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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
All the world's a stage.,
By Tintin "tintin75" (Winchester, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Travelling Players (O Thiasos [Non-US Format, PAL region 2]) (DVD)
Greek film director Theo Angelopoulos is one of the most influential and widely respected contemporary filmmakers, yet his films are still largely unknown to the American public. There are several reasons for this seeming lack of popularity, the main one being that Angelopoulos' films are the antithesis of action films: his cinema is a cinema of contemplation. Angelopoulos forces the spectator into the role of co-author and co-voyager as he or she must contemplate the images and events as they unfold on the screen. The fact that Angelopoulos holds a deep fascination for Greek myths, history, and culture, for the most part unfamiliar to the American audiences, does not add to his films' popularity in this country.
Angelopoulos came to international attention with the release in 1975 of "O Thiassos" ("The Travelling Players"). The subject historical epic is the adventures of a group of actors traveling across Greece from 1939 until 1952, performing "Golfo," a traditional 19th Century Greek classic tale of unrequited love. In this way, the film covers the last days of the Metaxas dictatorship, the beginning of the World War II, the German occupation, the Liberation and the arrival of the English and the Americans, and the Civil War. Greece's political history and the actors' lives are being woven together along this journey. The camera of Georges Arvantis has been crucial in all of Angelopoulos' films, and "The Travelling Players" is no exception. Two-thirds of the film consists of exterior shots in subtle, subdued colors, recorded in the drab light of wintry dawns and dusks. The film is shot almost entirely in long shots that are also long takes, many lasting several minutes, and some as long as seven to nine minutes. The retelling of these thirteen years of history, covered in 240 minutes, required only eighty scenes or takes. On several occasions, during some long takes, there is a shift in time, which is meant to underscore the political linkage between the pre- and post-war military regimes. At other times, objects or characters come into the camera's restricted field of view , somewhat poorly framed, and even unpredictably at times, while outside sounds, near or far away, remind the viewer of the existence of an outside, unseen world. Many of these long takes with little action in them often follow moments of intense emotion. They become, in fact, resting points where the viewer can reflect on the dramatic event he or she has just witnessed. There are three particular long takes, in full shots, with the camera immobile, during which three of the main characters, Agamemnon, Electra, and Pylades, each in turn recount key moments in the history of their country. During these monologues, the actors speak monotonously, without inflection or emotion. But other than these three instances when history becomes intimate through these testimonials, history is observed from a distance, without fanfare, without insightful dialogue. This film is composed as a mosaic of scenes rather than an ordered narrative as Angelopoulos switches back and forth in time and from one character to another. Using these distancing devices is one of the ways by which Angelopoulos forces the audience to reflect on the broader themes, rather than just the individual participants and moments. There are no leading stars in this film. Although Orestes is certainly an important character, and the second half of the film is Electra's story even more than Orestes', the true protagonist is the group of players itself. As time passes, the group membership changes, but the group itself survives as a living character. "The Travelling Players" is a meditation on history and myth. In this film, Angelopoulos examines the political power elite, monarchist-fascist, supported by foreign powers that had obstructed Greek democracy since at least 1936. This is a continuation of his investigation, which began with "Days of '36" (1972), and would continue with "Megalexandros" (1979). Angelopoulos' views contradict the "official" Greek history and constitute a fundamental revision of history in which the Left, in general, and the Communist Party of Greece in particular, are given their proper places, and are not depicted as the moral threat to Greek democracy. Angelopoulos' main arguments for this revision have to do with the nature of the Greek resistance to the German occupation and the civil war which followed. In this representation, Greece is no longer the Greece of the travel brochures, with its eternal sunshine and beautiful islands. Instead of the "travel poster" Greece, Arvantis' camera shows us a land with its scruffy homes, rundown "kafeneons," crumbling stone walls, and rutted streets. Greece is no longer the cradle of western democracy, but a place where tyranny is deeply-rooted, and its enchanted islands are places of detention, torture and executions. Greece is a land possessed by Hunger and Death. On a mythological level, the characters play out a modern version of the myth of the "House of Atreus." As it is in Aeschylus' "Agamemnon," betrayal is a major theme of the film, betrayal on a personal level by some members of the troupe. But on the contemporary historical level, the betrayal is that of Greece, from outside by other nations, but even more tragically, from within itself. Through this parallel Angelopoulos unambiguously suggests the repetitive cyclical nature of human existence. On the other hand, since Aeschylus's Oresteia also relates the birth of Athenian democracy, it is from this lesson that Angelopoulos, continuing the lesson of Aeschylus, thematically links individual tragedy to the national struggle for freedom. "The Travelling Players" is a powerful historical epic, if not an unusual one, as far as American audiences' expectations are concerned. I would certainly discourage seeing this as a first exposure to Angelopoulos' films. For those who appreciate Angelopoulos' work, it is one of his finest works, worthy of several viewings. Personally, I give the film a five-star rating, but viewers who are unfamiliar with Angelopoulos' films will give it one star.