Theodoros Angelopoulos was probably Greece's finest film maker. He had an eye for the artistic and went on to develop a style that others could never even hope to emulate, with long shots, clever and alluring angles and a kind of cinematic poetry. This is his second full length film being made in 1972. It tells the story of Sofianos who is a former drug trafficker and police informant who is arrested for the assassination of a Trade Union leader.
Once in prison the local MP comes to his aid only to be taken hostage. What follows is how the authorities deal with the crisis - badly. Now this is set just prior to the Metaxas dictatorship but was made during the rule of the so called generals and as such there was censorship. So this is allegorical in terms of how it is taking a swipe at the incompetence of the authorities and the parlous state of liberty in Greece at that time.
The downside is that this is very slow and more is left unanswered than is ever even asked – if that indeed makes sense. There are the long shots the great camera angles and a cast of non actors. Some of the acting is wooden and some of the scenes are painfully staged. I like to think that this is deliberate to show the unreality, mundanity or even futility of how life then was. For a modern audience though this will be a hard watch. The print is excellent and looks like it was made only last year not in 1972. If you are an aficionado of cinema then you will want to see this, I appreciated it for its vision and other aspects as described above but at times I struggled with the pace; that having been said it has stayed with me, hence my rating.
