitious to the libidinal or voyeuristic gaze of the postcontemporary consumer, nor even to the rapt theoretician of the "body" as some ultimate reality of experience. But expressive, worn, wrinkled faces, the humanism of the grain of the skin, the authenticity of the chronological - this is also denied the spectator of such films, which have no heroes or protagonists, and which aim at something other than individual categories of beauty or ugliness . In fact, this ungainly procession up the street, uneven couples and groups moving at different rates of speed, and with unequal effort, yet the directors of the troupe mixing democratically with the rest, after the fashion of the circus - this seemingly random collection, whose personnel is renewed and transformed like an old photo album with the temporal discontinuities (Agamemnon dead and alive; Aegisthus inexplicably absent; Orestes and Electra together and then apart again) , has as its "philosophical" function to disqualify categories of reception that have been formed in an overestimation of the individual, or individualism. The hieratic stiffness of these inartistically garbed figures in ungainly movement has rather the mission of foregrounding that unrepresentable thing, the collective: and Angelopoulos' early films have the distinction of inventing collective narratives and of projecting in new ways the collective destinies of a whole group of characters, who yield in their turn the figure of the greater collectivity itself and its multiple sufferings in history, its investment by repeated occupations, whether by domestic ruling classes, or Nazi soldiers, or the British intervention during the civil war. So it is as well that the great set-pieces in Angelopoulos seize on conventional or ritual forms to express this revival of genuine collectivity - whether in the balls or dinners; the wedding receptions; the demonstrations ; the paseos on the squares or the theatrical performances; the fetes foraines, which are constants throughout Angelopoulos' career, as vital in Ulysses' Gaze, despite its evolutionary distance from the early films, as in The Travelling Players itself. Think of the New Year's Eve family reunion in Bucharest, or the out-of-doors concert in Sarajevo between bombardments, or - most astonishingly of all - that slow blinking emergence into the light, after a raid, of the inhabitants of an asylum, who people the empty, cratered rim of a Sarajevo square with all the frozen gestures of their deliria. In the history of cinema, only Bufiuel, perhaps, matches this plastic

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fascination with groups in their multiplicity, collective snapshots which can also be released into motion as collective actors, proceeding down a road towards their ultimate fate . Nevertheless , this movement inherent in the episode of the films cannot be expected to carry over into the montage system that relates one episode to another in this exceedingly episodic production. "An art of transitions" : thus Flaubert's architectonic has been characterised, and there is a deeper sense in which the phrase has its relevance for all consequent modernisms, whose fundamental law is autonomization, the lavish surrender to the present of the sentence or the camera, the gag of the performance, or the perception of the lyric moment. For, the more intense is such attention to the present of the work, the more problematical becomes its relationship to what precedes and follows it; the more difficult the instant of passage between them - crucial and impossible all at once and the occasion for extraordinary leaps, the place which must be invisibly mended, in order to preserve the other, contradictory face of the modern, namely the "seamless web" or fabric of the text itself. Transitions in the modern must thus at one and the same time be organic and radically arbitrary; they must document some deeper motivation at the same time that they ostentatiously exhibit their made quality, their sheer artificiality. In these great early films of Angelopoulos (and, later on, in Ulysses' Gaze) , it is chronology that is called upon to motivate the logic of transition, as well as to underscore its unjustifiable discontinuities . It is the great loop and spool of history (as the Noms ravel and unravel it) that disorders the sequence of events in Tbe Travelling Players in some mysterious and profoundly satisfying fashion: a work which begins with the acting company arriving at Aegion in autumn 1 9 5 2 ("we were tired, we hadn't slept for two days"), and which ends with the same company (but different people) arriving at Aegion in the autumn of 1 939 ("we were tired, we hadn't slept for two days . . . "). It is tempting to compare this supreme play of chronologies with the structures of the old nouveau roman itself where an action that is more likely to have been a text from the outset is cut up into segments cunningly rearranged (not least, with a view towards their transitions) in such a way that our reading consists in a backward and forward movement that is, however, not complete until the last page . The nouveau roman and, in particular, its inventor and miglior fabbro, Alain Robbe-Grillet, moved swiftly away from subjective and psychological ordering towards the sheerly textual kind, in which images and representations in the world become productively confused with the putative events "represented" in the narrative, so that a kind of objectivity emerges in these works which wish to resemble multifaceted crystals, and to eschew the human

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agency of author and character alike (if not of reader) ; yet (apart from the unconscious impulses that can sometimes be observed to register seismographically through their patterns) they remain shackled to categories of individual action and experience, and ahistorical even when they attempt most desperately to register the political - as, for example, in Robbe-Grillet's Projet pour une revolution a New York (Projectfor a Revolution in New York, 1 970) . It thus seems to trivialise Angelopoulos' far more deeply historical project to adduce the comparison: the history and suffering of Greece intervene between his work and the French artifacts, nor does Angelopoulos' resistance to the fictive have much in common with theirs, which seek rather to return literature to its status as a constructed object than to mobilise art for some throbbing registration of the Real itself. Formal analysis thus always leads back to the structure of the content itself, and it is to be hoped that any consequent interrogation of the extraordinary forms thrown up in Angelopoulos' early works will ultimately emerge in the space and the mystery of the question about their possibility, and about the untimeliness of this reinvention of an historical art and an historical cinema in a period when these approaches to history were becoming ever scarcer. The suggestion, implied above, that it is the commitment to matter in his cinema which successfully neutralizes or at least suspends the fictive, while it is the commitment to perception and its temporalities which neutralizes or suspends the documentary, must in that form remain conjecture and speculation. What is certain is that, in the years following A lexander the Great, the very possibility of the historical film as such seems to have been momentarily or permanently eclipsed; and this is surely a development which must itself be accounted for historically. Is it possible that Greece itself belatedly reached an "end of history" already under way elsewhere, after the fall of the junta and the normalisation of parliamentary democracy in the framework of the European Union, and that in this new "post­ historical" atmosphere the persistent corpse of everything that made modern Greek history unique itself was lost from view? History thus no longer demanded this peremptory engagt;ment with itself, with its own traces and ineffaceable sufferings, that one can neither mourn nor forget. At any rate, the formal changes in the interval between 1 980 (Alexander the Great) and 1 983 ( Voyage to Cythera) are sufficiently momentous to serve as the marks and symptoms of a profoundly historical, and not merely personal, shift in Angelopoulos' work . In order to do justice to this extraordinary talent, however, we need to be very frank about the mixed feelings his later work may inspire and this , despite my sense, which I hope will also be obvious, that

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such films are clearly better than anyone else's and provide splendid cinematographic experiences in their own right. The question being asked, however, is whether they are better than his own earlier work, and it is a question I propose to answer dialectically, by suggesting what Ulysses' Gaze has finally made so clear: namely, that in them elements of a formal regression to much less interesting matters coexist with a leap ahead to a new formal situation utterly unforeseen in the earlier period, and anticipatory of realities not yet adequately confronted anywhere in the art beginning to emerge in our New World Order (itself the sign of a new, third stage of a now-global capitalism) . Had the later films - indeed also including 0 Melissokomos ( 1be Beekeeper, 1 986), Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist, 1 988) and To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou ( 1be Suspended Step of the Stork, 1 9 9 1 ) - been signed by another name than that of Angelopoulos, their appearance would have been the occasion for a welcome reserved only for the greatest films of the age . Even for those whose habits of perception were trained by Angelopoulos' earlier work, such works include the most extraordinary moments and afford pleasures not inferior to some of the grandest things in the earlier periods: the raft putting out to sea bearing the old couple, for example, or the marriage across the river in 1be Suspended Step of the Stork, not to speak of the continuing presence of all the great collective set-pieces - parties, family festivals, fitesforaines, and the like, to which we have become accustomed in the work of this auteur. What is regressive here is thus not invention within the image or episode, nor any diminution in the work of the camera as it processes what are in fact, as we shall see shortly, new realities; formal regression is rather to be found and documented in the return of all these later works to a framework organised around an individual protagonist, an individual hero or narrator, and it is a regression which thereby annuls the innovations and the formal conquests that Angelopoulos' earlier films had made by way of the construction of their unique collective narratives . This return to an older framework of the individual subjectivity, the individual experience, the leading protagonist, the narrative "point of view" - all things so dramatically absent from the films of the great period - is now underscored by the appeal to a collaboration with international stars such as Marcello Mastroianni or Harvey Keitel, who reinforce the long-overdue international film-festival recognition of such works, no doubt, but who also serve to substitute an old-fashioned individual pathos and a familiar existential disillusionment for the indeterminable vibrancy of the earlier collective representation. Here, therefore, older formal and essentially bourgeois categories of individualistic narrative return

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to frame, and thus to displace and denature the attempt to retain an historical focus and commitment. The very nature of the allegory is thereby modified : universality is now implied in the more traditional way, by way of the alleged universality of the individual experience , rather than - as in the earlier works - through the stubborn particularity of a unique collective history. The restructuring of allegorical meaning in the later films now has, as its result, the reappearance of those properties of the work cherished by traditional cultural interpretation and its institutions, namely themes as such - all so many abstractions from concrete narrative, so many nouns and names, such as betrayal , suffering, violence, homelessness and the like. Will I be understood if I claim that the earlier work has no themes of this kind, and that, because it does not need them, the sheer plenitude of being with which its frames arrest us can scarcely demand or even tolerate such abstract interpretation , translation or pointed labelling? The exact, distended, leisurely time of any episode of Tbe Travelling Players short-circuits meanings of that kind; nor does the Agamemnon story serve as much more than a narrative frame, an organisation of an excessive multiplicity of detail (just as the Odysseus story did for Joyce's Ulysses, where, however, a somewhat greater thematic seepage can still be detected - in the " idea" of paternity, for example) . The events of Tbe Travelling Players do not need such thematic interpretation, which would risk turning them all back into examples of something else: they are sheer experience as such, and it is this concentrated eventfulness - so rare, which one can also call History (provided that is not understood as yet another theme) - that one misses in the later films , which are thereby destined to lapse back into more familiar forms of the representational narrative as such . Yet, these formal regressions are also accompanied by signs of the emergence of something else still hard to identify , let alone to name: a different kind of narrative structure perhaps , a Novum not yet fully born, which may well turn out to be a path not taken or an unfulfilled possibility, but about which it is our task as the diagnosticians of actuality to speculate. I will therefore take the risk of calling this radically new narrative structure "spatial" , in order to underscore its possible affinities with the radically new situations and representational dilemmas of postmodernity itself, but also to force a confrontation with what we have called the "materialistic" aesthetic of the earlier films. For that aesthetic was also spatial in its fashion, and the older camera of the first period necessarily deployed its commitment to walls and stone, to mountainous landscape and the inveterate port, by way of an urban vocation : mapping the villages and small towns in a

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wellnigh sculptural fashion, by carving through them with collective movement: the contending demonstrations moving up the central streets at angles to each other, the players themselves tracing the maps of so many downtown areas by their inveterate movement from hotel to cafe, from theatre to railway station or port. These were still immanent maps, not yet endowed with aerial perspective: here space and matter were still at one , and individual and collective life contained by the framework of the classical city form, in which even the great ideological struggles of a national politics could find appropriate expression. To evoke spatiality in some more postmodern sense is to suggest the breakdown of that immanence, and the dissolution of an autonomous Greek story, the gradual opening of Greece (as of most other national situations) to dependency on the invisible force field of the world market itself. This is not to proclaim the dissolution of the nation state today into some vacuous multinationality: it still has many functions to fulfil, both progressive and reactionary, in a defence of the national interests, as well as in the service of groups intent on exploiting the new vulnerability of national enterprises and, above all, on weakening the power of resistance of labour movements. What has changed is the self-sufficiency of the meaning of internal national politics: the great ideological struggles of the Cold War could find incarnation and expression in the Greek Civil War. But the bitter new subalternities of the world market can only be fully represented elsewhere, outside the national boundaries, at the various new world centres Cit being understood that those centres now know new representational problems of their own). Clearly, a shift of this magnitude has immediate, although indirect, consequences for the possibilities of form of the newer works of art. In Angelopoulos, it is registered in the shift of locale from the older autonomous small town to border cities, places of waiting and rc;!fuge which are also places of longing, of boredom, of the pathos of exile and the sterility of borders and frontiers. And these are, predictably, the new "themes" of Angelopoulos' late work : they recall earlier modern motifs of displacement which it is paradoxical to juxtapose with the current North-American celebrations of the border and the ethnic mixture, the jubilant affirmation of multiple identities and miscegenated subject positions. Here, in Angelopoulos, a sadness and a frustration of the frontier seem to have more affmities with the "existential" melancholy of an Antonioni; and the formally regressive structure of such "themes" derives precisely from the way in which they are so easily deflected into metaphysics, and made to serve as "symbols" of some more generalised human condition. Indeed, from the still locally anchored situation of the elderly

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protagonist of the Voyage to Cythera, who no longer has a country, neither at home nor in "Moscow", nor in the Revolution itself or History, the later films drift decisively away from Greece itself towards some transnational situation which they cannot properly fix or identify. Nor does an incisive episode, such as the stubborn refusal of the old militant, in the same film, to surrender his parcel of the village common land for a shopping centre financed by an international consortium, constitute anything more than an intent to grapple with the new situation: its representation, its political value, remains within the content of the work, it still functions with an experiential narrative, and does not signal the emergence of some radically new narrative form, capable of confronting international consumerism, the market, universal Americanization, the new global subaltemity, in a formal articulation that expands our capacity to think of these new global realities . Yet, it is paradoxical, if not ironic, that Angelopoulos makes a beginning with just such formal innovation by stubbornly continuing on his path and distancing himself even further from the older Greek realities : for it is precisely by doing so that he is able, in Ulysses' Gaze, to encompass the upheaval of the Balkans and the unparalleled agony of the Yugoslav civil wars, and, at the same time, to find in that expanded content the solution to his own formal and narrative dilemmas. Or rather, a solution to come, perhaps: for it is no service to Angelopoulos to ignore the flaws and clumsiness of aspects of this convulsive effort; they are themselves indices of the Novum, marks of that "measure of ugliness" which Gertrude Stein attributed to every significant new work of art as "the sign of the creator's struggle to say a new thing in a new way". 13 For the immense time loops of these Balkans - from Romania to Greece itself, and passing through Belgrade and the Danube, and its tributaries, backwards and forwards , from the fin de siecle and the first local films to the astonishing life routine of Sarajevo under siege - cannot be thought to involve some merely mechanical transfer of the patterns of 1be Travelling Players to an expanded geography. Grand things - such as the sculptured head of Lenin on its way to sale in the West - or the set-pieces already mentioned (the family's New Year's Eve party in Bucharest; the outdoor concert in the mist in Sarajevo) recall older moments of a late modernism from which something new is seeking convulsive emergence . This is what encourages me to juxtapose this ambitious and unfinished project with another comparable yet utterly dissimilar attempt from a very different space and a very different generic and ideological atmosphere . Yet, it was Socrates himself who was heard

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to observe, in the early morning, after the central events of Plato's Symposium, when the other participants had long since succumbed to wine and fatigue, that "the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the writer of tragedy ought to be a writer of comedy also " . 14 The tragic resonance of Ulysses' Gaze and of the bloody "time of troubles" which is its pretext should not therefore be our first reference point for a comparison with Fernando Solanas' outlandish road comedy, El Viaje ( Tbe Voyage, 1 9 9 1 ) , whose sheer length at first glance alone seems the only comparable feature. Nor should the similarity of the organising pretexts of both films be dwelt upon at any great length: the search for origins, motivated in the Argentirte filmmaker's epic by the search of a youth, across all of Latin America, for a missirtg father he ultimately decides he does not even need; while, in Ulysses' Gaze, it is constituted by Harvey Keitel's obsessive pursuit of an ur-ftlmic text of the Balkans, that first cinematographic word which will hopefully restore something of the filmmaker's ontological certainty, in the doubt and confusion of the dark times of this potentially sub-continental "world war" . But the road movie and episodic structure thereby in both cases produced seem to me more significant than the metaphysical retext: reviving Eisenstein's fundamental circus-inspired "montage of attractions" , 1 5 and determirling the autonomization we have commented on at some length iri Angelopoulos, as well as Solanas' exuberantly mixed forms, iri which the young protagonist, in revolt against the oppressive family and school situations of his homeland in Tierra del Fuego, traverses the entire length and breadth of the extraordinarily variegated landscapes and cityscapes of Latin America on his way to a final stop in Oaxaca, in the Zapotec country of southern Mexico. Yet, each ' station on his way is generically distinctive; the film is determirted to mirtgle all the voices and discursive levels, from the didactic to the sentimental, from the most savage political satire Cit has, in fact, been banned in its native Argentina) to the magic-realist and the oneiric . Alongside the political-denunciatory - a vision of Buenos Aires transformed into an immense open-air cesspool, patiently navigated by its citizens in rowboats and presided over by a president in a frogman's outfit; Brasilia oppressed by a nightmare of bureaucratic restrictions that culminate in a kind of economic "chastity belt" designed to reinforce IMF standards and to balance the budget - we are treated to a veritable anthology of landscapes, from the Straits of Megallan, on which a skeletal galleon rests, to the heights of Macchu Picchu , an Amazonian rainforest disclosing the most terrifying vision of an open-air gold-mine manned by slaves, alongside a tourist-poster Caribbean and the sacred silences of Monte Alban; but also the sertiio and the humid thin air of the Andean landscape, and a desert in

