Angelopoulos; The Greek Auteur

December 1st, 2011

By Nikolaos Dervisis

Theo Angelopoulos, the greatest auteur of Greece; in my opinion, is as celebrated as he is talented. His unique style of filmmaking has influenced many new directors inside and out of Greece and some of his films are considered milestones in arthouse cinema. Angelopoulos studied law at the Kapodistrian Athens University, but after graduating he moved to Paris to study film at the Institute of Advanced Cinematic Studies. At the age of 30, after working as a film critic for a short time, he directed his first film “Reconstruction” in 1970, an homage to Kurosawa’s “Rashomon“.

Tarkovsky once said that a film director is characterized by the use of time and Haneke believes that cinema is closest to music, more than any other art form. This became 100% clear to me when I fist watched Angelopoulos’ “Ulysses Gaze“, an exceptional film that won the 1995 Grand Jury Prize in Cannes. The film moved in very slow rhythms that brought to my mind the ambient and hazy melodies of Brian Eno. I was able to gaze through all the details of each shot, almost to the point of feeling like I was in the shot with enough time to acclimate to it, yet never becoming bored. The film’s photography is amazing with soft colours, brilliant performances by Harvey Keitel and Thanassis Veggos (a legend of the greek film industry), passionate crescendos and flawless direction.

My favorite, however, is the 1975 film “The Travelling Players“. It chronicles the passions of the Greek nation between 1939 and 1952 through the eyes of a band of traveling players and is considered to be one of the top films in the history of cinema, according to FIPRESCI. The film contains less that 80 shots and its duration is approximately 4 hours.

Such themes as historical events through the eyes of outsiders and long journeys with characters that explore their minds and consider their mistakes are the most common subjects in Angelopoulos’ filmography. He has said that all of his filmS are to be considered as “chapters of a big book, about human destiny, about the times passed and about the times coming.”

A celebrated director, Angelopoulos has received numerous awards including the “Palm d’Ohr” at Cannes in 1998 for “Eternity and a Day“, the Gold Lion at Venice Film Festival in 1980 for “Megalexandros” and the Silver Lion in 1988 for “Landscape in The Mist“.

His latest films, “The Weeping Meadow” and “The Dust of Time” are parts of a trilogy that will end with “The Other Sea“, the film he is currently working on. It is about the economic crisis of today’s Greece through the story of an amateur theater group (like his 1975 film “The Travelling Players“) consisting of Greeks and immigrants that are attempting to perform Brecht’s “Treepenny Opera” in which Angelopoulos characters will be paralleled to Brecht’s. He has said that he will retire after finishing that film. We will see.

Tags: Nickos Dervisis, Theo Angelopoulos