Theo Angelopoulos: Voyages, Partings, Wanderings

The Weeping Meadow (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

The great Greek director Theo Angelopoulos was tragically killed in 2012 while filming in Athens. Widely regarded as a true master of modern cinema, Angelopoulos developed one of the most unique styles in the history of film-making, involving an innovative handling of time and space based on long, elaborate takes of great eloquence and beauty.

Upon moving to Paris as a student, Angelopoulos intended to become a lawyer, but abandoned his legal studies to study cinema instead. He was an usher at the Cinémathèque Française, the French national film archive, and he had previously worked for Jean Rouch, an ethnographic documentary filmmaker. He came home a dedicated socialist, a film critic, and a would-be filmmaker after he had seen films by Welles and Mizoguchi as well as silent cinema and Hollywood musicals of the 1950s. When Costa-Gavras’s Z premiered in 1969, it placed Greek political cinema on the map.  

Angelopoulos first two films, took a different approach to the historical/political thriller.  Reconstruction and Days of 36 quickly established his characteristic style, marked by crane views, lengthy dolly tracks, and long zooms, These takes often include meticulously choreographed and complicated scenes involving many actors. His work is comparable to the work of Hungarian film director Miklós Jancsó and can be likened to that used by French filmmakers René Straub and Alain Jessua, who chose oblique approaches over simplified presentations of history's significance in the present.

He established his international reputation with the epic The Travelling Players (1975) and went on to direct the remarkable O Megalexandros (1980) and Landscape in the Mist (1988). In his later films Angelopoulos used well-known actors to reach a wider audience - Marcello Mastroianni in The Beekeeper (1986), Harvey Keitel in Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), Bruno Ganz in Eternity and a Day (1998) and Willem Dafoe in The Dust of Time (2008).

The critic David Thomson wrote of Angelopoulos that: ‘By now, it has become clear that his style is deeply personal and poetic - and, of course, it has to be experienced, for the work is not just plastic but temporal. When Angelopoulos moves, he is sailing in time as well as space, and the shifts, the progress, the traveling make a metaphor for history and understanding.’

This is a transcript of a speech in which Angelopoulos reflects on cinema, his work and Greece. It was delivered at the University of Essex in 2001 when Angelopoulos was awarded an honorary degree from the Centre for Film Studies:

My relationship with Cinema began almost as a nightmare. It was in ‘46 or ‘47, I don’t quite recall. The post-war years, a time when a lot of people were going to the movies and we, the kids, sneaked in among the jostling adults standing in line at the box office, in order to disappear in the magic darkness of the balcony. I saw many movies then, but the first one was a Michael Curtiz film Angels With Dirty Faces.

There’s a scene in the film where the hero is led to the electric chair by two guards.  As they walk, their shadows grow larger and larger against the wall. Suddenly, a cry…‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die’. For a long time afterwards this cry haunted my nights. Cinema entered my life with a shadow that grew larger on a wall and a cry.

I began to write at a very early age, at the same time, overwhelmed by the tumult and the emotion that the turbulence of previous history had created in me. The sirens of war in 1940.

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

The German army of occupation entering a deserted Athens. First sounds, first images. Then the Civil War of ‘44. The slaughter. My father condemned to death. My mother’s hand trembling in mine as we searched for his body among dozens of others, in a field. A long time later a message from him, from afar. His return on a rainy day.The first stories. The first contact with words, words in search of an image  I didn’t know then. I understood quite some time later when I wrote the words in my first script.  The words were ‘it’s raining’.

In my days, Homer and the ancient tragic poets constituted part of the school curriculum. The ancient myths inhabit us and we inhabit them. We live in a land full of memories, ancient stones and broken statues. All contemporary Greek art bears the mark of this co-existence.

It would be impossible for the path I have followed, the course I have taken, for my thinking not to have been infused by all of this. As the poet says, ‘they emerged from the dream, as I entered the dream. So our lives were joined together and it will be very difficult to part them again.’

From very early on, my relationship with literature and poetry brought me close to all the investigations, whether language or aesthetics, of modernism. Later, in the beginning of the sixties, in Paris, in the days of political activism, Brecht’s epic theatre which refuted, up to a point, Aristotle’s definition of dramatic art, was becoming a point of reference.

It was years before I went back to Aristotle and his definition of tragedy: ‘Tragedy is an imitation of a worthy or illustrious and perfect action…’ It was years before I discovered that Molly’s monologue in the last chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses is nothing but a distant echo of the astonishing description of Achilles’ arms from Homer’s Iliad.

Reconstruction, my first film, was born in the period of dictatorship of the Colonels as an attempt to piece together the truth out of its fragments. Reconstruction not as a goal, but as a journey. The little stories as they are reflected but also determined by the greater History.