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which the allegorical IMF "tax bus" is prophetically attacked by a guerrilla uprising of Indian peasants (Solanas' ftlm, I believe, preceded the Zapatista revolution by only a few months). This variety in the content is underscored and amplified by a music-hall variety in the forms themselves, which range from the animated cartoon to the Mexican-style mural; from the musical to the adventure story and the sentimental encounter or the family drama; from the documentary to the sermon or the travelogue. Meanwhile, the sniggering and often scandalous nature of its political broadsides is, as it were, ennobled by the all-informing political passion, which, reawakening the great pan-American visions of a Bolfvar or a Castro, implacably targets the subalternization of Latin America by the US government and its multinationals, along with IMF austerity measures designed to protect the Latin American currencies in order to service the Debt. It is this political vision and passion which, as in Pope's 7be Dunciad (1 728), are able to transform the locally comic or grotesque into a virtually sublime vision of historical repugnance and abjection. The road movie and the regional epic: such are the formal breakthroughs suggested by these very different yet contemporaneous constructions of Angelopoulos and Solanas for all their very real differences. We must dare to seize on the existence of these two immense and ambitious experiments to posit the possibility of some new narrative form of regional mapping, over against the world system:' the one region united in suffering and blood, the other in pride and revolt, yet both reaching out beyond the older national allegory in order to invent a cultural politics commensurable with the world system. Both indeed make a contribution to inventing a new politics beyond the current "end of history" , that paralysis of action in submission to the world market whose spell can equally be detected in the helplessness of the Balkans and the slow impoverishment of Latin America; but they also afford unexpected glimpses of the narrative forms of the future, an inconceivable high art yet to come of the epoch of globalization and transnational communication, and worldwide mass culture. It is at the very least an extraordinary destiny for a filmmaker, who already achieved a distinctive a=uvre at the end of the modern period, to have been sufficiently receptive to the deeper swirling currents and trends of history after postmodernity itself to have projected his artistic language into a work such as Ulysses' Gaze, whose active prophecy of new and future forms will not be its least and most negligible achievement.

Notes For

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a

discussion of the problems posed by any theory of realism, see

"The Existence of Italy" , in my Signatures of the Visible (New York; London: Routledge , 1 990): 1 5 5-229. 2 The Flaubert of Joyce, read in slow-motion, becomes a modernist; read with Nathalie Sarraute (see her essay in L 'Ere du souPfon: Essa is sur le roman [Paris: Gallimard, 1 956]) , he becomes what must certainly today be called a postmodernist.

The procedure would be analogous to what I prescribe for genre analysis in "Magical Narratives: On the Dialectical Use of Genre Criticism" , in The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1 981): 103-1 50. 4

See "A propos de Baudelaire", in Contre Sainte-Beuve (Paris: Pleiade, 1 9 7 1 ) : 6 1 8-639.

5

See the essays in Situations I (Paris: Gallimard, 1 947).

6

My positions on this periodization are outlined in chapter one of Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Duke, NC: Duke University Press, 1991).

7

This is famously theorised by Althusser, especially in the essays in Pour Marx (Paris: Librairie Fran�ois Maspero, 1 965).

8

See Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea ofModern A rt: A bstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 1 983) . 9

"Apart from the dominant . . . Hollywood style, only a few other general modes of film practice have existed". David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1 985): 38 1 . 10

g

Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Workin Class Consciousness (Duke, NC: Duke University Press, 1 992): 1 1 7.

11

See, in particular, Martin Heidegger, "The Anaximander Fragment" , in Early Greek Thinking (London: HarperCollins, 1 984) : 1 3-58. 12 Besides Freud's classic "Mourning and Melancholia" , see the commentaries in Jacques Derrida, "Fors", in Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, The Wolfman 's Magic Word (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 986) . 13 Gertrude Stein, Four in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1 947): vii . 14 The Dialogues of Plato, volume 1, translated by B Jowett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 187 1 ) : 539. 5

1 For a further discussion of such "autonomization" , see the text referenced in note 1 .

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"What do our souls seek?": an interview with Theo Angelopoulos Andrew Horton

[The following interview was conducted in Greek, and took place in Athens on 17 and 18 August 1 995, in Theo Angelopoulos' office in Solomou Street. Dr Penny Apostolidis assisted with the translation.]

Two years ago, we sat in this off"ice and talked about the Balkans and the Bosnian war, before you began shooting Ulysses' Gaze . You explained then that you felt that there was the possibility of something positive coming out of all the confusion, killing and destruction. Now yourfilm is finished, and the war goes on with the threat of spreading throughout the Balkans. What are your thoughts about the Balkans (including Greece) today? I ask this because your film is a serious narrative that is squarely and purposefully set in the Balkans, not in Greece. Two years ago, I had the hope that all of this would end at some point in the near future. But, as the people we met while filming in the various countries of the Balkans told us, this war, these problems , will not end in ten years or even in our lifetime. I share their dismay and their evaluation of events. Of course, I feel the initial mistake was to let Yugoslavia break up. All the powers should have done more to help keep the country together years ago. Such a Yugoslavia, had it continued to exist, would have had to be more "relaxed" and allow for more autonomy among its different republics . But, nevertheless, it would still have been Yugoslavia. But everything began to come unwound when Germany recognised Slovenia and Croatia. Once those actions took place, a revised Yugoslavia became impossible. And that's a great tragedy, for I truly believe that a revised Yugoslavia could have allowed for a slower evolution towards more fret!dom for each area without the outbreak of war. Now it's too late .

What is your greatest hope for your new film, Ulysses' Gaze ? You evoke a tragic sense of the slaughter and problems in the Balkans, but films alone cannot stop a war. Of course not. And, of course, I would like people to see my film. But to be honest, the greatest pleasure would be to be able to show the film in Sarajevo with an audience of Serbs, Muslims and Croats

watching it together. You see, I have never been to Sarajevo . I wanted to shoot at least part of the Sarajevo section in Sarajevo. But I was never given all the permissions from the United Nations and others that one needs to go there.

You have the taxi driver tell Harvey Keitel when they stop in the snow in A lbania that "we Greeks are a dying race". 7bose are strong words. Would you care to comment on them . The lines that the taxi driver speaks are taken from poems of George Seferis. And there is more that is not in the film, including: "What do our souls seek journeying on rotten , sea-borne timbers from harbour to harbour/Shifting broken stones, inhaling the pine's coolness with less ease each day " . Yes, these are strong words for Greeks, "we are a dying race" . But they mean something more . I was at a conference in Paris once, and a young Greek woman who was working on her PhD at the Sorbonne came up to me . And she said, "Mr. Angelopoulos, we Greeks who are living abroad in Europe are in a great identity crisis. We are almost ashamed at times to say we are Greeks because of all the problems that are going on with the Albanians, with the economy and the Common Market, and with the Skopje Question (the Macedonian conflict over the name of the country) . We are not sure what to think anymore about being 'Greek"' . Well, her comments made me remember how different it was for me and my generation when I arrived in Paris in 1 960. Whenever I said, "I'm a Greek" back then, or my friends said, "We are Greek" , it was something wonderful, something to be proud of, something with meaning. This young Greek woman said, "We are like a people who are dying". She was, of course, echoing Seferis in her life , and, yes, so is the taxi driver in Albania in my film. In fact, before I wrote the screenplay, I also took a taxi ride from Fl6rina, much like Harvey Keitel's journey in the film, and we went to Albania. Suddenly it began to snow, and I asked the driver if he didn't need to put chains on the tires. And he answered me, "Don't worry. The snow and I understand each other" . (The driver in the film says almost exactly the same line) . "For twenty five years now, the snow and I have talked to each other. Whenever the snow tells me to stop, I stop!" You see, he had an intense personal relationship with the snow!

Marvellous! In that same scene I have another question: you have 7bannasis Vengos, thefamous comic actor who plays the driver, throw a biscuit into the snow as some kind of offering to it. How did this moment come about? In 1 974, I was filming 0 7biassos [ 7be Travelling Players] . And we travelled all over Greece by our own bus, meaning we lived in that

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bus! Then one freezing night near Metsovo (a mountainous area in northern Greece) , the trees were bent over with snow and ice, with ice hanging down in stalactite formations . The road was very slippery, and at one point we sto ped and climbed out to look around. We found branches to put under the wheels in order to go on, and we continued doing this all night. Then the fellow who was in charge of make-up, about 6 0 years old at the time, was working on making the sliced off heads of Communist partisans which were used in one scene. The heads were very lifelike, but were, of course, made out of rubber. But this man had done a magnificent job of adding hair, beards , blood and features . So whenever we stopped along the road, he would continue working on these heads. And I went over to him at one point, and he was speaking to the heads and told me what they said back to him in return. The heads would tell him when "they" were hungry or tired or when they should stop work . Of course, the whole crew knew about the "relationship" this man carried on with these heads. But one night, instead of talking to the heads, he sat alone eating a biscuit and then rolled down the window and shouted to the winter storm, "I'm alone and you are alone . Take this biscuit I throw you ! " And he threw the biscuit to the storm. [Angelopoulos adds this scene to the scene with the taxi in the Albanian snowstorm.]

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In the Belgrade drinking scene between the filmmaker (Harvey Keitel) and h is old journalist friend, Nikos, they toast many old friends, writers and filmmakers, including Constantine Cavafy, the well­ known Greek poet. Is it fair to say that part of that acknowledgment of Cavafy is because your vision of a modern "odyssey " is much like h is vision as expressed in "Ithaca ". By th is, I simply mean is it fair to say that your odysseys likewise focus on the journey more than on an expectation of a ''happy ending " as in Homer? Yes . Exactly. I feel that such an idea is the beginning of this film and, in fact, of all my films . You see, with Ulysses' Gaze for instance, what matters is not which award I won - the Palme d'Or or the Grand Prix - or what will people think of my film compared with Kusturica's, and so forth. All of these topics are minor details. What is important, what has meaning, is the journey. And, of course, each of my films is a new journey , a specific journey. It is also important for you to understand that when I set out on these cinematic journeys, I learn things that I have never learned or seen before. I do get to know, for instance, another way of life, for instance, that of the people in the harbours or in the mountains, something quite different from my life in the city. But the journeys are through history as well as through a landscape, as in Tbe Travelling Players. And the journey embraces all the human emotions from love and sexuality to hate and war. A

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journalist is completing a detailed journal on the making of Ulysses' Gaze together with the script as a book to be published in Greece . This will capture this journey we have made. For I feel the journey, and the making of a film , should take us where we have never been before.

In the same scene in Belgrade, they also toastfamous filmmakers they have enjoyed. But what did you mean by the exchange when Nikos asks about Eisenstein and Haroey Keitel answers, "We loved him but he didn't love us ". I can't say that I know exactly what I meant. It simply came out when I was writing that scene.

On the level ojfilm language and style, of course, you and Eisenstein seem to be opposites, and yet you both cor�front hi"story, the group, the masses, and how these work on the individual. True, but there was an American professor who came to see me when I had my retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and he brought me an essay written by Eisenstein in which he discusses how one can capture the essence of the P;tJ;thenon and the Acropolis . Somewhat surprisingly, he says that montage - that is, a shot of this part and of that part of the Parthenon - cannot do justice to the subject. Therefore he concludes that the only way to capture the Acropolis is in long shot! So perhaps we are not as far apart as it may seem, but also note that it is possible to speak of my shots as having montage inside the frame, rather than between frames.

Homer describes his Odysseus as being a "man of many ways" (polytropos), meaning that he can play many roles as well as that h e actually travels a great deal. Do you see your modern film director Odysseus in a similar light? In no way am I trying to be exact in suggesting Odysseus or the

Odyssey or any of the ancient myths. I see Odysseus more as a "reference point" , and the same goes for my use of any of the other ancient figures . Let's say that what I do is more like adaptation than imitation. So it is a figurative "match" in the sense that my Odysseus is in a similar situation as that of the Homeric character, but with the difference that my figure's Ithaca happens to be the missing ftlm that has not been developed. That's Ithaca in this film. And indeed, like the ancient Odysseus, this modern fellow must use a variety of skills to complete his travels successfully. For the journey creates obstacles which he must overcome .

I remember that two years ago you said you were impressed with

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Haroey Keitel in The Piano, and that you would try to get him for your film . Can you say a little about Keitel's reactions to working on a Greek film about the Balkans. Harvey Keitel came to understand that a ftlm can become such a journey of discovery as well. When I phoned him and agreed to meet with h im in New York, he had heard of me, but he had never seen any of my films . But Martin Scorsese and many of the New York filmmakers spoke to him about me, and yet he still had some fears: who is this Greek filmmaker? Is he only some kind of intellectual guy? Harvey realised that to make Ulysses' Gaze would be a big decision since in the time it would take to complete the film, he would have to tum down three other film projects. In addition, I was honest with h im and told him that if he worked with me he would work long hours in the middle of nowhere, and generally have a rough time. But Harvey said, "No problem. I have been trained as a marine! " And he did bring a trainer with him and he did work out every day! Finally, he did see Topio Stin Omichli [Landscape in the Mist, 1988] before agreeing to be in the film, and he liked it very much, feeling, like others, that it should have received an Academy Award® . Then, when he �rrived in Greece to begin this filmmaking odyssey, he was carrying a copy of Homer's Odyssey and a number of books on the

Odyssey! Can you say more about working with Haroey Keitel in this role? He had a 'lot of questions. The first one was: "This Greek American is travelling all over, where does his money come from to do all of these travels?" . He had a very practical mind! Of course we had a number of minor adjustment difficulties in the first two weeks as we got started, but then he began to understand the project and appreciate it, so that soon afterwards he came up and laughed and said, "Thea, now we are more than good friends! " . From that moment on, we basically had no trouble . Well, except for the last scene . We were shooting the scene in which he is reciting the lines from Homer in I..avrion [a town some 40 miles south of Athens]. I asked Harvey to speak not as he cried, but with the feeling after the tears, and he said, "I'll try". But he couldn't do it. So I said, "I want you to cry before you go on camera, so I will play some of the theme music for you in the other room, and then you can come on camera" . Harvey said he thought the music was wonderful, but he needed to listen to music that moved him deeply in some way. So he got out a tape of Frank Sinatra! Well, I played mine and he played his and the music became very "contra" . At that point we were all tired, there had been a lot of pressure and so on, and Harvey began crying and could not stop . He became very upset. I simply froze, and waited a bit, then I smiled and

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said in English, Harvey, are you ready?" . There was a pause as he stood motionless, and then he said, "Yes , I am" . At which point he went inside and gave one of the best performances of his life . By the end of the film, everyone was very fond of Harvey .

I am interested in your casting of Erland josephson as the Sarajevo film archivist. We remember him from so manyfilms by Bergman and others. But you bad originally cast Gian Maria Volante, the well­ known Italian actor, who died before shooting and to whom the film is dedicated. You could not find a better person or actor. In fact, although we cast Gian Maria Volante before he died, I had Josephson in my mind at first when I sat down to write the script. But I had known him for a long time, so when I went to cast, I asked him, he said "yes " . However, after his unexpected death i n Fl6rina, and Josephson arrived, I realised how perfect he was . Such a gentle face I have never seen, but there is also a certain bitterness or sadness there too. If Volante would have played the role, I would have rewritten it quite a bit, since he is such a handsome, romantic figure, really a kind of character out of Stendhal. But it was Josephson I thought about in the writing, and he was wonderful on the set, like a "good student" who always shows up prepared half an hour early, is the last to leave, and never complains . He was like a child. Because he became such a friend, Arvanitis never heard his last name and thought it was Erland, not Josephson!

