The Travelling Players

"The Travelling Players", one of the early films of Theo Angelopoulos, shows the vast difference between the talented rising director of 1975 that had something to say, and of the bourgeois famous director of 1998 ("Eternity And A Day") that won the Cannes award but had nothing left to say.

A sprawling epic running at around 4 hours, the film follows a group of touring actors performing a theatrical play across Greece between 1939 and 1952. The focus is on the troubled modern history of Greece during the period (a fascist dictatorship, resistance against the Italians, German occupation, civil war), seen through a series of warped desolate sequences drenched in languor, and also an apotheosis of traditional folklore, music, theater, rural and urban landscapes. Most of these scenes exhibit a rare poetical sensibility, while a few are a bit clumsy, but still interesting.

Couple that with the drama that unfolds within the group of players, and you've got a true masterpiece. Basically what we see is a loose adaptation of Aeschylus' ancient tragedy "Oresteia" (the father Agamemnon, the adulterous mother Clytamnestra, her lover Aegisthus, the avenging daughter Elektra, the avenging son Orestes etc). In the end, the group of actors stands severely rearranged through a painful and dividing historical period, shadows of themselves in a shadow of a country. The film ends as a perfect circle just the way it began, a metaphor for life itself.

This is the only film of Angelopoulos I really like, all those after it are just too much (or too little). It seems it is common practice for the best Greek films to be made under the harshest conditions - literary under fire! Thiasos is not an exception: it was made in about 2 years during the worst part of the military junta. Angelopoulos and his associates were planning to leave Greece on completion; during filming he would tell the police it was an action movie, a Greek western! Besides all that the core story derives from ancient Greek tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) and that is somewhat stunning.

The Travelling Players is possibly the greatest movie in the history of Greek cinema. It is directed by the world-renowned Greek director Theo Angelopoulos and it presents the life in Greece from 1939 to 1952 through a family of travelling provincial players. It explores the political history of Greece during a very dramatic period, that includes dictatorship, the WWII outbreak, the Italian invasion and the subsequent German occupation and it continues with the liberation of the country and the very bloody Civil War.

The Travelling Players was a very controversial movie. The film was to participate officially in the Cannes Film Festival, but the conservative Greek government, sought (and failed) to prevent this to happen, because the film tells the modern Greek history through a left- Marxist perspective.

Angelopoulos proves that he's a master filmmaker on every level. From direction and writing to every technical aspect. Cinematography in particular.

Also, the music by Loukianos Kilaidonis is fantastic and elevates the film in a different level.

The Travelling Players is a masterpiece that everyone should watch.

O Thiasos is one of those cerebral and omphaloskeptic movies that just do not happen anymore, shamelessly demanding from the viewer to attune to its eccentric pace. Space and time become pawns in the director's hands, who in effect accomplishes their operatic tranquility in contrast to the static directorial style. In rejecting all conventions of academic narrativity it sustains its formulaic enigma throughout its considerable length, persistently (and obsessively) questioning the freedom of man in a world domineered by irreversible occurrences. Boosted equally by grandeur, mystifying symbolism and pictorial lyricism the film comes to its redeeming conclusion. Enchanting, liberating, revolutionary, focused and precise. Both coldly objective and passionately subjective. A rare masterpiece.

We watch movies to forget the true banality of life. Movies are packed with witty, non-stop dialogue, head-spinning action which takes place in a short period of time, and, of course, beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous women. We are so conditioned by contemporary movies, we forget or want to forget ordinarily life.

The Traveling Players by Angelopoulos has none of this. The dialogue is ordinary, spoken by ordinary people, by ordinary men and women. When they speak it is not rapid-fire, non-stop delivery, but ordinary speech most times separated by long periods of silence.

The beauty of The Traveling Players - or any film by Angelopoulos - the ordinary is beautiful. The sweeping, long scenes in this movie are stunning. We quickly identify with one or more of the traveling players. In the dialogue we can hear words spoken by a close friend or acquaintance. When the film ends nearly four hours later, you will want to see more.

This movie should not be missed.