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful, compelling and rewarding,
This review is from: The Travelling Players (O Thiasos [Non-US Format, PAL region 2]) (DVD)
A weary, expressionless acting troupe arrives at a near empty train station in a rural Greek village. The itinerant actors have arrived into town to perform a popular, idyllic, pastoral play entitled Golpho The Shepherdess. The actors seem indistinguishable from each other, and only their literary names, derived from the Aeschylus Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides), provide a glimpse into their true character: the father, Agamemnon (Stratos Pachis); the adulterous mother, Clytamnestra (Aliki Georgouli); the traitorous uncle, Aegisthus (Vangelis Kazan); the avenging daughter, Elektra (Eva Kotamanidou); the revolutionary son, Orestes (Petros Zarkadis); and the self-involved daughter, Chrisothemis (Maria Vasileiou). The Travelling Players chronicles the turbulent recent history of Greece, from the Nazi occupation of World War II to the devastating Civil War between the Royalists and the Communists. Throughout the film, the troupe inexhaustibly attempts to perform the same play from village to village, only to be invariably disrupted by air raids, arrests, gunfire, and murder. Even their attempts to reach the next town often prove to be daunting as they encounter the bodies of executed rebels, are detained by supercilious Allied soldiers seeking entertainment, or are terrorized by their own countrymen searching for partisan rebels hiding in the mountains. Figuratively, the travelling players are transient, anonymous supporting players in their nation's own unresolved history - refugees within their own decimated country - eternally doomed to wander aimlessly through the austere and turbulent landscape, unable to go home again.
Theo Angelopoulos creates a harsh, bleak, and profoundly tragic portrait of the dissolution of the national soul in The Travelling Players. Angelopoulos frames the characters through medium and long shots in order to create a distant camera perspective, and reflects their own insignificance in their reluctant roles as peripheral witnesses to the country's turmoil. The unemotive, Byzantine countenance of the actors, similar to the muted expressions of the characters in Robert Bresson's films, further manifest, not only the ravaged, desolate villages of the Greek countryside, but also the emotional toll of the unending violence. The lyrics of a repeated ballad echoes the hopelessness and melancholy of the wandering players: "You will come back, no matter how many years go by, you will come back, full of remorse, to ask forgiveness, one night in shame you will come back". It is an elegy that mourns the loss of a great love, and solemnly awaits the return of a broken soul despite the ravages of time - a haunting, passionate serenade for a wounded nation still attempting to reconcile with its devastating, self-destructive past.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brilliant if difficult fiilm,
This review is from: The Travelling Players (O Thiasos [Non-US Format, PAL region 2]) (DVD)
A flawed masterpiece from Angelopoulos, the first of a number of great
films of his you can pick at if you want. It's tragic that one of the best modern film-makers is virtually unknown here in the U.S., and that so few of his films are currently available. First and foremost, 'The Traveling Players' is a technical achievement; almost 4 hours long and only about 80 cuts in the whole film! It goes against all we've gotten used to in film story-telling, and does it brilliantly. The story follows a troupe of actors back and forth through the years 1939 to 1952. They're thrown about by the violent, sometimes absurd tides of Greek history, with victory over the Nazi's giving way to the rise of local fascists at home. The film is very Brechtian and distanced in style. We hardly get to know the characters at all, despite the running time. It's much more interested in the great tides of politics and time than individuals - which is both its strength and its weakness. I was always interested, sometimes horrified, but rarely touched emotionally. Also, some of the good/bad of the politics felt simplistic. That said, despite its length, I will re-watch it. I suspect I'll appreciate the amazing scope of it's vision and the bravery of it's style even more without expecting to get caught up in the people in a conventional way. If you have the chance, get ahold of the 'New Star' DVD, which was only in release a short time. The transfer was supervised and approved by Angelopoulos, and certainly looks wildly better than the commonly found VHS tape.
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