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

The father is symbol, presence and absence, as a metaphorical concept as well as a point of reference.  The journey, borders, exile. Human fate. The eternal return. Themes that pursued me and still pursue me.  All my obsessions enter and exit my films, as the instruments of an orchestra enter and exit, as they fall silent only to re-emerge later. We are condemned to function with our obsessions. We make but one film, we write but one book. Variations and fugues on the same theme.

Many of those who have done me the honour of concerning themselves with my work think that my manner of writing is the result of political choice. That’s not quite how it is. Of course, while I was shooting Days of ‘36, a film about dictatorship during a time of dictatorship, it was impossible to use direct references. I sought a secret language. The allusions of History. The ‘dead time’ of a conspiracy. Suppression.  Elliptical speech an aesthetic principle. A film in which all the important things appear to take place off camera. But my choice of long takes does not stem from this fact.

Working with long takes was not a logical decision. I have always thought it was a natural choice. A need to incorporate natural time and space, as unity of space and time. A need for the so-called ‘dead time’ between action and the expectation of action, which is usually eliminated by the editor’s scissors, to function musically, like pauses. A concept of the shot as a living cell which inhales, delivers the main word and exhales. A fascinating and dangerous choice which continues to the present day.

I have been working with the same team of collaborators since the time I began. They know me and I know them. With the years they have become my family. They often make me angry when we work, I miss them when I don’t see them. I feel uncertain when a new technician joins the team, as though everything depends on this new person. I talk to them about my plans and my uncertainties. So many years have gone by and still the same agitation, the same uncertainty, the same need for us to be close, holding our breath, and waiting for the end of the shot.

O Megalexandros/Alexander the Great (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

Voyages, partings, wanderings. A car, a photographer friend driving in silence and the road.

Very often I think that my only home, the only place where I feel a sense of equilibrium, a peace of mind, is sitting next to my friend who’s driving. The open window, the landscape flitting past.

Images are born during these journeys. I don’t have to keep notes. They are born with their silhouettes, with their colours, with their style, very often with their camera movements as well, with their aesthetic balances, with their light. The hundreds of photographs serve as memory. But nothing ends before the film is shot. During the shooting of the film everything is recreated on the basis of this new reality.  Actors, unforeseen events, fortunate or unfortunate, sudden ideas.

And yet the beginning has preceded it. Long before. From the time when out of nothing, the idea for the film is born. Almost thirty years have gone by since my first film. I could paraphrase TS Eliot and say:

‘So here I am, in the middle way.

My years largely wasted amid the rages of History,

still trying to learn to use images.

And my every attempt is a wholly new start and a kind of failure because we only learn when we no longer have to express ourselves.

And so each new venture is a new beginning in the general mess of imprecision of feeling. Undisciplined squads of emotion.

A raid on the inarticulate.

To recover what has been lost, and found, and lost again.

To recover…

In my end is my beginning.’

- Theo Angelopoulos (1935 - 2012)

Theo Angelopoulos: Landscape and History

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)

“The 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.”

– Dan Georgakas, The Last Modernist: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos, 1997

Made under the watchful eyes of the last days of the Greek military junta, Theo Angelopoulos’s formally and thematically ambitious masterpiece follows an acting troupe in the war-torn years between 1939 and 1952 as they attempt to stage a production of the pastoral play Golfo the Shepherdess.

Highly stylised in its pageant-like movement through history, encompassing the Metaxas dictatorship, World War II and the Greek Civil War, the film is notable for its protracted and elaborately choreographed tracking shots. Reminiscent of the technique of filmmakers such as Max Ophuls and the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, these labyrinthine long takes wind tortuously around the actors and action, sometimes switching historical era within the same shot. The result is a radical and challenging chronicle of a nation’s recent history.

These same travelling players are encountered on the road by two vagrant children in search of their father in Angelopoulos’s later classic, Landscape in the Mist (1988).

The following is an extract from an interview with Theo Angelopoulos in 1974.

Q: When did you decide to shoot The Travelling Players, and what were the political circumstances at the time?

TA: We launched the film on the eve of the Polytechnic events. In any case, since the film deals with the 1939-52 period and refers to all sorts of unmentionable historical episodes, the Papadopoulos censors wouldn’t have been very likely to approve it. Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead and shoot the film. Shortly before we started, the Polytechnic incidents erupted in all their vio­lence followed by the Ioannides putsch. At this point we wondered whether it was worth making a film that might very well never be shown in Greece. And what would be the sense of such a decision? We discussed the matter with the producer, and he agreed with us that even if the film was to be banned in Greece, it would achieve its purpose through the echoes of its screenings abroad. In January and February 1974, as the terror was reaching its peak, we decided to go ahead with the film. We were prepared to make our film disregarding any censorship threats whatsoever.

Q: What was the original idea?