You made thefilm archivistjewish - Iva Levy. Could you comment on the reason for this? Happily. A long time ago I had read a short story, "Letter to Max" ; by the famous Bosnian Nobel Prize-winning author, Ivo Andric, who wrote Tbe Bridge on the Drina and other great works. It's important that this story was written before the Second World War. Set in the 1 930s, it's a letter to a childhood friend, Max, who is a Sarajevo Jew who left before the war because he could not stand the hatred just below the surface in his culture . It wasn't an articulated or outspoken fear, but it was there nevertheless . And that's the tragedy of Yugoslavia. What is happening today is not a new story, a new hatred that simply appeared suddenly. The wars in the former Yugoslavia have a very, very old history. So, on the one hand, I wanted to capture something of this feeling by making the archivist Jewish, but I also wanted to escape the problem of making him either Muslim, Serb or Croat, for that would somehow make his suffering too directly related to events. That is, if he were Croat, everyone would say the Serbs hated him, and so forth. But as a "fourth" race, Jewish, he is and

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is not a part of the war. Mai"a Morgenstern of Romania plays four women in the film: the old girl friend (and thus a Penelope figure) whom the director left years ago . . . Yes, she is Penelope in the first scene. Then she is Calypso - that is, Kali, the woman from the film archive who becomes his lover like the goddess in the Odyssey. Remember Odysseus spent seven years on her island but he was always thinking about Penelope and how to get home as he sat by the sea, crying. In Homer, he says what I have the protagonist say to Calypso/Kali: "I cannot love you ". And he cries at that moment in part because he cannot love her. Then Mala plays the widow in Bosnia who is the Circe "witch" figure, and finally Naomi Levy, the film archivist's daughter, who is like Nausikaa, the young princess whom Odysseus meets. Was it easy working with her in so many roles? We had no problems. She was a wonderful actress, a very serious and honest actress. The only problem was simply that she is very dramatic because of her theatre training. She has a long background with the Romanian National Theatre. And you know how I operate: I had to help her "hold back" a lot in her performances when she wanted to give more. I am confused as to when the scene with the Bosnian widow is taking place. Is that supposed to be during the First World War and thus a scene from the Manakis brothers' episodes? Yes, the uniform, you see, is from that period, thus Harvey Keitel is once again "visualising" what happened back then. The scene is tied to the Manakis brothers. She speaks of borders between Bulgaria and Greece and the Aegean Sea. Similar, almost, to the Bosnian crisis of today, a kind of parallel. It is 1 9 1 5 . You have used the Odysseus and Odyssey theme quite often. But this is thefirstfilm that announces the reference in the title, much asjoyce did in the early part of the century in Ulysses . Can you comment on bow you see these Homeric echoes working in your films? I use the Ulysses or Odysseus theme as a reference and not as some strict plan that needs to be completely worked out. It is, like the Agamemnon myth and others, a part of European culture. In the film, the director played by Harvey Keitel is given no name. But we hear parts of To Meteoro Virna To Pelargou /'The Suspended Step of the Stork, 1991] in the beginning, and in the script be is called '� ".

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Is this another way of saying it is your story in some imaginative way? "A" is not me, not Angelopoulos! Why shoot on location? Casablanca was not shot in Casablanca, but on the Hollywood lot. Why subject yourself to all the trouble you have gone through to shoot in Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia? Would it not have been easier simply to use locations in Greece and ':fix them up "? I believe something special happens on location, in the real place, and I do not mean just the ability to photograph the decor, the landscape. But it is more that when I am in the place I have set the film, all five of my senses are working. I become more completely aware. I therefore feel I am living the experiences I want to film. You see, I am not trained in the Actors' Studio method, so it helps me literally to go where my stories are supposed to take place. You are not a director known for creating comedies. A nd yet Ifound myself laughing out loud a handful of times in Ulysses' Gaze . How did this happen in such a serious project? One moment, of course, is the "biscuit scene" in the Albanian snow which we have discussed, and another is when Haroey Keitel says to the young woman in Sarajevo, 'Vancing in Sarajevo'; as if be were in a club in Los A ngeles or something! I suppose such a moment is a little bit influenced by similar scenes in Tbe Travelling Players, which does have some humorous moments as well. Where did you shoot the Bosnian section? Much of it was in and around Mostar, some in Vukovar (Croatia) and also in the Krijena. We were actually in Bosnia shooting twice, and more often for some of the Croatian locations. But I would have felt even happier, of course, had we gone to Sarajevo, and why? Because Sarajevo is not just at the centre of all the problems at the moment. Rather, it is a kind of symbol and idea for all of Yugoslavia and what it used to be and could have been. And it is where the First World War started, so it is not only a Yugoslav story in this century, but also a European story. It is also our story and, really, a story for the world. And bow did you create Sarajevo in the mist? We used a large hangar at Belgrade Airport. We brought everything inside there, from trees, to snow, to roads, and with one expert from France and one from Greece, we created artificial mist. But it was a difficult exercise, because the chemicals in the mist

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bothered the actors and they had to walk around with cotton masks over their mouths and noses as in a hospital or as in Hiroshima after the bomb! It was not at all easy. You cast 1banassis Vengos as the taxi driver. He is one of the best­ loved comic actors in Greek cinema and on the Greek stage. Can you comment on your use of a comedian for a quite serious role? I have always felt that great comic actors are somehow more outstanding than those who mainly specialise in dramatic roles. I think there is, after all, something deeply dramatic inside each comedian, and this is certainly true of Vengos. We have beard that you received the most enthusiastic audience response at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and many critics including Richard Corliss with Time magazine agreed that you should have won the Palme d'Or, instead of the Grand Prix. But was there a specific response from ''Balkan " representatives at Cannes? Absolutely. All the Balkan critics and filmmakers who were there spoke very highly of the film, except those from Skopje (the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) who did not like it that the Greek taxi driver points and says, "This is the border between Albania and Skopje", instead of what they wanted to hear, which would be, of course, "the border between Albania and Macedonia" . But I could not say this, not because I was afraid to, because I am not afraid to "cross borders". And yet I could not say this because it would be an historical mistake to do so. Even Robert Kaplan points this out in his book about the Balkans, Balkan Ghosts. He explains well how this Slavic culture developed into a mixture of nations, but that is not our story here today. That's another story! Time does not allow me to ask all that I wish to ask about Ulysses' Gaze . But one scene that is striking is the barge scene with the broken statue of Lenin being transported up the Danube for a rich German businessman. Were you influenced at all by the Yugoslav director DuSan Makavejev, who used a broken statue of Lenin two years ago in Gorilla Bathes at Noon to represent the end of the Communist era? I haven't seen this film, but when I was shooting in Belgrade, Makavejev himself told me about his scene! But I had already shot my scene. In that scene, you have the camera track slowly around Lenin 's bead. 1be shot is almost a loving or caressing action. It's a goodbye to an era. I am saying goodbye to all of that, which is or was also part of me and my childhood and youth. That broken

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statue represents the end. A complete end. There is a powerful sequence in the script, which I understand you shot but have not included in thefilm as I saw it. I am referring to the Albanian hotel sequence in which we see American couples buying Albanian babies and the two old Greek sisters meeting after 45 years. Why did you cut it? Of course, I feel it is a wonderful scene and I was not happy that I felt, fmally, that I had to cut it. But the bottom line was that we had to get the film down to under three hours if we wanted some kind of wide distribution. Did you know that with 1be Travelling Players, which is almost four hours as it is, I had another hour and fifteen minutes which I wanted in the film, but which I finally cut! They were wonderful scenes that I loved very much. But. . . 1b e United States is known for producing films which embrace some form of a "happy ending '� no matter bow unrealistic that ending may he. 1bus many Americans say that films such as yours have "depressing " endings. How would you defend the ending of Ulysses' Gaze as being something more than simply "depressing "? I would simply say what Aristotle said about tragedy, that a drama or, in this case, a film should evoke pity and fear in an audience, and then create a catharsis by which these emotions are released. My film does not have a happy ending, but it does have a catharsis, a relief, a letting go of fear and pity. And that's not depressing! You understand: to cry, which is part of catharsis, is necessary if one is to succeed. What is, finally, the catharsis in my film? It is the poem from the Odyssey which Harvey Keitel recites at the end. It's important that the lines from Homer are aimed at the future: "When I return . . . ". So his journey will return. It is not over. The journey to find "home" continues. And this is a kind of hope. For he is, despite all, in those closing moments, beginning to be at peace with himself and the world. In the screenplay, you describe the "lost" film and suggest we will actually see this 1902 black and white segment as an actor playing Odysseus climbs out of the sea and stares into the camera. Why did you choose to leave this out? It's not important to see the film. It's more important to see its effect on Harvey Keitel, on the Odysseus ftgure. Is it not possible to describe Ulysses' Gaze as a love story? For instance, in addition to Haroey Keitel's various loves in the film, there is also the passage from Romeo and Juliet which was not in the

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original script. Yes, it is a love story. It is juliet's famous speech which is both full of love and eroticism as well. It is easy to guess what the headaches offilmmaking are for you . But what is the greatest pleasurefor you in makingjilms? Why go through all the hardships, work, problems and barriers? I don't make ftlms to please anyone. You see, for people like me, films are simply a way of life. When I talk about my life, I have to talk about my life "in ftlms". That is, filmmaking is my second life, a parallel life. I like Faulkner's words that the world was created to become a novel. So in my case, I like to believe the world was created to become a ftlm. Cinema is my life, it is my very breath. When I begin a new ftlm and I begin to travel around looking for locations with Giorgos Arvanitis, my friend and cinematographer, I often start to feel a tingling in my skin, the hairs of my arm standing up, and that is because I'm excited to be starting a new film. You can even say that special feeling is a bit like making love. For all of the difficulties, all the frustrations and hardships, ftlmmaking is, finally, a human adventure. In Ulysses' Gaze, we bear, but do not see, several scenes from The Suspended Step of the Stork, including the line, ''How many borders do we have to cross to reach home?". OJ course, the whole myth of Odysseus is about a homecoming. But, for you, what is "home''? Once, in Rome, I was staying in the same apartment building with Andrej Tarkovskij. He was shooting Nostalghia [1 983] at the time. And we talked about "nostalgia", the concept and feeling, and he tried to tell me it was a Russian word, but of course I explained it was a Greek word, "nostos", meaning homecoming. So we argued over whether it was Russian or Greek! Finally, he said, "Excuse me, I did not know it was a Greek word, but you see, nostalgia is so deeply a part of the Russian soul and spirit, that I feel it is we who developed it! " And so it is for Greeks. It's a strange fact that of all of the foreignersho leave their countries and go to America, it's the Greeks who have the most nostalgia for the place where they were born, and who do, in fact, return home. Although I cannot speak for the Irish, for I know that nostalgia is also important to them as well. But what is "home"? It is the place where you feel at one with yourself and at one with the cosmos. It is not necessarily a real spot that is here or there. And this goes as a concept for "Greece" as well, for I do not believe that Greece is only a geographical location. That is not what is important or interesting to me. For me, Greece is much larger. It extends much further than the actual borders, for it is the Greece for

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Recomtruction ( 1 970)

Days of '36 ( 1 972)

The Travelling Players ( 1 975)

The Travelling Players ( 1 975)

The Hunters ( I 977)

Alexander the Great ( 1 980)

Alexander th� Great ( 1 980)

Voyage to Cythera ( 1 983)

Voyagt to Cythera ( 1 983)

Tht Beekeeper ( 1 986)

The Beekeeper ( 1 986)

Landscape in the Mist ( 1 988)

Landscape in the Mist ( 1 988)

The Suspended Step ofthe Stork ( 1 9 9 1 )

Ulysses' Gau ( 1 99 5)

Ulysses' Gau ( 1 99 5)

which we search, like home. So this Greece that is in my mind is the Greece I call home; not this office or this place here in Athens where I am sitting. I have beard that you may be interested in doing a film in the United States about Greek nostalgia. Is this true? I have an idea for a script set in New York on such a theme, but I've had no time to even think about it yet. Tbe Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet George Seferis appears to be important to you. You quote him directly in 0 Megalexandros [Alexander the Great, 1980} and I believe that, in beginning Ulysses' Gaze with Plato 's line that "to know a soul, one must gaze into a soul'� you are indirectly acknowledging Seferis' "odyssey" poem series, ''Mythical Story". What does Seferis mean to you? It's simple. Seferis is my favourite modern poet. Long before I became a filmmaker, I was interested in poetry. I began writing poems when I was sixteen, under the influence of Cavafy, Seferis and Odysseus Elytis in Greece, and also T S Eliot, Rilke and others. And by 1 950, I was deeply into their poetry, which was not taught at school, I might add (except some of Cavafy). Then in fiction I was deeply influenced by James Joyce, Stendhal, Balzac and Faulkner. In Greece, I liked Papdiamantis, who is not known even by Greeks now! So it's more accurate to say that I spent my youth with these influences, rather than with cinema. And perhaps I was slow to discover cinema, because in our culture, literature, especially poetry has always been first, and even music has been ahead of cinema. Yes, I was quoting Seferis and referring to him in Alexander the Great and also in Ulysses' Gaze, when Nikos, the old friend, tells Harvey Keitel that the first thing God made was the journey. That is a line from Seferis. Likewise, when Harvey says "in my end is my beginning", he is quoting Eliot. In studying all your films closely recently, I have noticed something I had not understood before: you have at least one strong female character in each ftim . In fact, these women come across as much stronger than the men. That's simple: I believe that women are stronger than men! Not only in my films, but also in life. Beginning with my mother, I have known strong women. For instance, it seems to me that Electra "carries" the second half of The Travelling Players: she is quite clearly the centre of action and the strength needed to continue as a person and as a troupe.

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True. But, of course, that is also true of my "model" , so to speak, the Agamemnon trilogy. It is Electra who sees to the revenge of her father's death. Orestes helps, but it is Electra who pushes and convinces Orestes to follow through in their mission. Orestes doesn't have the strength to carry out revenge by himself. It is Electra and her strength that he needs. Thus it is traditionally Electra who is the strongest figure in the myth. In Landscape in the Mist, it is Voula who shows unusual courage and strength, and in Taxidi Sta Kithira Noyage to Cythera, 1983], although she is very quiet, I am impressed with Katerina, Spyros' wife - that is, the Penelope figure who surprises us by going with "Odysseus". Yes. Katerina - that is, Penelope - is quiet but she is strong. She is the one who has had to wait 30 years for her husband to return. And it is strength of character that leads her to ask, simply, when he returns after 30 years, "Have you eaten?". That's the strongest statement she could possibly make. Much stronger than "You are back" or "I love you " : "Have you eaten?" . That's a fearful strength ! And of course she shows incredible strength in the end when she decides to go with her husband on the raft. Because she knows she will probably die, in fact she must know she will die, but she will do so with her husband. She has chosen not only that she wants to be with Spyros, but also that she does not wish to be alone a second time. After all, the myth of Cythera is that it was the place of "Love" , the island of Aphrodite, thus the voyage to Cythera must be a journey of love and eroticism. I do believe that Penelope, in this case, shows even more strength than Odysseus! And I have a special fondness for Eleni in your first feature film, Anaparastasis /Reconstruction, 19 70], for, as a Clytemnestra figure, according to the Agamemnon myth, she is sympathetic in her silence and her ability to endure all she bas been through . She is a truly strong woman. And it is important that we do not feel she is a "murderer" , even though she has helped commit a murder. In choosing the title, I was influenced by Dostoyevsky, for instance, the "reconstruction" that takes place in Crime and Punishment. It is rather that her environment that is the real murderer, that has murdered her spirit. It's very important that she sa'ys, "I will have no one judge me" . "I will have no one judge me" . I respect her. She is an amazing person. You have said in several interoiews bow important "the group " is to most ofyourfilms. Can you elaborate a bit more on this, particularly

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as to how you might distinguish the group from a "community". I am particularly thinking of Aristotle's comment that any community and a community could be as small as two people - begins with trust. Without trust, A ristotle suggests, there can be no community. Yes, I focus on the group in my epic ftl.ms and those films can be defmed as including Meres Tou 36 [Days of 36, 1 972], 7be Travelling Players, I Kinigi [ 7be Hunters, 1 977] and Alexander the Great, in which the group is more important for the film than any individual. For these films, we have a group consciousness instead of any real individual character development or psychology. But, beginning with Voyage to Cythera , I have done the opposite, I have followed the fate of a single main character and we see his or her development as they come into contact with various groups. But you are right, a group is not exactly the same as a community as Aristotle describes it. In this sense, the group in 7be Travelling Players is not a community, but it does have a "collective group mentality", despite the betrayals and mistrust that occur from within. I think I would define "community" in this way: it is a number of people who are on the same wavelength in a number of ways that they can recognise immediately in each other. Thus a community is not defined by nationality or boundaries and can be a kind of communication that coexists in different parts of the world, as various people "fmd" each other voluntarily or by accident. And, yes, in this way in Ulysses' Gaze, for instance, there are a number of communities formed throughout the film, including between Harvey Keitel and the taxi driver, between Harvey and Nikos in Belgrade, and with the film archivist, Ivo Levy, in Sarajevo.

Can you comment a little on how you see "history" working in your films. In my epic films (listed above), it is "History", with a capital "H", that takes "centre-stage" . The opposite is true in the films since Voyage to Cythera , in which history becomes something of a fresco in the background. Put another way, what used to be History becomes an echo of history. Is it fair to say that in Voyage to Cythera the boundary between film (the film which Alexandros is making) and "reality" is so thin that we can actually take the whole film as occurring inside Alexandros' head? 7bus, in a real sense, Voyage to Cythera is a dream of a film mixed with elements of the director's rea/ life. Exactly. The whole film really takes place inside his head. In fact, the moment he thinks of something, we see it - the thought becomes realised. Every character in Voyage to Cythera is two characters, is "doubled". Alexandros is the director and star of his film. His sister is

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both his sister and also his lover (the same actress plays both). The old man is both Alexandros' father and a seller of lavender. Each is double, both with a daily life character and an imagined life. When he, the director, wants something to happen, all he has to say is "One, two, three, lights!", and light appears. 1bus your approach to reality and filmmaking in Voyage to Cythera is quite different from that of Truffaut in La nuit americaine {Day for Night, 1 9 73] and Fellini in Otto e mezzo {81h., 1963], both of which delight in making clear which segments are "on camera " and which parts of life are "off camera '� setting up a playful and ironic contrast between the two. That's true, although of course, in Fellini and a little in Truffaut, dreams of both life and film do play a role, but not to the degree my film does. Is it fair to say in The Suspended Step of the Stork that we never really know if the character played by Mastroianni is actually the politician who disappeared or not? It doesn't matter. Whether he is or is not the missing politician is not the important question in the film. What is important is that he could be the politician, the missing figure. And, of course, he is not the actual father of the "bride" in the wedding which takes place aero:,:; the "border" river, but he is, rather, acting "like" a father. Yes. Finally, a practical craft question: how do you go about actually writing your screenplays with others, since there are often several names on the credits. I have a very unusual or perhaps strange way of working. I write the scripts by myself. And then I talk about what I've written with others. Or I talk before writing. That is, I will explain what I want to do and they question me. "Well, what if you did this or that?" And then I write some more.

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Theo Angelopoulos: filmography Compiled by Andrew Horton, with the help of Irini Stathi

The following abbreviations have been used in this filmography: TA

Theo Angelopoulos

bw col d dist ed ep

black and white colour director distributor editor executive producer

m m p pc pd ph sc sd

mins music producer production company production designer cinematography scriptwriter sound

Forminx Story

Greece 196 5 bw 35mm d TA Unfinished. E Ekpombi

The Broadcast Greece 1968 23 mins bw 35mm p, d, sc TA ph Giorgos Arvanitis ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Arvanitis cast Theodore Katsadramis, Lina Triantaphillos, Nikos Mastorakis, Mirka Kalantsopoulou. awards Greek Critics' Prize, Salonika Film Festival, 1968. Anaparastasis

Reconstruction Greece 1970 1 10 mins bw 35mm pc Giorgos Papalios Productions p Giorgos Samiotis d TA sc TA with the participation of Stratis Karras, Thanasis Valtinos ph Giorgos Arvanitis m folk songs ed Takis Davlopoulos sd Thanasis Arvanitis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Toula Stathopoulou (Eleni Gousis), Yannis Totsikas (Christos Grikakas), Michalis Photopoulos (Christos Gousis), Thanos Grammenos (Eleni's brother), Alexandros Alexiou (police inspector),

111

TA, Christos Pal iyanopoulos, Telis Samandis, Panos Papadopoulos (journalists) , Petros Holdos (judge), Yannis Balaskas (police officer) , Mersoula Kapsali (sister-in-law) , Nikos Alevras (assistant to prosecutor) . awards Grand Prix for best director, Salonika Film Festival, 1970; prize for best foreign film, Hyeres Film Festival , 197 1 ; FIPRESCI special mention, Berlin Film Festival , 197 1 ; Prix Georges Sadoul, 1 97 1 . Meres Tou

'36

Days of '36 Greece 1972 130 mins col 35mm p Giorgos Papalios pc Giorgos Papalios Productions d TA sc TA with the participation of Petros Markaris, Thanasis Valtinos , Stratis Karras ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Giorgos Papastefanou ed Vassilis Syropoulos sd Thanasis Arvanitis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Giorgos Kiritsis (lawyer), Christophoros Chimaras (minister) , Takis Doukakos (chief of police) , Kostas Pavlou (Sophianos) , Zarkadis (Lukas Petros), Christophoros Nezer (director of the prison) , Vassi i is Tsanglos (guard), Yannis Kandilas (Kreezis) , Thanos Grammenos (Sophianos' brother) . awards FIPRESCI prize, Berlin Film Festival 1972 . Grand prix de Ia mise en scene and cinematography, Salonica 1972. 0 Thiassos

The Travelling Players Greece 1 975 230 mins col 35mm ep Giorgos Papalios p Giorgos Samiotis pc Giorgos Papalios Productions d, sc TA ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Lukianos Kilaidonis, with Fotos Lambrinos, Nena Mejdi , Dimitris Kamberidis, Kostas Messaris ed Takis Davlopoulos, Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Arvanitis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Eva Kotamanidou (Electra) , Aliki Georgouli (Mother) , Stratos Pachis (Father) , Maria Vassiliou (Chrysothemis) , Vangelis Kazan (Aegisthus) , Petros Zarkadis (Orestes) , Kyriakos Katrivanos (Pylades) , Yannis Firios (accordionist) , Nina Papazaphiropoulou (old woman) , Alekos Boubis (old man) , Kosta Stiliaris (mil itia leader) , Grigoris Evangelatos (Poet) . dist New Yorker Films (USA) awards 1975 FIPRESCI award for best film, Cannes Festival; Ital ian Critics Association: Best Film in the World, 1970-80; FIPRESCI : One of the Top Films in the History of Cinema ; Grand Prix of the Arts, Japan; best film of the year, Japan ; Golden Age award, Brussels; Interfilm award, Forum, Berlin.

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I Kinigi The Hunters aka The Huntsmen Greece 1977 165 mins col 35mm p Theo Angelopoulos, Nikos Angelopoulos pc Theo Angelopoulos Productions with the participation of INA d TA sc TA with the participation of Stratis Karras ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Lukianos Kilaidonis ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Arvanitis pd Mikes .Karapiperis cast Vangelis Kazan (Savvas) , Betty Balassi (his wife) , Giorgos Danis (Yannis Diamantis) , Mary Chronopoulou (his wife) , Ilias Stamatiou (Antonis Papdopoulos) , Aliki Georgouli (his wife) , Nikos Kouros (the general) , Eva Kotamanidou Chis wife) , Stratos Pachis (Giorgos Fantakis), Christophoros Nezer (the politician) , Dimitris .Kamberidis (the Communist) . awards Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1978 . 0 Megalexand.ros

Alexander the Great Greece 1 980 2 1 0 mins col 35mm ep Phoebe Stavropoulou pc RAI (Italy)/ZDF (Germany)/Theo Angelopoulos Productions p Nikos Anegelopoulos d TA sc TA with the participation of Petros Markaris ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Christodoulos Chalaris ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Argyris Lazaridis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Omero Antonutti (Alexander) , Eva Kotamanidou (his daughter) , Michalis Yiannatos (Dragoumanos) , Grigoris Evangelatos (the schoolteacher) , Christophoros Nezer (Mr Tzelepis), Mifanta Kounelaki (Mrs Tzelepis) , Ilias Zafeiropoulos (young Alexander) , Thanos Grammenos (man of the village), Toula Stathopoulou (woman of the village) . awards Venice Film Festival 1980, Golden Lion and FIPRESCI award for best film. Chorio Ena, Katekos Enas

...

One Village, One Villager Greece 1981 20 mins col 35mm documentary p YENED (Greek Television) d TA ph Giorgos Arvanitis ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Arvanitis [Shown on Greek Television, 1981] Athena, Epistrophi Stin Akropoli

Athens: Return to the Acropolis Greece 1 983 43 mins col 35mm documentary pc Trans World Films/ERT 1V/Theo Angelopoulos Productions d, sc TA text Costas Tahtsis ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Manos

1 13

Hatzidikias, Dionissi Savopoulos, Lukianos Kilaidonis ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Georjiadis pd Mikes Karapiperis [Shown on Greek Television, 1983] Taxidi Sta Kithira

Voyage to Cythera Greece 1 983 137 mins col 35mm ep Giorgos Samiotis, P Xenakis, Phoebe Stavropoulou , V Libouressi pc Greek Film Centre/Thea Angelopoulos Productions/ZDF/Channel 4/RAI p Giorgos Samiotis d TA sc TA, Thea Valtinos, Tonino Guerra ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Eleni Karaindrou ed Giorgos Triantaphillos sd Thanasis Arvanitis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Manos Katakis (old man [Spyros]), Mary Chronopoulou (Voula) , Dionissis Papayannopoulos (Antonis) , Dora Volanaki (Katerina, old woman [Spyros' wife]) , Athinodoros Proussalis (police captain) , Michalis Yiannatos (coastguard officer) , Vassilis Tsanglos (president of the dockworkers' union) , Despina Geroulanou (Alexandros' wife), Tasso Saridis (German soldier), Julio Brozi (Alexandros) . awards Cannes Film Festival 1984 : Best Screenplay; 1984 FIPRESCI award for best film, Cannes Festival ; Critics' Award, Festival of Rio, 1 984. 0 Melissokomos

The Beekeeper Greece/France 1986 122 mins col 35mm ep Nikos Angelopoulos pc Greek Film Centre/MK2 Productions (Paris)/ERT 1 TV (Greece)/Theo Angelopoulos Productions d TA sc TA with the participation of Dimitris Nollas, Tonino Guerra ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Eleni Karaindrou ed Takis Yannopoulos sd Nikos Achladis pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Marcello Mastroianni (Spyros), Nadia Mourouzi (the girD , Serge Reggiani (the sick man) , Jenny Roussea (Spyros' wife) , Dinos Iliopoulos (Spyros' friend) . dist Artificial Eye (UK) Topio Stin Omichli

Landscape in the Mist Greece/France/Italy 1 988 1 26 mins col 35mm p TA pc Greek Film Centre/ERT 1 TV (Greece)/Paradis Films (Paris)/ Basicinematografica (Rome)/Theo Angelopoulos Productions d TA sc TA with the participation of Tonino Guerra, Thanasis Valtinos s TA ph Giorgos Arvanitis m Eleni Karaindrou ed Yannis Tsitsopoulos sd Marinos Athanassopoulos pd Mikes Karapiperis cast Michalis Zeke (Alexander) , Tania Palaiologou (Voula) , Stratos Tzortzoglou (Orestes) , Eva Kotamanidou, Aliki Georgouli, Vangelis Kazan, Stratos Pachis , Kyriakos Katrivanos, Grigoris Evangelatos,

1 14

Yannis Firios (travelling players) . dist Artificial Eye (UK) I New Yorker Films (USA) awards Venice Film Festival 1988, Silver Lion award for best director; 1 989 "Felix" : European Film Academy; best director and best cinematography, Chicago Film Festival . To Meteoro Vima To Pelargou

The Suspended Step of the Stork Greece/Italy 1991 1 2 6 mins col 35mm ep Phoebe Economopoulos, E Konitsiotis pc Greek Film Centre/Thea Angelopoulos Productions/Arena Films (France)Nega Films (Switzerland)/Erre Produzioni (Italy) p Bruno Pesery, TA d TA sc TA, Tonino Guerra , Petros Markaris with the participation of Thanasis Valtinos ph Giorgos Arvanitis, Andreas Sinanos m Eleni Karaindrou ed Yannis Tsitsopoulos sd Marinos Athanassopoulos pd Mikes Karapiperis architectural designs Achilleas Staikos cast Marcello Mastroianni (the politician who disappeared) , Jeanne Moreau Chis wife) , Gregory Karr (Alexander, the reporter) , Il ias Logothetis (the colonel) , Dora Chrisikou (the young bride) , Vassilis Bougioclakis (the production director), Dimitris Poulikakos (television cameraman) . To

Vlenuna Tou Odyssea

Le Regard d'Ulysse Ulysses' Gaze Greece/France/Italy 1995 17 6 mins col 35mm ep Phoebe Economopoulos, Marc Soustras pc Thea Angelopoulos Productions/Greek Film Centre/Mega Channel/Paradis Film/La Generale D'lmages!La Sept Cinema/with the participation of Canal Plus/Basic Cinematografica!Instituto Luce/RAI/Tele-Munchen/ Concorde Films/Herbert Kloider. In association with Channel 4 p Giorgio Silvagni, Eric Heumann, Dragan Ivanovic-Hevi, Ivan Milovanovic d TA sc TA with the participation of Tonino Guerra, Petros Markaris, Giorgio Silvagni ph Giorgos Arvanitis, Andreas Sinanos m Eleni Karaindrou ed Yannis Tsitsopoulos sd Thanasis Arvanitis , Marton Jankov-Tomica, Giannis Haraliambidis pd Giorgos Patsas, Miodrac Mile Nicolic cast Harvey Keitel (A), Mala Morgenstern (woman in Fl6rina/ Penelope; Kali/Calypso; widow/Circe; Naomi Levy/Nausikaa) , Erland Josephson (Iva Levy) , Thanasis Vengos (taxi driver), Giorgos Michalakopoulos (Nikos) , Dora Volanaki (old lady in Albania) , Mania Papadimitriou (the mother in A's memory) . dist/video Fox Lorber (USA) I Artificial Eye (UK) awards Grand Jury prize : Cannes Film Festival 1995 .

115

Theo Angelopoulos: selected bibliography Compiled by Matthew Stevens and Andrew Horton

Primary bibliography A:

Published screenplays

Angelopoulos, Theodoros . Alessandro if Grande (Turin : ERI/Edizioni RAI, 1982) [ in Italian) . -------

. Anaparastasis (Athens: Themelio, 1979) [ in

Greek] . -------

. I Kinigi (Athens: Themelio, 1977) [ in Greek) .

-------

. 0 Megalexandros (Athens: Kaktos, 1980) [in

Greek) . -------

. 0 Melissokomos (Athens : Aigokeros, 1986) [in

Greek] . -------

. Taxidi Sta Kithira (Athens : Aigokeros, 1 984)

[in Greek) . ------- . 0 7biassos (Athens: Themelio, 1975) [ in Greek] .

------- . To Vlemma Tou Odyssea (Athens: Ekdoseis Kastanioti, 1995) [ in Greek) . ------- . Topio Stin Omichli (Athens: Aigokeros, 1988) [in Greek) .

Barbera, Alberto and Gianni Volpi (eds). La recita (Milan : Universale Economica Feltrinelli, 1977) [in Italian) . "Le voyage des comediens", !'Avant-Scene du Cinema 164 (December 1 975) : 7-42 [ in French] .

B: Statements by Angelopoulos "En guise de prologue" , Positif 383 (January 1993) : 50 [in French) . "Le plan de mes neuf ans", Cahiers du Cinema 443/444 (May 1991): 6 l in French) . "Quelques plans arraches a l'oubli" , Positif 400 (June 1994) : 7 [in French) . C:

Interviews with Angelopoulos

Blind, Jean-Marc. "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos realise au cours du tournage en avril 1986" , Cinema (France) 397 (29 April-S May 1987) : 2 [in French] .