TA: I first thought about a travelling company touring the smaller towns around the country. A journey through the Greek landscape and history, following a group of actors from one town square to the next. Later, more elements were added like, for example, using the myth of the Atrides for the relations between the actors. I used an existing formula-father, son, mother, lover, their children . . . power . . . murder - which functions both as a myth and as a basis for the plot. It was a liberating decision, since I had made up my mind from the very beginning this was not supposed to be a lesson in history. The myth of the Atrides offered the option of a social unit that I could observe all through the period from 1939 to 1952. The Days of ’36 revealed the portrait of a dictatorship. The Travelling Players is a kind of se­ quel, giving names and specifications to this portrait. It goes up only until 1952, because I believe that year’s massacres put an end to the civil war and consecrated the triumph of the right wing and the victory of Papagos. That is, the story covers the period between the overt dictatorship of a general to the veiled dictatorship of a field marshal, who was viewed by many Greeks, exhausted by all the catastrophes they had experienced before, as a liberator.

There were a number of obstacles I had to overcome in order to achieve my purpose. First, to combine all these elements into one structure, but also to avoid conventional scenes of the kind you encounter so often in these cir­cumstances: hunger, death, persecutions, etc. For this reason, the film begins in 1952 with Pagagos’s election campaign. I wanted to portray the generation of the Resistance, the people who were against the Metaxas dictatorship, who fought in WW2, who joined the National Front of Liberation and retreated later into the mountains. All those who were forced by the events to take a stand and, finally, were considered the "Resistance generation" from the left­ist point of view, naturally. Three persons represent this generation in the film: the older 1939 militant and two younger persons suspected of sympa­thizing with this man and his opinions. All three of them join the Resistance and are arrested. One of them is deported and released in 1950 after signing an anti-communist declaration. The second is executed in 1951 for refusing to give up the armed struggle. The third falls ill in prison, is released for "health reasons," and will carry with him the "revolution trauma" for the rest of his life. Time has stopped for him in 1944; he constantly projects the events of that year into the future. The entire picture bears the stamp of this trauma. All the characters suffer from it. Some have signed the declaration, others have died in prison or lost their minds.

Q: You claim you used the myth of the Atrides to avoid the artificiality of a con­ventional arbitrary form. Aren’t you worried that such a myth, so deeply entrenched in the cultural traditions of our civilization, would create an opposite effect, by imposing on the film an inexorable fatality? You obviously wish to use the myth as an historical model, but it could lead to the wrong conclusions. Some people might take the film as another interpretation of the myth.

TA: To begin with, the presence of the myth is not that evident in the film. We do not use names, there is no Agamemnon, no Electra, no Pylade, not even a Nikos or Pavlos. The only name in it is Orestes, who for me is a con­cept more than a character: the concept of the revolution so many dream of. The affection many of the characters lavish on him represents their yearning for the ideal notion of the revolution. Orestes is the only one who remains faithful to himself and his goals, and is willing to die for them.

Q: Isn’t there a risk in identifying your protagonists with the heroes of the myth (Electra, Orestes, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra) and then placing them in a different historical context?

TA: The motivations are different, the circumstances are not the same. His­ tory affects them, changes and transforms them. All I did is sketch them, and this helps me to define more accurately the historical space in which they are allowed to move. In the film, Aegisthus is a militant for the August 4 party and finds himself involved in pseudo-collaboration with the Germans. The concept of power is revealed in him by his attitude to the other actors, after the death of Agamemnon. Attempting to analyze his personal motivation would lead to a psychological drama about the primal reasons that made Aegisthus what he is. And that does not interest me at all. What I was trying to achieve is a kind of Brechtian epic, where no psychological interpretation is necessary.

Q: How did you put the script together?How did you use the myth in it?

TA: First of all, I tried to use the 1952 events as a point of departure. From that point, I looked back, but not in the classical flashback tradition, because these are not personal recollections of one definite character, but collective memories, giving me the freedom to plant inside the 1952 sequence certain historical episodes from the past. The first scene takes place in 1952, the last in 1939. As you can see, I am progressing in the opposite direction. In the final scene we see all the characters who participate in the film. Some of them, we know, have been already killed in action; others are in jail. The survivors are old by now; they have broken up, have been barely released from prison. They walk towards each other, they stop in front of the camera, and we hear the text of the beginning: "In the summer of 1939 we reached Aigion. We were exhausted, we hadn’t slept for two nights." The only differ­ence is the year-instead of 1952 in the opening scene it is now 1939. The characters here are still full of hope for the future, but we know what is in store for them. It’s like an old family picture we look at, knowing only too well what is going to happen to each of the persons in it.

Q: How did you select the historical events you wanted to show on screen?

TA: The choice of some dates and events is evident at first glance. The first "historical fact" we run into, in 1939, is the declaration of WW2. This "fact" affects everybody and is therefore introduced at a popular festivity, the actors and many other people being there at the same time. The German victory is represented by the capitulation of a small Greek garrison. The Liberation is seen through a popular revolt. Later, in December 1944, we have the mea­sures against possession of weapons, the civil war, and the elections of 1952. Also, when selecting the events, I preferred those I found to be most repre­sentative of Greek characteristics. For the 1944 events, it was the people in the street and the dimensions of their reaction I was concerned with, not the governmental decisions as such. The people consider December 1944 as their revolution, a revolution that was cut off in the middle, before it reached its natural conclusion. Why? My film does not offer a straightforward answer to the question, but there is plenty of evidence in it to find the answer. For instance, why didn’t the ELAS [The Greek Popular Army of Liberation] reach Athens? And there are more events we all know are part of the historical background of that period. Everything is shown through the perspective of simple people-the same people who have to bear the effects of these events. The film is a popular epic much more than an analysis of recent Greek his­tory.

Q: Unlike your first two films, the erotic element is of major importance in The Travelling Players. What is its significance in relation to the political elements in the picture?

TA: The sexual element is integrated in the characters. Clytemnestra’s affair with Aegisthus and Electra’s reaction are all based on their respective personali­ties. There is however a point when these relations stop being only personal, for Aegisthus is more than just the lover of the mother. He is also a traitor. He is killed not only because of his affair with Clytemnestra or because he has successfully ridded himself of Agamemnon, but for betraying Agammem­non and his son to the Germans. Electra’s rape is a political act as well. I believe that at the origins of every act of violence there is some kind of sexual impulse. Since Electra is raped in interrogation, the act becomes automati­cally political. The film also introduces the concept of prostitution. Chryso­temis is a prostitute who later marries an American soldier. This kind of marriage may solve a certain problem, but at the same time it represents the bankruptcy of moral values. The sexual element is therefore transferred to a political-ideological level.

Q: What does the stage play Golfo the Shepherdess, produced by the players in your film all over Greece, mean to you?

TA: The play functions on several levels. First, it is the means for these play­ers to make a living. But it is also art, since they perform it on stage. Then there is the text they use and the myth of the Atrides. The text is always interrupted at some stage and never completed on screen. And finally, add­ ing the historical background, the play itself gains another dimension. Let’s take, for example, one line from the play: "Are we being watched?" This doesn’t have anything to do with the popular drama anymore; it refers to the fate of the actors themselves, the characters of the film.

Q: It seems as if Golfo is the only play they ever perform. And you have to agree that both thematically and dramatically this is a very conventional play. Politically speaking, it rather mystifies instead of clarifying the true antagonism between so­cial classes. Don’t you feel there is a contradiction between the distinct political position of the actors themselves and the reactionary ideology of the play they keep producing?

TA: Golfo in nothing more than a convention, a Greek version of Romeo and Juliet. The actors are not really conscious of the conflict between their per­sonal politics and the ideology of the play. All they want is to make a living by offering their audience the kind of fare they like to see.

Q: What about the relations between theater and cinema? The stage sequences raise the question of realism, in the sense that an actor plays an actor who plays a role in a play, so what is real in all this?

TA: I have given a lot of thought to this matter. The actors play actors. Masks, costumes, sets, they are all extremely important elements. The change of costumes, for example. When the Englishman puts an actor’s beret on his head and gives the actor another hat in exchange, he becomes an actor in the play as well. When the British perform on the improvised set or sing "Tipperary," the actors are the audience. When Golfo is supposed to fall down, dead, a British soldier falls too, killed by a bullet, as if he, at this spe­cific moment, was playing the part of Golfo. Certain acts and events are re­peated all through the film and given more than one sense, and the performance of the play is never concluded because it is always interrupted by the political events taking place at the same time.

Q: Does your film adhere to a clear aesthetic concept established beforehand?

TA: Despite rumors that I have a definite aesthetic concept with which I will stick through hell and high water, I would like to insist on the fact that I do improvise a lot. In the film there are a certain number of very dynamic scenes featuring a large variety of actions, and also static scenes, the three mono­logues. Since I wanted to have one distinct aesthetic approach, I tried to com­pensate through camera movements in every possible instance, except for the theater production and the three tales. For these scenes, the camera stood still, facing the actors. The basic principle governing all the film is the se­quence shot, whether the camera is moving (which it is most of the time) or immobile. This way, the scenes gain much in depth and detail, with the edit­ ing being done inside the camera. We never shot two scenes, if we had the option of doing it in one.

Q: You feel much more comfortable with the sequence shot and prefer it to the traditional editing process.

TA: It is my own notion, possibly a very personal one. The sequence shot offers, as far as I am concerned, much more freedom, but it is true that the spectator needs to be more involved in it. There is another advantage I like in the sequence shot that you cannot have in traditional editing: the empty screen, when the action is implied, taking place elsewhere.