1 16

Brossard, Jean-Pierre and Robert Grelier. "Le voyage des comediens de Theodore Angelopoulos", La Revue du Cinema/Image et Son 300 (November 1 975) : 29-33 lin French] . Brown, Geoff. " Homer's where the art is" , Time Out 14- 2 1 February 1996: 26-27. Burke, Marina. "Dead Time", Film Base News 29 (May/June 1 992) : 1 2- 1 3 . Carcassonne, Philippe. "Theo Angelopoulos", Cinematograpbe 2 8 (June 1 977) : 1 0- 1 1 lin French] . Casetti, Francesco . '"I cacciatori' : conversazione con Thodoros Anghelopulos" , Cinema e cinema 4: 13 (October-December 1977) : 5761 [in Italian] . Ciment, Michel . "Alexandre, ou Ia melancolie. Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos", Positif 363 (May 199 1 ) : 1 6-22 [ in French] . . "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos . Le regard perdu, emprisonne et qui cherche a etre libere" , Positif 4 1 5 (September 1 995) : 2 1-27 [in French] .

------

. "Entretien avec theo angelopoulos (sur alexandre le grand)'' , Positi/ 250 (January 1982) : 10- 1 5 lin French] .

------

. "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos sur l'Apiculteur'' , Positif 3 1 5 (May 1987) : 4-6 [in French] .

------

------ . "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos sur Le voyage a Cythere", Positif 288 (February 1985) : 26-33 [in French] . ------ . "Entretien avec theo angelopoulos (sur 'les chasseurs')", Positif 1 94 (June 1977) : 16-21 [in French]. ------ ,. "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos sur Paysage dans le brouillard' , Positi/ 333 (November 1988) : 6- 10 [in French] . ------ ,. "Entretien avec theodore angelopoulos", Positif 174 (October 1975) : 2-9 lin French]. Demopoulos, Michel. "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos" , Ecran 63 ( 1 5 November 1 977) : 48-49 [ in French]. . "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos", jeune Cinema 1 13 (October 1978) : 44-48 lin French; originally published in Sincbronos Kinimatograpbos 1 (September 1974)].

------

Demopoulos, Michel and Frida Liappa. "Entretien avec theodore angelopoulos sur 'o thiassos"', Positi/ 174 (October 1975) : 10- 14 lin French] . Foglietti, Mario and Flavio Vergerio . "AI di Ia del mito: Colloquia con Theodor Angelopulos" , Rivista del Cinematografo 1 2 (December 1975) : 532-539 [in Italian]. Gili, Jean A. "Entre miel et Ie dard. Sur l'Apiculteur'', Positi/ 3 1 5 (May 1 987) : 2-3 [in French] . Haustrate, Gaston. "Entretien avec le realisateur" , Cinema (France) 287 (November 1982) : 33-37 [ in French]. Horton, Andrew. "National Culture and Individual Vision: An Interview with Theodoros Angelopoulos", Cineaste 19: 2-3 0993) : 28-3 1 . ------

. "Conversation with Angelopoulos", Pilgrimage April

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1976: 35-36. Martin, Marcel . "Propos de Theo Angelopoulos", La Revue du Cinema/ Image et Son 443 (November 1988) : 25 [in French] . Mereghetti, Paolo, Bernard Oheix and Georges Sammut. "Entretien avec Angelopoulos " , ]eune Cinema 88 (July-August 1975) : 27-29 lin French] . Mitchell, Tony. " ' 0 Megalexandros' : Tony Mitchell interviews Angelopoulos", Sight and Sound 50: 1 (winter 1980-8 1): 30-33. "Odyssey through the ruins", 7be Guardian 1 9 January 1996: Sec. 2, 6 . Perez, Michel . "Le tour onirique" , lR Nouvel Obseroateur 10 November 1 988: 58-59 [in FrencW. Rabourdin, Dominique. "Theo Angelopoulos : 'Le fantome de Ia revolution"' , Cinema (France) 224-225 (August-September 1977) : 40-45 [in French). Remy, Vincent. "Theo Angelopoulos: Le regard nomade", Telerama 2379 ( 1 6 August 1 995) : 32-37 lin French) . Romney, Jonathan. "The last epic picture show" , 7be Guardian 1 5 February 1 996. Stenzel, Samantha. "An Interview with Thodoros Angelopoulos", 7be Athenian June 198 1 : 34-35. "Theo Angelopoulos: 'Les Chasseurs'", Positi/ 200-201-202 (December 1977-January 1978) : 2-3 [extract of script; in French]. "Theodore Angelopoulos", IRttres franfaises 28 July 197 1 . Toubiana, Serge and Frederic Strauss. "Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos", Cahiers du Cinema 413 (November 1988) : 18-20 lin FrencW . Wilson, David. "Interview with Thea Angelopoulos", 7be Athenian June 198 1 : 15-17. Zaagsma, Frank . "[Het geval Angelopoulos] . Of: Hoe enkele Nederlandse kritici verzeild raakten in het labyrint van een film en er bijna niet meer uitkwamen" , Skoop 8: 9 0973) : 34-37 lin Dutch] .

Secondary bibliography A:

Special journal issues and catalogues devoted to Angelopoulos

Canosa, Fabiano, George Kaloyeropoulos and Gerald O'Grady (eds) . 7beo A ngelopoulos (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990) . Contents: "Theo Angelopoulos", by Michel Ciment (3) ; "'An Artist has no Biography. His Biography is his work ' : An Interview" , by Constantine A Themelis (4-8) ; "'0 Megalexandros' - an interview" , by Tony Mitchell (9); "Animating Dead Space and Dead Time", by Tony Mitchell ( 10) ; "The Travelling Players : A Modern Greek Masterpiece" , by Susan Tarr and Hans Proppe ( 1 2-13); "The Films of Theo Angelopoulos", by Helene Tierchant ( 14- 1 5); "Theo Angelopoulos : The New Greek Cinema and Byzantine Iconology" , by Andrew Horton ( 16-20) ; "Voyage to Cythera", by Yvette Biro (2 1-22) ; "Tesselations and Honeycombs : The Beekeeper", by Gerald O'Grady (23-24) ; "Landscape in the Mist" , by

1 18

James Quandt (25); "Theo Angelopoulos: Filmography, Bibliography" , by G erald O'Grady ( 26-27) . Comune di Venezia. 7bodoros Angbelopulos (Venice: Circuito Cinema, 1 982) [in I talianl . Contents: " Un cineasta degli anni '70", by Lino Micciche (2-5); "II fantasma dell'Agora", by Isabelle Jordan (6-9); "II cinema, Ia storia, gli uomini" , by Thodoros Anghelopulos (10-14) ; "Biofilmografia" ( 1 5) ; "Note biografiche" ( 16); "Regie" ( 18-24) ; "Bibliografia essenziale" (25-6) . Esteve, Michel (ed) . 7beo Angelopoulos (Etudes cinematographiques 142145 [ 1 985]) lin French) . Contents : "L'Histoire, l'ideologie et le pouvoir" , by Michel Esteve (3); "L'Art des equilibres . Entretien avec Theo Angelopoulos sur Voyage a Cytbere', by Jacques Gerstenkorn (5-22); "Un Cineaste des annees 1 970" , by Lino Micciche (23-29); "Theo Angelopoulos: une poetique de l'Histoire" , by Barthelemy Amengual (31-55); "Note sur ]ours de 36, ou l'angoisse du vide" , by Marie-Claude Tigoulet (57-66); "L'Histoire sied a E lectre" , by Yvette Biro (67-7 1); "Politique de la representation", by Joel Magny (73-80) ; "L'Histoire au present" , by Michel Esteve (81-91); "Le Cadavre et l'Histoire", by Christian Zimmer (93-96) ; "Ideologie et pouvoir: Alexandre le Grand' , by Michel Esteve (97- 1 10) ; "Atbenes, retour sur l'Acropole" , by Lorenzo Codelli ( 1 1 1 - 1 1 5); "L'Ampleur d'une desillusion" , by Gerard Pangon ( 1 17-134); "L'Empire des voyages" , by Yvette Biro 035- 147); "Filmographie de Theo Angelopoulos " , by Joel Magny ( 149- 1 53). Revue Beige du Cinema 11 (spring 1985) [in French) Contents : "Ouverture" (1); "Un vieillard sur le bord du fleuve" , by Georges Seferis (3) ; "Fragments pour des lectures multiples du cinema de Theo Angelopoulos", by Michel Grodent (5-7); "Le materialisme esthetique de Theodore Angelopoulos", by Lino Micciche (9-27) ; "Reconstitution" , by Yannis ,Bacoyannopoulos (29-42); "C'est ainsi qu'Alexandre entra dans les villes", by Photis Lambrinos (43-44); "L'eau et le cercle" , by Fran�ois Ramasse (46); "Les chasseurs sur la jetee" (49); "Sur un vers etranger" , by Georges Seferis (50); "'Pomme fanee' : autour du 'Voyage a Cythere"', by Michel Grodent (5 1-60); "Ca:ur douloureux ne trouve nul remede . . . " (61); "'Je veux aller avec lui'" (62) .

B: Books and chapters or sections on Angelopoulos in books Arecco, Sergio . 7bodoros Angbelopulos (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1978) [in Italian) . Ciment, Michel . "Theo Angelopoulos", in Laurie Collier Hillstrom (ed) , International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, volume 2, third edition (Detroit; New York; Toronto; London : St James' Press, 1 997) : 2426. Ciment, Michel and Helene Tierchant. 7beo Angelopoulos (Paris: Edilig, 1 989) lin French) . De Santi, Gualtiero . II cinema di Angbelopulos (Pesaro : Comune di Pesaro, 1979) [in Italian) . Esteve, Michel. "Theodore Angelopoulos ou le refus de !'idee totalitaire" ,

1 19

in Le pouvoir en question: essai sur Ia dignile de l'homme a l'ecran (Paris: Les E ditions du Cerf, 1984) : 13-34 lin French]. Horton, Andrew. The Films of Tbeo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation (Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1997) . Jaehne, Karen. "Theodoros Angelopoulos", in John Wakeham (ed), World Film Directors 1945- 1985, volume 2 (New York : H W Wilson Company, 1988) : 55-59. Kolovos, Nikos . Tbodoros Angelopoulos (Athens: Aigokeros, 1990) l in Greek] . Kousoumidis, Marinos. lstoria tou Ellinikou Kinimatograou (Athens : Kastanoiti, 1991) lin Greek] . Micciche, Lin o . " Il materialismo estetico di Thodoros Anghelopulos" , in La ragione e lo sguardo: saggi e note sui cinema (Cosenza: Edizioni Lerici, 1979) : 55-96 l in Italian] . Mitropoulou, Anglaia. Ellinkos Kinimatographos (Athens : 1980) : 282-310 l in Greek]. Rafalidis, Vasilis. Kinomatographika Tbemata 1984-85 (Athens : Aigokeros, 1985) l in Greek] . Ruggle, Walter. Tbeo A ngelopoulos: Filmische Landschaft (Baden : Verlag Lars Muller, 1990) l in German]. Soldatos, Yiannis . lstoria Tou Ellinkou Kinimatografou (Athens : Aigokeros, 1982) l in Greek] . Stathi, Irini. Space and Time in the Films of Tbeo Angelopoulos, PhD thesis, Pantheio University, Athens, 1996 lin Greek] . Thomson, David. A Biographical Dictionary of Film, revised and enlarged edition (London: Andre Deutsch, 1994) : 17-18. Vincendeau , Ginette (ed) . Encyclopedia of European Cinema (London: CasselVBritish Film Institute, 1995) : 12. C:

Articles about Angelopoulos in journals and newspapers

Ajame, P ierre. "Thea, le derviche tourneur" , I.e Nouvel Obseroateur 24 April 1987: 55 lin French]. Amengual, Barthelemy. "Thea Angelopoulos. Une esthetique 'theatrale' de Ia realite sur TI1eo Angelopoulos", Positif 288 (February 1 985) : 1 9-25 lin French] . Bacoyannopoulos, Yannis. "The Promise of a Young Cinema", in Cine­ Mythology: A Retrospective of Greek Film (Athens: Greek Film Centre, 1 993) . .

Bacoyannopulos, ] . "Il cinema greco alia vigilia di una nuova epoca", Rivista del Cinematografo 1 2 (December 1975) : 520-522 l in Italian] . Barnes, Hugh . "Head on the block in Bosnia", The Sunday Telegraph (Review) 1 1 February 1996: 12. Bassan, Raphael and Marcel Martin. "Thea Angelopoulos: Un analyste de Ia Grece" , La Revue du Cinema/Image et Son 401 Oanuary 1985) : 59-65 lin French] . Bergala, Alain, Marc Chevrie, Yann Lardeau, Alain Philippou and Serge

1 20

Toubiana. "Les 32 heures de Cannes", Cabiers du Cinema 360-361 (summer 1984) : 47-48 [in French). "Bio-fll mographie de Theodore Angelopoulos" , l'Avant-Scime du Cinema 1 64 (December 1975): 44-45 [in French). Blind, Jean-Marc. "Entretien avec Marcello Mastroianni sur l'Apiculteur" , Positif 3 1 5 (May 1 987) : 7-8 [in French) . Brown, Georgia. "Greece Frightening" , Village Voice 27 April 1993 : 58. ------

. "Stare power" , Village Voice 20 February 1 990: 75, 78.

Carr, John . "Bishop excommunicates director" , The Hollywood Reporter 3 1 5 : 32 (27 December 1990) : 1-4. Casetti, Francesco. "Le sequenze paradossali in Anghelopulos " , Bianco e nero 5/6 0978) : 66-85 lin Italian) . Codelli, Lorenzo . "Entretien avec Tonino Guerra sur Angelopoulos " , Positif 3 3 3 (November 1988) : 1 1 [in French) . Coggiola, Sergio. "Ritratto di Theo mentre gira il suo viaggio" , Cinema n uovo 33: 2 (April 1984) : 15-21 [ in Italian) . Cordelli, Franco . "La 'messinscena' di Angelopoulos", Filmcritica 274/275 (April-May 1 977) : 185- 188 [in Italian) . Corliss, Richard. "Cannes Goes Under" , Time 12 June 1995: 68-70. Demopoulos, Michel . "Bio-fllmographie de theodore angelopoulos " , Positif l74 (October 1975) : 2 3 [in French). . "La nuit grecque" , /'Avant-Scene du Cinema 1 64 (December 1975) : 6 l in French) .

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Durgnat, Raymond. "TI1e Long Take in Voyage to Cythera: Brecht and Marx vs . Bazin and God" , Film Comment 26: 6 (November-December 1990): 43-44, 46. Font, Domenec. Theodore Angelopoulos: La historia y su destrucci6n" , Film Guia 15 (March-April 1977) : 49-55 [in Spanish) . G iacci, Vittorio. "Anghelopulos: mito e metafore come strumento e lezione di storia", Cinej01um 147 (September 1975) [in Italian) . Gili, Jean A. "Theo Angelopoulos . Au fond du labyrinthe sur Paysage dans le brouillard", Positi/ 333 (November 1988) : 3-4 lin French) . Grivas, Alexis . "A brings new style to Bee Keeper" , Screen International 563 (30 August-6 September 1986) : 14. ----- . "Le regard d'Ulysse" , Screen International 993 (3-9 February 1995) : 28. . "Ulysses gets back on track" , Screen lnternationa/ 989 (612 January 1 995) : 6.

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Guerra, Tonino. "L'Orient dans une tasse" , Positif 432 (February 1 997) : 50- 5 1 [in French; originally published in Italian in II Messagero 1 5 December 1991). Haustrate, Gaston . "Alexandre le grand: Ia fm d'un cycle", Cinema (France) 287 (November 1982) : 42-43 lin French). . "Fiche d' identite", Cinema (France) 287 (November 1 982) : 22 [in French) .

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121

Haustrate, Gaston . "Filmographie commentee" , Cinema (France) 287 (November 1 982) : 23-32 l in French). . "Survol d'une a:uvre" , Cinema (France) 287 (November 1982) : 38-4 1 lin French) .

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Heinich, Nathalie. "Notes sur Ia trilogie de Theo Angelopoulos Qours de 36, Le Voyage des Comediens, Les Chasseurs)" , Cahiers du Cinema 283 (December 1 977) : 10- 1 4 [in French) . Horton, Andrew. "Greek Films vs. Films Made by Greeks" , Pilgrimage June 1976: 27-29. . "History As Cinema and Cinema As History" , The Athenian October 1 977: 36-37.