Q: We could say the sequence shot adopts the concept of montage but instead of using traditional editing, it combines together various elements in one scene, which, through the movement of the camera, stimulate the imagination of your spectators.

TA: It is equally important to mention that through the sequence shot it is possible to preserve both unity of space and unity of time. The film does not acquire an artificial pace at the editing table. Also, once you change the frame, it is as if you’re telling your audience to look elsewhere. By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyze the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it.

Q: Did you encounter any difficulties during the production of the film?

TA: First of all, the weather. I was persecuted by beautiful weather. I needed a clouded sky-I couldn’t imagine the occupation under sunny skies. But Greece is well known for its magnificent weather and sunny sky, summer and winter alike. You can’t imagine how much trouble this was! When you have scenes where the first part is shot in Athens and the second in Amfissa, you need to have similar meteorological conditions; the mood, the atmo­sphere have to be as close as possible. And that is rarely evident in a film. On top of that, we went over budget, and worst of all, we were afraid of shooting this kind of film under the present conditions you are only too familiar with.

– A journey through Greek Landscape and History: The Travelling Players. Interview with Theo Angelopoulos by Michel Demopoulos and Frida Liappas, 1974.

Theo Angelopoulos: Writing and History

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

The script is the raw material for cinema, as soon as it is written I forget all about it. A script becomes something else when it is transferred to film… For example, the script for ‘Voyage To Cythera’ and the actual movie have a distant relationship. Scripts remain much closer to the original idea behind a movie. Nevertheless, their role, their meaning alters significantly as soon as filming begins or, to put it in a slightly different way, a script is the movie up until the moment when the first scene is shot. As soon as this happens, the script and the movie go their separate, often considerably different pathways.  – Theo Angelopoulos

The great Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos collaborated with Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra and the Greek novelist Petros Markaris on several of his films. In the following extract from an interview with Dan Fainaru in 1999, Angelopoulos discusses his writing methods and the personal and political background to his work:

Q: This is a strange relationship, him [Tonino Guerra] being an Italian who does not speak Greek, while you do not speak Italian. And yet, it is with him you start writing your scripts.


A: It is true we do not need to speak the same language, but we are both men of the South. I believe that all the Mediterranean people have some­thing in common. Not only because there are ancient roots common to all of us, having been in contact with each other for thousands of years, but also because of the proximity of the sea and the similitude of the climate. I never feel abroad when I am in Italy.

With Tonino, it was an instant relationship. He was working at the time with Andrei Tarkovski in Rome on Nostalghia. Andrei and I shared the same flat for a couple of weeks, a flat owned by an assistant director who worked with me on Megalexandros and with Tarkovski on Nostalghia. All I knew about Tonino at the time was his work with people like Fellini and Antonioni, but Andrei seemed to be very happy with their collaboration. I asked my assistant, the owner of the flat, to introduce us, and he arranged for me to go over to Tonino’s place. I intended to meet him, get to know him, and then see whether there was a way for us to cooperate.

Five minutes after I stepped into his flat, we were already at work. We immediately realized we were speaking the same language – in film terms of course, because when we met I spoke French and he spoke Italian but we understood each other perfectly. We also discovered there are many things for which we share the same affection and love. What I like about Tonino is not only the fact that he is a poet, but also that earthly, peasant side, which for me, is very important.

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: In practice, how do you proceed when you meet to work on a script?


A: I must first explain that while basically, I am the author of my own scripts, I always need another person who will play the devil’s advocate, the psychoanalyst or whatever, to give me a different perspective of the things I have in mind. He is to be the first person to hear my ideas in the raw, and his feedback helps me choose the right direction. In the case of Tonino, most of the time he acts the part of the psychoanalyst. I am not sure many people work together the way we do.

Once a film is finished and I feel I am ready to start the next one, I go to his village in the mountains. We sit down, talk about everything and any­thing, have a drink, and then go to lunch. Later, as we sit down and relax, he will ask me whether I have anything in mind I would like to work on. At this point I am still doubtful. I start talking, telling him different stories I had been reflecting upon, ideas that caught my fancy, images that stuck in my mind, nothing yet very organized one way or another. I am walking back and forth; he listens to me, sitting down. When there is something he con­siders to be of particular interest, he stops me and writes it down...

The Hunters (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Later, we go through all the things he has noted, and we try to see whether there is a coherent idea in there. To do this, I take the notes, go to the room he has prepared for me, pore over them for a few hours, then come back to the sitting room, and suggest a way to proceed. We go out, have a coffee, talk about the direction I proposed. He would tell me whether he likes it or not and add a few other related ideas he had in the afternoon while I was working in my room. Out of it comes another version, an im­proved one, of the same idea, and we go on like this for three, four days, discussing various options for the script.

But we do not do it all the time, from morning till night. We eat, we go for long walks, we meet people in the village, and we also talk about the script. When I leave, I already have in mind a first draft. I call him and tell him about it, or I put it on paper and send him a copy. But he, too, prefers to hear me tell it, rather than read it. He gives me his opinion, and then I start working with a second person.

Tonino assists at the birth of the original idea. And sometimes he can be quite insistent on certain details. For instance, he once called me in Greece after we had already completed the script for Landscape in the Mist, and he told me: ‘Listen Theo, we absolutely have to have a hen in the movie.’ ‘Where do you want me to put it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know where,’ he re­plied, ‘but I feel we have to put a hen, somewhere.’ He was right and one of the scenes in the film opens with a hen.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

The second person I work with is my first reader. In the past it was Tha­nassis Valtinos; these days it is Petros Markaris. Through him I get a first reaction to my script. Markaris, by the way, has written a whole book in which he describes our cooperation on Eternity and a Day. He never told me, but he documented everything we did, all our phone conversations, our dis­cussions – he didn’t leave anything out.

Part of his job is to take the script I have written by hand and type it into a computer – I still can’t use a type­writer, let alone a computer. He sends me this draft, and I put in my own corrections and additional remarks, and send it back to him. This goes on for some time, we either meet or exchange faxes of the drafts as they progress from one stage to the next, until I reach the point when I feel the others have given me everything they can, and I put in the last touches on my own. But the final shooting script you will find only if you take it off the finished print of the film. If you compare that with the script I have when I start shooting, you will find there are huge discrepancies between them.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: You have often talked in the past about the possibility of your adapting a literary work but until now it has never happened. All your screenplays are based on original scripts.


A: I tried my hand at adaptations several times, but every single time, I gave up in the middle. It is difficult to adapt a book, certainly a book you love, without losing some of its original flavor and qualities. I can’t think of a successful adaptation of a great novel. I believe the best novels to turn into films are either thrillers or second-class literature.

Orson Welles, for instance, took a rather routine crime story and made a masterpiece out of it in Touch of Evil. There are many more examples of this kind, for instance several of Godard’s films. As for myself, right now I do not feel like doing a crime story, though I am still tempted by Malraux’s Human Condition. But I realize that there will be always something missing in the transition to the screen...

Voyage To Cythera (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Your parents are from the South, the Peloponnesus and Crete. And yet you seem to be obsessed with the North, with dark skies, cold winters, heavy rains.


A: It’s a question I am often asked. I have no explanation. I have often tried in the past to find one, but couldn’t really. Maybe one has to look far back; a psychoanalyst might unveil the real sources. What I can tell you is that when I set out to make my first feature film, Reconstruction, I remember one after­noon, in the small village where the story took place. The landscape was all shades of gray, the dark sky, the drab little houses, the stony hills. It was raining, just a drizzle; a thin fog was covering the mountain, and the village was practically deserted. Most people had gone to Germany like so many other Greeks in the fifties, in search of a better life. Only a few old women dressed in black, barely visible in the gloomy light, sneaked silently through the narrow streets.

Suddenly I heard an old, cracked voice, singing a very old song. It was an ancient old man, singing ‘Oh, little lemon tree . . . Oh, little lemon tree . . . ,’ the song I finally used in the film. It was a magic moment which marked me for life: the rain, the fog, the gray stones, the women in black looking like ghosts, and the old man singing. This deserted village, a forgotten corner in a land ruled by military dictatorship, was for me the image of a country drained out by the constant flow of departing emigrants, and the only thing left in it is an old love song.

This image has probably imprinted itself in my subconscious, the matrix for all the films to follow. This is the reason I believe the first film is the original seed. Everything that comes later is either a variation, a development, or an elaboration evolving from that first theme. For me, Reconstruction contains all the themes I later developed. I really think one always does the same film, over and over again. Lately I watched again a number of Bergman films, and this is true for him as well.

Landscape In The Mist (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Was it at home, from your parents, that you first acquired the love for culture?

A : Not really. My father was a shopkeeper, my mother was a simple house­wife mostly concerned with the well-being of her children. I don’t remember the origins, but I know I started writing for the first time during the civil war, in Athens, towards the end of 1944, a period we still call ‘The Red Decem­ber.’ The communists, who suspected him of being a liberal, arrested my father. As a matter of fact, the person who arrested him was my own cousin, because you have to know that my family – like the rest of the country – was divided in two, part liberal and part communist. During my father’s absence, for reasons that are still not very clear to me, I wrote my first poems. And since that time, I sincerely believe that poetry was the foremost influence in my life...

He was away for a few months, kept somewhere in the center of Greece, and once he was released, he had to walk all the way home, half the length of the country. I remember seeing him at the end of the street, at the time children were still playing in the street, walking slowly towards us. I rushed home and called my mother. We knew he was supposed to come home, but when I told her I’d seen him, she rushed into the street to greet him. Once back inside, we were in such a state, no one could utter a single word. We sat around the table, drank our soup looking at each other in silence. We all felt like crying but kept back our tears. This is, as you may remember, the opening scene of Reconstruction.