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. "The Beginnings of a New Greek Wave" , The Athenian April 1975: 22-24.

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------ . "The New Greek Cinema and Theodore Angelopoulos' Melissokomos" , Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, volume 3 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987) : 624-627. . "Theodor Angelopoulos and the New Greek Cinema", Film Criticism 6: 1 (autumn 1981 ): 10-20.

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------ . "Theodore Angelopoulos, The New Greek Cinema and Byzantine Iconology" , Modem Greek Studies Yearbook, volume 2 (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1986) : 89- 1 1 1 . Jordan, Isabelle. "Pour un cinema epique" , Positif 174 ( October 1975) : 1522 [ in French] . Karakasis, Pantelis et a! . "Europaisches Kino aus Griechenland" , Filmfaust 23 Quly/August 1 98 1 ) : 3- 17 lin German]. Kotamanidou, Eva and Michel Demopoulos . "Chronologie de Ia fiction et de l'histoire dans 'les Chasseurs"' , Positi/ 194 Qune 1977) : 1 3- 1 5 [ in French). "La quete d'Harvey" , Studio 86 0994) : 43 [in French) . Lake, Steve. "Covering the Waterfront: Eleni Karaindrou's Music for Films" (published notes with the CD, Eleni Karaindrou: Music for Films [Munich: ECM Records, 1991)) . Lavoignat, Jean-Pierre. "Le regard d'Ulysse" , Studio 99 ( 1 995) : 28 [in French) . "Les evenements en Grece de 1939 a 1952" , /'Avant-Scene du Cinema 1 64 (December 1 975) : 4-5 lin French) . Micciche, Lino. "II materialismo estetico di Anghelopoulos", Cinemasessanta 1 13 Qanuary-February 1977) : 29-47 [in Italian; reprinted as Lino Micciche, "II materialismo estetico di Thodoros Anghelopulos", in La ragione e lo sguardo: saggi e note sui cinema (Cosenza : Edizioni Lerici, 1979) : 55-96) . Mitchell, Tony. "Angelopoulos' Alexander" , Sight and Sound 4 9 : 2 (spring 1980) : 85. Murphy, Kathleen . "Angelopoulos: Children of Paradise" , Film Comment 26: 6 (November-December 1990) : 38-39, 42. "Musique et chansons du film", !'Avant-Scene du Cinema 1 64 (December 1 975) : 6 lin French) .

122

Pappas, Peter. "Toward the Definition of a New Greek Cinema", jump Cut 9 (October-December 1975) : 4-6. Pascaud, Fabienne. "Thea Angelopoulos". Teterama 1835 03 March 1 985) : 1 4- 1 5 lin French) . Pellizzari, Lorenzo. "Anghelopulos: una questione di tempo" , Cinema e cinema 4: 13 (October-December 1977) : 50-57 lin Italian). Petrakis, Helene. "Musique ou logique. Entretien avec Helene Karaindroy", Positi/ 370 (December 199 1 ) : 17- 1 9 lin French) . . "Un essai constant pour une inconnue. Entretien avec Yorgos Arvanitis", Positif 370 (December 199 1 ) : 13- 1 6 lin French) .

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Pitiot, Pierre. "Apres St Raphael . Angelopoulos : de l'espace-off au non­ dit" , Cinema 78 234 (June 1978) : 48-49 lin French). "Rigas Feraios' Map", Balkan Media 4 : 3 0995) : 1 6-17. Rollet, Sylvie. "Thea Angelopoulos ou le cinema comme theatre du temps" , Positif 370 (December 1991): 6-9 lin French) . Rouchy, Marie-Elisabeth . "Le regard de Koudelka", Telerama 2383 ( 1 3 September 1995) : 26-28 lin French; photographs taken during the shooting of Ulysses ' Gaze, with comments by Angelopoulosl . Ruggle, Walter. "Am Ende beginnt alles von vorne" , Filmbulletin 4 ( 1 986) lin German) . . "Menschen in der Wellenbewegung der Geschichte", Tages A nzeiger (Zurich) 1 October 1986 lin German) .

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Sabouraud, Frederic . "La route des abeilles", Cahiers du Cinema 394 (April 1 987) : 20-22 [in French) . . "Mandrake et le fantome: Entretien avec Marcello Mastroianni" , Cahiers du Cinema 394 (April 1987) : 23-26 lin French) .

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Schutte, Wolfram. "Land-Surveyor and Time-Traveller: The Greek Film D irector Thea Angelopoulos" (published notes with the CD, Eleni Karaindrou: Music for Films [Munich : ECM Records, 1991]) . Smith, Helena. "The actors and the bishop", 7b e Guardian 3 January 199 1 : 2 1 . Stenzel, Samantha. "Angelopoulos out o f the mist" , Variety 6 May 1 99 1 . . "Composer Who Probes the Soul: Eleni Karaindrou", The Athenian December 1990: 40-4 1 .

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"Stop the shoot" , Th e Guardian 30 November 1990: 24 . "Thea Angelopoulos", Variety 24 October 1984: 176. "Thea Angelopoulos : 'Mes films sont des appels a Ia discussion . ' " , Cinema (France) 201-202 (September/October 1 975) : 196- 2 1 0 l in French; includes filmography) . ..

"Thea Angelopoulos . Realisateur" , Le Film Franfais 2 1 39/2 140 ( 1 and 8 May 1 987) : 99- 100 lin French) . Thompson, Peter. "Bishop excommunicates film director" , The Independent 18 December 1990: 10. ------ . "Unholy film row fires passions", 7be Independent 16 December 1990: 1 5 .

1 23

Tobin, Yann. "L'arbre et Ia main . Sur Paysage dans le brouillard' , Positif 333 (November 1 988) : 5 [in French] . Tyros, Andreas. "The Greek Vision: Gloom and Spendor" , Cine-Mythology: A Retrospective of Greek Film (Athens: Greek Film Centre, 1993). "Unwanted gazes hit Angelopoulos", Screen lnternational 1045 ( 1 6-22 February 1 996) : 5. Vergerio, Flavio. "II cinema storico di T. Angelopulos", Rivista del Cinematografo 1 2 (December 1975) : 522-531 [ in Italian] . Weaver, Mary Anne. "The Greek Who Filmed His Country's Tragedy" , The Washington Star 25 April 1976: 14. Weber, Daniel . "Nur zusehen - ohne einen Laut" , Neue Zurcher Zeitung 10 October 1 986 [ in German] . Wilmington, Michael. "Angelopoulos: The Power and the Glory" , Film Comment 26: 6 (November-December 1990) : 32-37. Wilson, David. "Out of a dead land: The Beekeeper" , Sight and Sound 57: 1 (winter 1987-88) : 64-65. D:

Selected film reviews, and articles about specific films

To Vlemma Tou Odyssea I Ulysses' Gaze Andrew, Geoff. " Ulysses' Gaze", Time Out 14-21 February 1996: 7 1 . Brown, Geoff. "Urban jungle not for the tots", Th e Times 1 5 February 1 996: 3 1 . Carriere, Christophe. "Le Regard d'Ulysse" , Premiere (France) September 1 995 : 26 lin French] . Danikas, Dimitris . "E istoria pote then teleiosnei" , Ta Nea 26 May 1995 [in Greek] . Feneck-M ikelides, Ninos . "To vlemma tou Odyssea" , European Film Review 6 ( 1 995) : 20. Francke, Lizzie. "Greek tragedy meets the road movie", New Statesman and Society 9 February 1996: 34. Hartoulari, Mikela. "Fill pathous stin Thiaso" , Ta Nea 2 November 1995 [ in Greek) . Hatzizisi, Kivelli. "Timitiki ipodoxi", Ethnos 30 May 1995 [ in Greek) . Herpe, Noel . "Le Regard d'Ulysse. L'exil et le royaume" , Positif 4 1 5 (September 1995) : 16-17 [in French] . Horton, Andrew. " Ulysses ' Gaze" , Cineaste 2 1 : 1 0996) : 43-45 . Katsounaki, Maria . "E Ellada topos eksorias yia t ou Ellines", Kathimerini 5 October 1995 [in Greek] . Kimberley, Nick . " Ulysses' Gaze/To Vlemma Tou Odyssea/Regard d'Uiysse" , Sight and Sound 6: 2 (February 1996) : 55. Kolovos, Nikos. "Thodorou Angelopoulou : To Vlema tou Odissea", E Leksi 130 (November-December 1995) lin Greek] . Malcolm, Derek . "History in the making" , The Guardian 15 February 1 996: 8-9.

1 24

Mars-Jones, Adam. "A walk on the blind side" , The Independent 1 5 February 1996: 8-9. Marsolais, Gilles . "L'apocalypse au quotidien" , 24 Images 78-79 (September/October 1995) : 44-45 [in French] . Menza, Maddalena. "La sguardo di Ulisse", Film (tutti i film della stagione) 18 (November/December 1995): 35-36 [in Italian] . Papadopoulou , Maria . "To Vlemma tou dimiourysi", Ta Nea 29 May 1995 [ in Greek] . Perry, George. "Ulysses' Gaze" , The Sunday Times 18 February 1996: Sec . 10, 7. Piazzo, Philippe. "Le regard d'Ulysse", Teterama 2437 (25 September 1 996) : 1 1 1 [in French] . Remy, Vincent. "Le Regard d'Ulysse" , Telerama 2383 ( 1 3 September 1 995) : 26-28 [in French] . Rollet, Sylvie. "Le Regard d'Ulysse. Un plaidoyer pour l'humanite du cinema", Positif 4 1 5 (September 1995) : 18-20 [in French] . Romney, Jonathan. "Keitel superb in a monumental fable" , The Guardian 25 May 1995: 2. Stevens, Julie. " Ulysses' Gaze" , Empire 81 (March 1996) : 43. Stimpson, Mansel . " Ulysses' Gaze" , What's On in London 14 February 1 996: 32-33. Stratton, David. " Ulysses ' Gaze" , Variety 29 May 1995: 53. Valletoux, Thierry. "Le regard d'Ulysse" , Studio 102 (September 1 995) : 1 6 [ in French] . Walker, Alexander. "Everyone is a hero . . . ", Evening Standard 1 5 February 1996: 32.

To Meteoro

Vima

To Pelargou I The Suspended Step of the Stork

Aude, Fran�ois . "Le Pas suspendu de Ia cigogne ou pourquoi s'evaporer avant Ia prochaine utopie", Positi/ 370 (December 199 1 ) : 1 0- 1 2 [ in French] . Bacoyannopoulos, Yannis . "Meteori Elegeia sta Oria tou Aiona", Katbimerini 10 January 1992 [in Greek]. Caryn, James . "Angelopoulos Disillusioned Politician", The New York Times 23 September 199 1 . Chevassu, Fran�ois. " Le pas suspendu de Ia cigogne: Melancolie d e fm de siecle", Revue du Cinema 477 (December 199 1 ): 29-30 [in French]. Dahan, Eric. " Angelopoulos: La politique en suspens", Liberation 4 December 199 1 . Danikas, Dimitris . "Eksoristoi stin Kentriki Leoforo" , Ta Nea 18 January 1 992 [ in Greek] . Dimitrouka, Maria. "Enas Palios Neos Anthropos Stin Athena" , Ethnos 7 January 1992 [in Greek] . Dupont, Joan. "More Than Ever, Cannes Is Festival" , International Herald Tribune 10 May 199 1 .

1 25

Gauthier, Guy. " 'Le pas suspendu de Ia cigogne"' , Revue du Cinema 473 (July/August 199 1 ) : 23 lin French] . Grivas, Alexis. "The Suspended Step of the Stork", Screen International 798 ( 1 5-21 March 199 1 ) : 14 [production report]. "Le pas suspendu de Ia cigogne" , Le Film Fran�ais 2378 (29 November 199 1 ) : 18 lin French]. Mariotti, Franco. "II passo sospeso della cicogna", Cinema d'Oggi 27: 1 1 ( 1 0 June 1993) : 3 0 lin Italian] . Mikelides, N F. "E Melangholia tou Telos Tou Aiona", Eleflherotipia 10 January 1 992 lin Greek] . Osborne, Robert. "Suspended Step of the Stork", The Hollywood Reporter 3 1 7 : 30 (21 May 1991): 9, 76. Pangon, Gerard. "5 50- 5 1 l in French] .

rnn

12 de bonheur" , Telerama 2374 ( 1 2 July 1995) :

Rafalidis, Vasilis. "Dimourgia To Meteoro Virna tou Pelargou" , Ethnos 1 2 January 1 992 l in Greek]. Repetto, Monica. "II passo sospeso della cicogna" , Film (tutti i film della stagione) 6 (November/December 1993) : 273-274 lin Italian] . Ruggle, Walter. "Der Fundamentalismus kennt nur Grenzen" , Filmbulletin 33: 5/6 (December 1991): 1 5-21 lin German], Stone, Judy. "Greek Director Takes His Work to the Edge", San Francisco Chronicle 5 March 199 1 . Strat. "To Meteoro Virna To Pelargou", Variety 3 June 199 1 : 5 1 . "Von Grenzen auf dem Weg nach Hause: Le pas suspendu d e I a cigogne von Theo Angelopoulos", Filmbulletin 33: 5/6 (December 199 1 ) : 13-14 lin German] .

Topio Stin Omichli I Landscape in the Mist Brown, Georgia. "Children of Paradise", Village Voice 18 September 1990: 57. Coldstream, John . "Children of the road", The Daily Telegraph 15 June 1 989: 18. Forbes, Jill. "Biblical Odyssey: Landscape in the Mist" , Sight and Sound 58: 3 (summer 1989) : 206-207. Holden, Stephen. "Landscape in the Mist" , The New York Times 1 4 September 1 990: C10: 5 . Johnstone, lain. "Gags and gazpacho", Th e Sunday Times 18 June 1989: C7. Martin, Marcel . "Paysage dans le brouillard: Bonjour les enfants " , La Revue du Cinema/Image et Son 443 (November 1988) : 24-25 lin French; includes film review]. NFM. "Landscape in the Mist" , Screen lnternational 687 ( 14-21 January 1 989) : 18. Pym, John . "Landscape in the Mist" , Monthly Film Bulletin 56: 667 (August 1989) : 253-254 . Robinson, David. "Business as usual", The Times 15 June 1989: 20.

1 26

Ruggle, Walter. "Abschied von gestern" , Filmbulletin 164 (February/ March 1 989) : 13-17 lin German] . Sawtell, Jeff. "Greek youth in a modern Odyssey" , Morning Star 16 June 1989: 8. Stimpson, Mansel . "Travelling players", What 's On in London 14 June 1989: 74 . Strat. "Topio Stin Omihli" , Variety 7 September 1988: 32, 34. Strauss, Frederic. "L' empire de Ia contemplation " , Cahiers du Cinema 4 1 3 (November 1988) : 15-16 lin French]. 0 Mellssokomos

I The Beekeeper

Alexandropoulo, Soula. "Death of a Beekeeper", The Greek A merican 17 May 1986: 17. Bassan, Raphael. "L'apiculteur: Le rendez-vous de Spyros et d'Hades", La Revue du Cinema/Image et Son 426 (April 1987) : 32-33 lin French] . French, Philip. "Long and winding road" , The Observer 10 January 1988: 17. Johnstone, lain . "The art of bu ilding a character", The Sunday Times 10 January 1988: C7. KB . "The Beekeeper" , Screen lntemational 634 (9- 16 January 1988) : 27. Malcolm, Derek . "The sting in the tail " , The Guardian 7 January 1988: 8. Merat, Gerard. "L'apiculteur" , Cinema (France) 397 (29 April-5 May 1987) : 1 lin French] . Pulleine, Tim. "The Beekeeper" , Films and Filming 400 (January 1988) : 26. . " 0 Melissokomos (The Bee Keeper)" , Monthly Film Bulletin 5 5 : 648 (January 1988) : 17-18.

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Robinson, David. "Age of innocence and seduction" , The Times 7 January 1 988: 1 1 . . "Cracking the code of mixed cultures", The Times 5 September 1986: 17.