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Do you remember anything of the German occupation?


A: I have said it often enough – I am a war child. When I was born, Greece was ruled by a dictator, General Metaxas. In 1940, the Italians invaded Greece. The first sound I remember is that of the war sirens. And the first image is that of Germans entering Athens, just as I painted it in the opening sequence of Voyage to Cythera. It’s all there, including the episode of the young German soldier directing traffic, the child touching his shoulder, and then running away into a maze of narrow streets with the soldier chasing him. One way or another, I have the feeling that we always dip into our own reservoir of memories and relive certain episodes we have experienced in real life. My work is full of all those special moments of my childhood and adolescence, my emotions and dreams at that time. I believe the one source for everything we do is there.

Q: When did you first take on a distinct political stand?


A: As long as I was in Greece, I considered myself apolitical. Only when I got to Paris did I choose, consciously, to join the Left. Of course, in the fifties, I took part in all sorts of student demonstrations, for instance to support Cyprus, but there was no political conscience behind it. I stayed away when­ ever left-wing and right-wing students would fight on the campus.

At the same time, that is after I graduated high school, I was beginning to realize that my interest in cinema was gradually growing almost into an obsession. I was frequenting all-day cinemas showing detective stories of which I saw a lot. Naturally, the American classics of the genre – Huston, Polonski, Hawks, Walsh – figured at the top of the list. But the first film I ever saw was Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces. I still remember the scene where James Cag­ney is taken to the electric chair, the shadows on the wall, his scream: ‘I don’t want to die.’ I must have been nine or ten at the time. This may ex­plain my fascination to this day with detective stories, be they novels or films...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: History and  politics were once in the forefront of every film you made. Now, they are still there, very evident, but much more in the background. Not to mention the quote from ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’ which says: ‘Politics is nothing more than a career.’ You said earlier you were a man of the left; you certainly still are, but not in the same way.

A: I think many things have changed around us through the years that have been making film. Already in Megalexandros I tried to portray a freedom fighter that turns into a tyrant. I felt that everything we believed in changes once it touches power. The film was a reflection on two themes, power and property. They corrupt all those who, to start with, may have been sincere idealistic socialists. I saw all around me the things that were happening under socialist regimes. I couldn’t help noticing the changes taking place in all those people who were behind May ‘68. All the ideals we once had were being twisted and fading away.

My first film to move history from the fore­front to the background was Voyage to Cythera. It deals with people who be­lieved once in historical perspective and political change, only to discover, thirty years after sacrificing practically everything they had for the revolu­tion, that they are rejected by one and all. It is a political odyssey that ends with the old man, the hero who once dreamed of changing the world, and his wife, the only one who remained at his side, drifting out into the sea...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: It has been often said that each one of your films is a sequel of the previous one. Do you agree?


A: It’s true. This is the reason you will never find the word ‘End’ at the end of any of my films. As far as I am concerned, these are chapters of one and the same film that goes on and will never be finished, for there is never a final word on anything. I believe we never manage to do more than a frac­tion of the things we’d like to do. My last film, Eternity and a Day, is attempt­ing to convey the idea that a few words, acquired here and there, are never enough to complete a whole poem.

Q: Your films seem to be very personal not only because your way of doing them is so different from all others, but also because they really talk about yourself, all through. One is often under the impression that your protagonist, even though an actor plays the part, is a reflection of yourself projected in a dramatic context quite close to certain aspects of your life. You even told me once that you seriously consid­ered playing one of the parts, yourself.

A: Yes, it is a bit like that. There are of course directors who play in their own films, like Orson Welles. Sometimes one cannot avoid the feeling, particularly when the film is very close to yourself, that no actor could do justice to the part. I felt like this in Eternity and a Day. In the early stages, I was uneasy with Bruno Ganz in the lead, but deep down it was my own identification with the part that generated my fear that no actor could fully satisfy my expectations.

This is the reason that, at a certain point, I stopped the shoot. I needed to put myself at a certain distance from the script, put it in perspective and see the character wearing the features of another person. One could say the same things when discussing Voyage to Cythera or Ulysses’ Gaze. The truth is that these characters are composite images. There is a smaller or greater part of yourself in each one of them, but there are also other persons you have known. It is never quite you but certainly some of you is always there. And the deeper you go into those characters, the closer they are to your intimate self.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: Another constant concern in your films is the father-son relationship.


A: As I have told you before when we talked about my childhood, the father figure is very important in my own past. The absence of the father who has been taken away – and we had no idea whether he was still alive or not – has been a heavy load on all of us. Since my very first film, it was a crucially important point. Reconstruction opens with the return of the father. Later films deal with the search for the father figure, whether a real or a fictitious father, one who could be a point of reference for the entire film and its pro­tagonist.