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Ruggle, Walter. "Die letzte Reise des Imkers", Filmbulletin 1 5 5 (AugustSeptember 1987) : 24-35 l in German]. Strat. "0 Melissokomos" , Variety 3 September 1986: 18. Usher, Shaun. "The Beekeeper" , The Daily Mai/ 8 January 1988: 24. Walker, Alexander. "Sting in the tail", Evening Standard 7 January 1988. Walters, Margaret. "Glad to be glum", The Listener 1 19: 3044 (7 January 1 988) : 30-3 1 .

Taxidi

Sta Kithira

I

Voyage to Cythera

Albera, Fran�ois. "Pommes rouges et pommes pourries", Revolution 1 5 March 1 985 l i n French] . Amengual, Barthelemy. "Taxidi sta kithira", Positi/ 281-282 (July/August 1984) : 1 00- 101 lin French] . Biro, Yvette. "Voyage to Cythera", Film Quarterly 4 1 : 1 (autumn 1987) : 49-54.

Brown, Georgia. "Ode on a Grecian Journey" , Village Voice 1 1 April 1989: 64. E . St. "Reise nach Kythera", Das Fernsehspiel im ZDF 46 (September­ November 1984): 45-46 lin Germani . Esteve, Michel . "Voyage a Cythere" , Esprit April 1985: 96-98 [in French). J.M. "Voyage a cythere", Cinema (France) 307-308 Quly-August 1984) : 28 lin French) . Kell. "Taxidi Sta Kithira", Variety 16 May 1984: 133. Kral, Petr. "Adieu au heros: sur Le voyage a Cythere", Positi/ 288 (February 1985) : 3 1-33 [in French] . Martin, Marcel. "Voyage a Cythere: L'exil interieur" , La Revue du Cinema/ Image et Son 401 Qanuary 1985) : 22-23 lin French]. Murat, Pierre. "Le voyage a Cythere: Le retour du vieil homme", Teterama 1835 03 March 1985) : 12- 1 3 [in French] . Revault d'Allonnes, Fabrice. "Le cercle grec" , Cahiers du Cinema 368 (February 1985) : 39-40 lin French) . Rinaldi, Giorgio . "Taxidi sta Kithira (Viaggio a Citera), di Thodoros Anghelopoulos", Cineforum 235 Qune/July 1984) : 13-14 [in Italian) . Tarqui, Anna . "Voyage a Cythere" , Cinema (France) 314 (February 1985): 40-4 1 lin French]. Tournes, Andree. "Angelopoulos entre reel et imaginaire", ]eune Cinema 160 Quly-August 1984) : 15-17 lin French). 0 Megalexandros

I Alexander the Great

A.M. "Alexandre le Grand" , Les 2 Ecrans 28 (November 1 980) : 17-18 [ in French) . Bergson, Phillip . "As long as it takes" , Times Literary Supplement 12 December 1980: 1414. Carrere, Emmanuel . "Alexandre le Grand: Ote-toi de mon pouvoir" , Telerama 1710 (20 October 1982) : 41 lin French) . f.v. "0 Megalexandros", Rivista del Cinematografo 53 : 1 1 (November 1980) : 560 [in Italian) . Gervais, G inette. "Alexandre le grand", jeune Cinema 147 (December 1982-January 1 983) : 39-4 1 [ in French). Gibbs, Patrick . "Englishmen trapped by Alexander", 1be Daily Telegraph 9 September 1980. Jordan, Isabelle. "0 Megalexandros (Alexandre le Grand)'' , Positi/ 237 (December 1 980) : 50-51 [in FrencW . Malcolm, Derek. "Pride and prejudice" , 1be Guardian 9 September 1 980. Megalos, William. "The Filming of 0 Megalexandros" , The Athenian July 1980: 22-25. Mitchell, Tony. "Animating Dead Space and Dead Time" , Sight and Sound 50: 1 (winter 1980-8 1): 29-33. Montinaro, Brizio. Diario macedona (Milan : Edizioni II Formichiere, 1980) [in Italian) .

128

Montinaro, Brizio . "Notes sur Ie tournage d'alexandre le grand" , Positif 250 (January 1982) : 5-9 [in French) . Mosk. "0 Megalexandros" , Variety 17 September 1980: 23. Pellizzari, Lorenzo. "Dal gioco dei tarocchi al gioco del cerchio" , Cinema e cinema 7: 25/26 (October-December 1980) : 100- 105 lin Italian) . Piccardi, Adriano. "0 Megalexandros" , Cineforum 232 (March 1984) : 4752 [in Italian) . Ramasse, Fran�ois. "Alexandre le Grand. Le cercle etait presque parfait ou 'the still, sad music of humanity"' , Positif 262 (December 1 982) : 6465 lin French] . Tessier, Max. "Alexandre le grand", La Revue du Cinema/Image et Son/ Beran 377 (November 1982) : 32-36 [ in French) . Torri, Bruno. "Venezia '80, sovrano il pressappochismo culturale", Cin emasessanta 1 36 (November-December 1980) : 35-36 lin Italian) . I

Kinigi I The Hunters

Barrot, Olivier. "Les chasseurs", Beran 1 5 November 1977: 48 [ in French) . Bory, Jean-Louis. "Les Chasseurs", Le Nouvel Obseroateur 656 (6- 1 2 June 1 977) [ in French) . Cuel, Fran�ois . "Les chasseurs", Cinematographe 32 (November 1977) : 35-36 [in French) . Grelier, Robert. "Les chasseurs", La Revue d u Cinema/Image e t Son 322 (November 1977) : 93-94 [in French). Jordan, Isabelle. "Le fantome de )'agora (sur 'les chasseurs') " , Positi/ 194 (June 1 977) : 9- 1 2 l in French) . Passek, Jean-Loup . "Les chasseurs : La grande peur des classes dominantes" , Cinema (France) 224-225 (August-September 1977) : 37-38 lin French) . Simsolo, Noel . "Les chasseurs: Impossible de tricher avec ce ftlm" , Cinema (France) 224-225 (August-September 1977) : 33-36 [in French) . Welsh, Henry. "Theo Angelopoulos: a contenu progressiste, forme novatrice", jeune Cinema 107 (December 1977-January 1978) : 23-27 l in French) . Zimmer, Christian . "Du sens a deterrer", Les Temps Modernes 380 (March 1978) lin French) . 0 Thiassos

I The Travelling Players

Biro, Yvette. " History Becomes Electra", Village Voice 19 April 1983: 54. Bory, Jean-Louis. "Une cornemuse et deux cadavres" , Le Nouvel Obseroateur 27 October 1975 lin French) . Buache, Freddy. "Le voyage des comediens" , jeune Cinema 88 (July­ August 1975) : 26-27 lin French) . Ciment, Michel. "0 thiassis", Positi/ 171- 172 (July/August 1975) : 71-72 lin French) . Davies, Russell. "Cinema", The Obseroer 12 September 1976.

1 29

Delmar, Rosalind. " Thiassos, 0 (The Travelling Players)" , Monthly Film Bulletin 43: 508 (May 1976) : 108- 109. Demopoulos, Michel and Frida Liappa. "0 Thiassos" , Sinchronos Kinimatographos 1 (September 1974) : 48-55 [in Greek] . Erler, Richard. "Film: Electra Reflected: The Travelling Players", The New York Times 5 September 1975 . . "0 Thiassos (The Travelling Players)", The New York Times 10 April 1 976: 22: 1 .

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Elley, Derek . "The Travelling Players", Films and Filming 2 2 : 9 (June 1976) : 3 1 . Ghezzi, Enrico. "Non c'e recita senza provvidenza" , Filmcritica 276 (September 1977) : 214-218 [in Italian] . G ibbs, Patrick . "0 Thiassos" , The Daily Telegraph 10 September 1976. Holl. "0 Thiassos" , Variety 4 June 1975: 18. Holland, Bernard . "Film: Greek 'Thiassos' : Electra in Four Hours", The New York Times 12 April 1983: C 1 2 . Horton, Andrew. " 0 Thiasos: The Most Original and Important Film o f 1975 " , Pilgrimage April 1976: 34-36. . " 0 Thiasos: Not So Much a Film As An Experience", The Athenian December 1 975: 3 1-33.

------

Koning, Hans. "0 Thiasos" , Film Quarterly 30: 3 (spring 1977) : 46-50. "Le voyage des comediens" , jeune Cinema 1 13 (October 1978) : 43 lin French) . Magny, Joel . "Le voyage des comediens", Telecine 203 (November­ December 1975) : 7-8 lin French]. McArthur, Colin. "A generation's political options" , Tribune 28 October 1977. Millar, Gavin . "Liberty and betrayal" , The Listener 96: 2475 ( 1 6 September 1976) : 344-345 . M .T. "Le voyage des comediens" , Ecmn 4 1 ( 1 5 November 1975) : 68-69 [in French] . P appas, Peter. "Culture, History and Cinema: A Review of The Travelling Players" , Cineaste 7: 4 (winter 1976/77) : 36-39. Passek, Jean Loup. "Le Voyage des Comediens : Le recit et le vecu", Cinema (France) 203 (November 1975) : 109- 1 14 lin French] . Perry, David. "Travelling players", The Spectator 1 1 September 1 976: 27-28. Robinson, David. "0 Thiassos" , The Times 10 September 1976. Rollet, Sylvie. "Le Voyage des comediens. L'histoire est-elle une comedie?" , Positif 383 (January 1993) : 5 1-54 lin French). Tarr, Susan and Hans Proppe. "The Travelling Players: A Modern Greek Masterpiece", jump Cut 10/ 1 1 (winter 1976) : 5-6. "The Travelling Players: the soul of Greece in a brilliant new film", Continental Film Review 23 : 7 (May 1976) : 20-2 1 . Weaver, Mary Anne. "The Greek Who Filmed His Country's Tragedy" , The Washington Star 25 April 1976: 1 4 . Wilson, David. "The Travelling Players", Sight and Sound 45: 1 (winter

130

1 975n6) : 58-59.

Wilson, David. "The Travelling Players: A Historical Guide" , Monthly Film Bulletin 43: 508 (May 1976) : 1 16. Zambetti, Sandro . "Festival & rassegne: Cannes. Daile alchimie politico­ mercantili emerge il rosso della resistenza greca" , Cineforum 145 (June/ July 1975) : 392-395 [in Italian] . Zimmer, Christian. "Reconnaissances en pays etranger", Les Temps Modernes 354 (January 1976) : 1 163- 1 169 [ in French) . Meres Tou

'36 I

Days of

'36

Capdenac, Michel . "]ours de 36" , Beran 46 (15 April 1976) : 52-53 [ in French] . f.p . " Giorni del 36'' , Cinema nuovo 26: 250 (November-December 1977) : 455-458 [ in Italian] . Grant, Jacques. "]ours de 36: Comment filmer politique", Cinema 76 208 (April 1976) : 1 25-1 27, 130 lin French] . Greenspun, Roger. "New Directors/New Films", Film Comment 10: 5 (September-October 1974) : 46. ].L.P. "]ours de 36" , Cinema 73 177 (June 1973) : 34 [in French) . Lingouris, Nikos. "Meres toy '36 II" , Sincbronos Kinimatograpbos 24-26 (October-November-December 1972) : 16-37 [in Greek) . Rena . "lmeres Tou 36" , Variety 15 November 1972: 36. Samandas, Telis . "Die Tage von 36" , Filmkritik 200 (August 1973) : 371375 [in German) . ------ . "]ours de 36" , Travelling January-February 1 974: 1 0- 1 5 lin French] . . "Meres toy '36 I", Sincbronos Kinimatograpbos 24-26 (October-November-December 1972) : 6- 1 5 [in Greek) .

------

Torok, Jean-Paul. "Le secret derriere Ia porte (jours de 36) " , Positif 182 (June 1 976) : 52-53 [ in French) . Anaparastasis

I

Reconstruction

Arecco, Sergio. "'Anaparastassi': II cinema geologica di Anghelopulos", Filmcritica 28: 268 (March 1976) : 1 1 2- 1 13 [in Italian]. Bacoyannopoulos, Yannis . "Anaparastasi", Film 2 1 (December 1980) : 2762 [in Greek) . f.p . " Ricostruzione di un delitto" , Cinema nuovo 249 (September-October 1 977) : 370-372 lin Italian] . Jac . "Anaparastasis" , Variety 12 December 1973: 18. Powell, D ilys. "New fire from Greece" , 'Jbe Sunday Times 9 November 1975. Rafalidis, Vasilis. "Anaparastasi", Sincbronos Kinimatograpbos 3 0 979) : 1 2-25 [in Greek] . Rena . "Anaparastassis", Variety 1 1 November 1970: 27. Segu in, Lou is. "Anaparatassi" , Positif 1 2 9 (July-August 197 1) : 58-59 lin French] .

131

Index

B* see Otto e mezzo 11

X

14

16

Abstract Expressionism 80 Academy Awards® 38, 100 Actors' Studio 103 Aegisthus (mythical figure) 35 , 36, 62, 86 35 , 61 , 62, 80 Aeschylus Agamemnon (mythical figure) 8 , 35 , 3 6 , 62, 63, 80, 86 , 90, 1 02, 108 Akerman, Chantal 15 Alexander the Great see 0

Megalexandros Althusser, Louis American New Criticism

95n7 79 Amiche, Le (The Girl Friends) 26n1 0 Anaparastasis (Reconstruction) 1 , 5 , 1 1 , 1 7, 1 9, 20, 29, 45, 50, 60, 6 1 , 80, 84, 1 08 Andrej Rublev 64 Andric, Ivo 101 Angelopoulos, Katerina 5 Angelopoulos, Spyros 5 Antonioni, Michelangelo 2, 4, 7, 1 3, 1 4, 1 6, 1 7, 1 9, 20, 22, 24, 38, 57, 6 1 , 6 3, 65 , 78, 80, 91 65 Antonutti, Omero Aphrodite (mythical figure) 46 51 Arabian Nights, 1be Aristophanes 28 Aristotle 2, 4, 36 , 105 , 1 09 82 Aronowitz, Stanley Arvanitis, Giorgos 2, 33, 58, 59, 62, 65 , 67, 76, 83, 1 0 1 , 1 06 Astarte (mythical figure) 46

132

Au Hasard Balthazar (Balthazar) 57 Avventura, L' 13, 1 4, 26n 1 0 35 Bachatoris, Kostas 1 04 Balkan Ghosts (book) Balthazar see Au Hasard Balthazar Balthus, Count Balthasar 13 Klossowski de Rola 78, 107 Balzac, Honore de 8 , 43 , 44 Baudelaire, Charles Bazin, Andre 83-85 Beekeeper, 1be see 0

Melissokomos 84 Beethoven, Ludwig van 16 Benning, James Bergman, Ingmar 38, 54, 65 , 80, 1 0 1 Berlin Film Festival 29, 38 Bertolucci, Bernardo 7, 1 1 , 38, 59 Bicycle Thieves see Ladri di

biciclette

Biro, Yvette

Blow-Up

1 , 6 , 9, 34, 4 1 n5 14 94

Bolivar, Simon Bordwell, David 1 , 2, 4 , 6 , 7, 8 1 , 95n9 44 Borges, Jorge Luis Brecht, Bertolt 1 2, 1 5 , 20, 24 , 38, 54, 6 1 , 8 2 Bresson, Robert 1 2, 1 3, 24 , 57

Bridge on the Drina, 1be' (novel) 101 Broadcast, 1be s ee E Ekpombi 48, 50 Brozi, Julio 38 Brussels Film Festival Bunuel , Luis 86 Byzantine Empire 4, 28, 3 1 , 49 Cacoyannis, Michael 3 1 , 59, 81

Calypso (mythical figure) vi, 102 Cannes Film Festival 1, 2, 1 0 , 38, 64, 67, 1 04 Casablanca 1 03 Castro, Fidel 94 Cavafy, Constantine P (C P Kavafis) 98, 107 Chabrol, Claude 80 Chicago Tribune, 1be 9 Chinoise, La 20 Chronicle of a Love see Cronaca

di un amore Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach) 16, 17 Chrysothemis (mythical figure) 35, 37, 62 Ciment, Michel 25n2, 54, 57n4 Cineaste 7, 34 Cinema Novo 14 Cinematheque Fran,;:aise 1 1 , 59, 66 Circe (mythical figure) 102 Citizen Kane 11 civil war (in Greece) (1 946-49) 5 , 6 , 8 , 28, 30, 39, 4 2n9, 52, 54, 55, 7 1 , 73, 91 Clytemnestra (mythical figure) 35, 36, 62, 108 84 Cocteau, Jean Cold War 91

Commare secca, La (The Grim Reaper) 11 Communism 6 , 30, 33, 36, 37, 39, 4 1 n9, 47, 62, 98, 1 04 Communist Party of Greece (KKE) 30, 39, 4 1 n9 Conrad, Joseph 68 Corliss, Richard 2, 104 Costa-Gavras, Constantin 7, 27, 3 1 , 60, 81 Crime and Punishment (novel) 108

Cronaca di un amore (Chronicle of a Love) 26n 10 Cry, 1be s ee II Grido Csillagosok, katonak (The Red and the White) 14

Day for Night s ee La nuit americaine Days of '36 see Meres Tou

De Sica, Vittorio Dickens, Charles

'36

57 78 Dimokratiki Allaghi (newspaper) 5, 28, 29 Donen, Stanley 60 Dostoyevsky, Feodor 1 08 Dreyer, Carl Theodor 2, 1 2 , 1 3 , 57, 6 1 Dunciad, 1be 94 16 Duras, Marguerite EAM s ee Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo

Earrings of Madame De , 1be see Madame De. . . . . .

"East Coker" (poem) Eder, Richard Eisenstein, Sergej

4 4 1 n4 7, 83, 93, 99 Ekpombi, E (The Broadcast) 5 ELAS see Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherikos Stratos Electra (mythical figure) 8, 16, 34-37, 62, 63, 86, 1 07, 1 08 Eliot, T S 2-4, 1 07 Elytis, Odysseus 107 "Embarquement pour Cythere" ("Embarkation for Cythera") (painting) 43, 46 Esteve, Michel 25n1 Etat de siege (State of Siege) 31 Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo (EAM; National Liberation Front) 47 Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherikos Stratos (ELAS; National Popular Army of Liberation) 47 European Union 88 Eutaxias, Dimitri 47 Every Man for Himself see Sauve

qui peut (Ia vie)

Fascism 32, 37, 41n9, 5 5 , 6 1 , 64, 65 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 20, 59 Faulkner, William 79, 82, 1 06, 1 07 Fellini, Federico 7, 1 1 , 38, 80, 1 1 0 film noir 60 Flaubert, Gustave 79, 87

1 33

Forbidden Games see jeux interdits

2, 59 16 Franco (Bahamonde), Francisco 59 12 Freud, Sigmund Frisch, Karl von 51 Georgakas, Dan 1 , 2, 5 , 7, 8 Gerstenkorn, Jacques 25n l , 25n7 Getino, Octavia 14 Girl Friends, The see Le Amiche Godard, Jean-Luc 7, 1 1 , 1 5 , 20, 24, 53, 59, 63, 65, 83 Goebbels, Joseph 62 Golfo 35

Ford, John

Fortini/Cani

Golfo the Shepherdess 32, 34-38, 61 Goncourt, Edmond de 46 Goncourt, Jules de 46 Gorilla Bathes at Noon 104 Grido, II (The Cry) 13, 14, 16 Grim Reaper, The see La

Commare secca Grodent, Michel 25n3 Guerra, Tonino 57, 67 Hadjidakis, Manos 31 Hail Mary see je vous salue,

Marie Hawks, Howard 60 Heath, T L 56 Hegel , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 79 Heidegger, Martin 83 Hemingway, Ernest 40 Hiroshima 1 04

History of Greek Mathematics (book) 56 Hitchcock, Alfred 79, 80, 83 Hollywood 2, 7, 9, 1 1 , 13, 28, 30, 3 1 , 34, 37, 60, 80, 81, 103 Homer vi, 2, 6, 7, 98-1 00, 102, 105

bora de los homos, La (The Hour 14 of the Furnaces)

Horton, Andrew

42n 10

Hour of the Furnaces, The see La bora de los homos

1 34

Hugo, Victor Marie Huillet, Daniele 16, 17, Hunters, The see I Kinigi Huston, John IDHEC see Institut des Hautes Etudes Cim!matographiques IMF see International Monetary Fund India Song 16, lnstitut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographiques (IDHEC) 1 1 , 13, International Monetary Fund 93, (IMF) James, Henry Jameson, Fredric 1 , 4, 9, Jancs6, Miklos 4, 1 3 - 1 5 , 3 8 ,

78 24 6o

20

28 94 79 10 63

je vous salue, Marie (Hail Mary) jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1 080 Btu:x:elles

20

1 5 , 20

jeux interdits (Forbidden Games) 66 Josephson , Erland 101 Joyce, James 38, 40, 90, 102, 107 Kali (mythical figure) 102 Karamanlis, Constantine 28, 29, 39 48, 66, 72 Katakis, Manos Katzelmacher 20 48 Kazantzakis, Nikos Keitel , Harvey 1, 6, 24, 67, 89, 93, 97- 103, 10 5 , 1 07, 109 Kelly, Gene 37 Killers, The 11

Kinigi, I (The Hunters) 5 , 19, 2 1 , 23, 30 , 3 9, 45, 49, 64, 83, 109 KKE s ee Communist Party o f Greece 59 Koundouros, Nikos 84, 85 Kracauer, Siegfried 80 Kubrick, Stanley Kurosawa, Akira 59, 76, 80 Kusturica, Emir 98

Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Th ieves)

57, 66

Lambrakis, Gregory

28, 3 1

Landscape i n the Mist s ee Topio Stin Omichli

Langlois, Henri 1 1 , 59 Lenin, (Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich 67, 92, 104 London Film Festival 38 Lumiere brothers vi

Lumiere et compagnie (Lumiere and Company) vi Madame De . . . (7be Earrings of Madame De . .) 64 Magnificent Ambersons, 1be 64 .

Mahler, Gustav 84 14, 1 04 Makavejev, Dusan Manakis brothers 67, 102 Mannheim Film Festival 29 57n 1 Mardrus, J C Marshall Aid plan 47, 48 1 2, 1 5 , 24, 79 Marx, Karl Mastroianni, Marcello 24, 40, 67, 89, 1 1 0 Meg ker a nep (Red Psalm) 15

Megalexandros, 0 (Alexander the Great) 5, 2Sn8, 30, 39, 45, 47, SO , 59, 6 1 , 64, 65, 78, 80, 8 5 , 88, 1 07, 1 09

Melissokomos, 0 (7be Beekeeper) 6, 8, 1 1 , 1 6, 1 7, 19, 22, 40, 5 1-57, 6 1 , 66, 89 Mercouri, Melina 31

24, 67 Moreau, Jeanne Morgenstern, Mala 102 Mumau, F W 6 1 , 63 Museum of Modem Art, New 8, 38, 99 York Mussolini, Benito 4 1 n9 "Mythical Story" (poem) 3 National Liberation Front see Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo National Popular Army of Liberation see Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherikos Stratos Nazism 30, 33, 36, 42n9, 62, 86 neo-realism 57 Never on Sunday 31 38 New York Film Festival New York Times, 1be 9, 33 9 New York University

Nicht versohnt, oder es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht (Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules 24 Night, The see La Notte Nobel Prize

2, 1 0 1 , 107

Nostalghia (Nostalgia) 106 Not Reconciled, Or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules see Nicht versohnt, oder es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht Notte, La (7be Night) 1 3 , 26n 1 0 , 67 14

Meres Tou 36 (Days of 36)

Nouvelle Vague

5 , 19, 20, 29, 30, 45, 47, 60, 6 1 , 63, 64, 1 09 Metaxas, General John 29, 32, 36, 4 1 n9, 47, 6o

nuit americaine, La (Day for Night) 1 10

Meteoro Virna To Pelargou, To (7be Suspended Step of the Stork) 6, 1 0 , 19, 2 1 -24, 40, 57, 67, 102, 1 06, Miller, (Alton) Glen Minnelli, Vincente Mishima, Yukio (Hiraoka Kimitake)

Missing

89, 1 10 47 60 45 31

Mizoguchi, Kenji 1 1 , 57, 58, 6 1 , 63 7, 1 3 Modigliani, Amedeo

Odysseus (mythical figure) vi, 3, 48, 90, 99, 100, 102, 105 , 1 0 6 , 1 08

Odyssey 3, 6, 99, 100, 102, 105, 1 06, 108 Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 1be

(novel) 48 O'Grady, Gerald 1, 8 "Old Man on the River Bank, An" 3 (poem) On Growth and Form (book) 55 Ordet (7be Word) 57, 63 Oresteia (trilogy of plays) 35 Orestes (mythical figure) 18, 35-37, 58, 62, 63, 86, 1 08

1 35

Ortega y Gasset, Jose Oshima, Nagisa

51 59 Ossessione 60 Otto e mezzo (Bih) 9, 70, 1 10 28 Ottoman Empire Ozu , Yasujiro 2, 4, 58, 59, 82 Paisa (Paisan) 57 57 Palaiologou, Tania Papagos, Field Marshal Alexander 32 38, 39, 59 Papandreou, Andreas 68 Papas, Irene 107 Papdiamantis, Alexandros 34, 54 Pappas, Peter 7, 1 1 Pasolini, Pier Paolo Penelope (mythical figure) 48, 77, 1 02, 1 08 Perisiadis, Spyros 61 Piano, The 1 00 Picasso, Pablo 13 plan-sequence 2 1 , 6 3 , 66, 7 5 , 76 3, 36, 93, 1 07 Plato Player, The 64 Poetics, The 2 Pope, Alexander 94 postmodernism 4, 8, 1 1 , 25, 79, 80, 90, 9 1 , 94 Poulenc, Francis 13

Projet pour une revolution a New York (Project for a Revolution in 88 New York) (novel)

7, 1 3 Prokofiev, Sergej Proust, Marcel 38, 79, 82 Quandt, James 25n4 Rafalidis, Vasilis 1, 6, 8 80 Ray, Satyajit Reagan, Ronald 80 Reconstruction see Anaparastasis Red and the Wh ite, The see

Csillagosok, katonak Red Psalm see Meg ker a nep Regie du jeu, La (The Rules of the Game) 13 13, 20, 22, 59 Renoir, Jean Resnais, Alain 7, 1 1 Ricceur, Paul 74 1 07 Rilke, Rainer Maria Ritsos, Yiannis 28 87, 88 Robbe-Grillet, Alain

1 36

43 102 105 7, 1 1 , 1 3 , 57

Rococo Romanian National Theatre

Romeo and juliet Rossellini, Roberto Round-Up, The see

Szegenylegenyek

79

Roussel , Raymond

Rules of the Game, The see La Regie du jeu

Sarraute, Nathalie Sartre, Jean-Paul

95n2 79

Sauve qui peut (Ia vie) (Slow Motion/Every Man for Himself)

63 79 Scharer, Mark 1 0n4 Schutte, Wolfram Scobie, Lieutenant-General 33, 47 Ronald 59, 1 00 Scorsese, Martin Second International 39 Seferis (Seferiades), George 2, 3, 5 5 , 69, 97, 107 Silence, The see Tystnaden Sinatra, Frank 100 Singin ' in the Rain 37 Slow Motion see Sauve qui peut

(Ia vie) Socrates Solanas, Fernando E Spitzer, Leo Staiger, Janet

92 14, 93, 94 79 95n9 63

Stalker State of Siege see Etat de siege Stein, Gertrude

79, 92 31 Stendhal (Henri Marie Beyle) 1 0 1 , 107 60 Stone, Oliver Straub, Jean-Marie 1 6, 1 7 , 24 13 Stravinsky, Igor

Stella

Suspended Step of the Stork, The see To Meteoro Virna To Pelargou Symposium 93 Szegenylegenyek (The Round-Up) 14 Taormina Film Festival 38 Tarkovskij, Andrej 2, 58, 59, 63, 80, 1 06

Tati, Jacques

12

Taxidi Sta Kithira (Voyage to Cythera)

6, 8, 9 , 1 1 , 1 2 , 23, 24, 43-50, 6 1 ,

64-66, 69-78, 88 , 92, 108- 1 1 0 Telemachus (mythical figure) 48 Themelis, Constantine 55 Theodorakis, Mikis 28, 3 1 Thessaloniki Film Festival 29, 38

7b iassos, 0 (The Travelling Players)

2-5, 7, 8, 1 6-18, 20, 2 1 , 24, 27-42, 45, 47, 54, 58, 6 1-67, 69, 75, 76, 84, 86, 87, 90, 92, 97, 98, 103, 105, 1 07, 1 09 Thompson, Sir D'Arcy Wentworth 55 Thompson, Kristin 95n9 Tierchant, Helene 25n2 1, 1 04 Time magazine Tito (Josip Broz) 42n9

Topio Stin Omichli (Landscape in the Mist) 6, 1 1 , 1 7 , 18, 2 1 , 23, 24, 38, 57, 58, 61, 66, 67, 89, 1 00, 1 08 Touch of Evil 64 Travelling Players, 1be see 0

7b iassos

Truffaut, Frans;:ois Truman, Harry S Truman Doctrine

65 , 80, 1 1 0 47 42n9 Tystnaden (The Silence) 54 Tzortzoglou, Stratos 58 Ugetsu Monogatari 64 Wysses 90, 102 Ulysses (mythical figure) see Odysseus Wysses' Qaze see To Vlemma Tau

Veifremdungse.!Jekt Viaje, Et (The Voyage) Vinti, I (7be Vanquished) Vivaldi, Antonio

15 93

1 7 , 26n 1 0 57

Vlemma Tau Odyssea, To (Wysses ' Gaze) vi, 1-4, 6, 10, 24, 40, 67, 78, 86, 87, 89, 92-94, 96, 98- 1 00, 1 03-107, 109 Volanaki, Dora 48 67, 101 Volonte, Gian Maria

Voyage, 7be see El Viaje Voyage to Cythera see Taxidi Sta Kith ira Wajda, Andrzej 80 Watteau, (Jean) Antoine 8, 43, 44, 46, 48 Welles, Orson 2, 1 1 , 20, 6 1 , 63, 80 60 Wilder, Billy 1, 9 Wilmington, Michael Wind from the East see Vent d'est Wolfflin, Heinrich 18, 20 Word, 7be see Ordet 80, 102, 103 World War I World War II 5, 1 3 , 28, 33, 4 1n9, 70, 71, 7 3, 1 0 1

W.R.: Misterije organizma (w.R. : Mysteries of the Organism) 14

Wybomy, Klaus 16 Wyler, William 20 z 7, 27, 28, 3 1 , 59, 60 Zeke, Michalis 57 Zorba the Greek 31

Odyssea United Nations 97 Universite de Paris-Sorbonne 28, 97 5, 28 University of Athens Vanquished, 7be see I Vinti 49 Velouchiotis, Aris Vengos, Thanassis 97, 1 04 Venice Film Festival 58

Vent d'est (Wind from the East) 15

1 37

Notes on contributors

Yvette Biro, Professor of Screenwriting at New York University's Graduate Film Program, is a professional screenwriter with many credits on feature films. Her books include Profane Mythology: 7be Savage Mind of the Cinema ( 1 982) and 7be Order of Disorder 0 996) and To Dress a Nude: Exercises in Imagination (with Marie-Genevieve Ripeau, 1966). David Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies in the Communications Department at the University of Wisconsin, has written several books, including Narration in the Fiction Film ( 1 985) , 7be Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960 (with Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, 1985) and 7be Cinema of Eisenstein ( 1 993) . Dan Georgakas is an editor of Cineaste and, among others works, is co­ editor of 7be Cineaste Interoiews, New Directions in Greek American Studies and In Focus: A Guide To Using Films.

Andrew Horton is a film scholar and screenwriter who has lived in Greece for over six years, and has written about Angelopoulos since 1975. His most recent books are 7be Films of 7beo A ngelopoulos: A Cinema oj Contemplation (1997), Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay ( 1994) and, with Michael Brashinsky, Russian Critics On the Cinema of Glasnost ( 1 994). He currently teaches at Loyola University. Fredric Jameson is William A Lane, Jr, Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Director of the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University. His books include Marxism and Form ( 1 971), 7be Prison-House of Language (1972) , 7be Political Unconscious (1981) and 7be Ideologies oj

7beory ( 1 988).

Gerald O'Grady is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard University. He co-edited the catalogue, 7beo A ngelopoulos, for the Museum of Modem Art retrospective in New York in 1990.

Vasills Rafalidis is one of Greece's leading film critics and film scholars.

Michael Wihnington is a nationally recognised film critic, presently writing for 7be Chicago Tribune.

138