Q: Another characteristic of your films – practically all of them are road movies.

A: Yes, but with a difference. Usually, in road movies, the characters roam from one place to another without a definite purpose. In my films, these journeys always have a goal. In Voyage to Cythera, for instance, it is the journey to the imaginary island of one’s dreams, the island of peace and happiness. In Landscape in the Mist the children are looking for their father. The reporter in The Suspended Step of the Stork is travelling around for a definite reason; he is trying to unveil the mystery of the politician who disappeared. In Ulysses’ Gaze the entire trip through the Balkans is determined by the wish to find some pieces of lost film.

Q: You said once that some films come from the heart, others from the mind. Is it true in your case?


A: Some films have at their origins an intellectual premise. In others, it is sentiment. For instance, The Hunters was almost entirely conceived intellec­tually. The same for Days of ‘36. The Beekeeper comes straight from the heart. Most of my films are in-between, a combination of both.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

Q: There are, in your films, whether they come from the heart or the mind, magi­cal moments that will stay with me forever. The party in ‘The Travelling Players’, the last shot of the old couple on the raft in ‘Voyage to Cythera’, the rape in ‘Land­scape in the Mist’, the wedding in ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’, the New Year party and Lenin’s statue on the barge in ‘Ulysses’ Gaze’, the bus ride in ‘Eter­nity and a Day’. And these are only a very few examples. Every time they occur, one is left amazed again and again by their originality, their imagination and poetry. Is it something that just happens while you’re shooting the film or is it carefully prepared beforehand?


A: Both. The bus ride was not at all written this way. Originally, in this scene, there were just the writer and the boy. It was an almost realistic scene, which could, of course, be very moving. Two persons in an empty bus, cross­ing the city in the rain. But somehow, I had the feeling it was not enough. This is why it took so long to shoot this scene. As we were shooting, I was gradually changing it. Finally, I did the scene twice, once following the script, a second time throwing the script away. The second version is the one we used. The scene of the party in The Travelling Players, when two men are dancing the tango together, had originally a few lines of dialog. Once we started rehearsing it, I decided to change it.

The scene was taking place in 1946 – people were still wearing at the time bowler hats, striped suits, and so on. At a certain moment, during a break in the rehearsal, I noticed two men, both wearing bowler hats, standing next to each other. The pianist was play­ing a few notes of a tango, one of them approached the other, and they started dancing together. That was completely unexpected. I had not written it in the script, not even thought of it, but that is how I rounded up this scene, and I believe it was the right way to do it. Sometimes, it’s this kind of improvisation on the spot; sometimes you know what you’re going to do a few days early. For the rape scene in Landscape in the Mist, it was like that. It was not in the script, but I had it already in mind several days before we shot it.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)

As for the marriage scene in The Suspended Step of the Stork with the bride on one side of the river, the bridegroom on the other – when I wrote the script, the scene was different, but I felt something was missing there. Then, one day, I was in New York on a bus going to Bronx through Harlem. At a stop, I saw a small black boy improvising some dance steps on one side of the street, and on the other side, there was another small black boy, who was answering him with his own dance steps. Nothing out of the ordinary, maybe, but I immediately saw the river in the middle.

And there is some­thing else, something I read in 1958 about an island near Crete, a very small one, completely isolated in the winter. During those long months, the shep­herds who live there use a sign language to communicate with a Cretan priest, who would watch for them at certain hours. They would inform him if someone was dead on their side, he would say mass in Crete for the de­ceased person, and they would bury the corpse on the small island. The combination of these two sources of inspiration resulted in the marriage as you see it in The Suspended Step of the Stork. The New Year party in Ulysses’ Gaze was written more or less the way it is played. I knew it was all going to be in one shot, but I felt, when writing it, there was something missing, and as we were rehearsing, I added light touches here and there.

As for the barge with Lenin’s statue on it, this marks for me the end of an era. I had prepared the sequence beforehand, but the idea of having the peasants watching it float down the Danube and crossing themselves as it went by originated with something I saw in Constanza, a Romanian port on the Black Sea. A crane was moving a huge head of Lenin from a ship to a barge, when a fishing boat just happened by. The couple on it, a man and a woman, stood up, shocked, as if Lenin had just come back to life. The woman covered the man’s eyes and instinctively made the sign of the cross.

But I have to say that strangely enough there are scenes you believe are crucial when you write the script, but do not seem at all like this once you have shot them. While other scenes, which you may not have been very keen on, turn out to be key moments in the film.

– Extracted from ‘Dan Fainaru: And About All The Rest’ in Theo Angelopoulos: Interviews (Ed. Dan Fainaru, University Press of Mississippi, 2001)