The outline of the film is that in 1952, the players debark and look back upon the prior thirteen years of their nation's turmoil. The film then shifts back to 1939, and proceeds in a straight chronological fashion back to 1951. The players, who may or may not be related by blood, are a mixed lot of old and young, male and female. Early on, the young males join the Communist Party to first fight off the Nazi Occupation, and then battle the Nationalist Greek government. Yet, we barely see them throughout the rest of the film. No single actor dominates and all are fairly anonymous (which is why giving the names of the characters (the few one might be able to discern) and the actors is pointless; although, at three points in the film, characters break the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience in soliloquies. The first is when an old player talks on a train about his experiences battling the Turks in the 1920s. The most jarring- and least effective- is when a raped woman turns her suffering into a diatribe on the rape of Greece by outside forces. The final one is when a prisoner of war returns home to describe his torture, including the Sisyphan task of moving rocks up hills, only to move them back down. This usage, however, only emphasizes the fact that they are not real individuals, but a literal Greek Chorus, commenting on the history that passes them by, for never do they really participate. They are almost always passive observers. This is most starkly represented when we see the players scurrying in the dark foreground of a street battle between Communists and Nationalists in a lighted background. Both parties advance and retreat in a highly choreographed, symbolic, and beautiful way. Yet, never do the players take sides in the historical drama. Another scene where this is made clear is when the players are stopped by British forces who make them perform their pastoral play, called Golfo The Shepherdess, on a beach- the only time we see the troupe get to perform it to its completion, for, before that, is always interrupted, but not in the humorous manner it would be in a Fellini film. When stopped, one of the older male players pleads for mercy to the British that they are not Communists. The scene ends with the Brits and players dancing together to an accordion version of It's a Long Way To Tipperary, only to end with a gunshot piercing and killing one of the young British soldiers, who falls to his death in the sand.
The transfer of the Region 2 DVD, from the Greek company New Star, is better than the version of Days Of '36 that they released. It is nearly pristine. There are no extra features to speak of, save for colored subtitles which allow for easier reading. The film is in a 4:3 aspect ratio. The scoring by Loukianos Kilaidonis rarely is extra-diagetic. Most of the music ushers forth from the characters and their natural surroundings, which only adds to the Symbolic quality of the film. The screenplay by Angelopoulos alone, is a damned good one, as described above. The only flaw being its length, one wonders if a more experienced (at that time) screenwriter could have convinced Angelopoulos to trim the script and film down into unequivocal greatness.
The cinematography, by longtime Angelopoulos collaborator, Giorgos Arvanitis, is superlative. There are scenes in the real world that feel otherworldly, and there are scenes that are symbolic that look real. Arvanitis makes beauty out of grubby alleys, twisted garbage and debris, and evokes emotions with long dolly shots, often looking away from the seeming main action of a scene to focus on a seemingly minor thing. He also will have the camera linger on a character's reaction to something, without showing us the thing, or showing it only later than expected. There are also very few sunny shots in this film. In fact, the whole Angelopoulos canon has few shots that are sunny in it. Hibernal dawns and dusks, earth tones, and cool blues, abound. The man seems to relish the hues, real and psychological, that are evoked by overcast skies. It is also claimed that the whole 222 minutes of the film is wrought with less than a hundred individual shots- a remarkable show of formal patience, and trust in the images and audience's appreciation for them, on the part of the director.
The Travelling Players should also be commended for not falling into the trap of caricaturization, which often happens with clumsily deployed symbolism. No group- not Nazis nor Communists, British nor Italians, Nationalists nor Americans, are shown as without blame in the Greek situation. This is because the film, despite its abundant use of political symbols, is definitely not a political film, but a Symbolic one. The Symbolism dominates the political content for the focus is on illustrating human behavior in extremis; a condition brought about by the politics of the time. But, it could just as easily have been brought about by religious oppression, natural disasters, or disease. A final point about this remarkable and daring film is that, despite its length, and despite its deployment of Symbols, it is, unlike the films of David Lean, definitely not an epic. In fact, the film deliberately miniaturizes history into the small moments, a collage of indignities, that define the lives of the players, and in that miniaturization, it maximizes the human experience for its audience. How many films, great or not, can stake that claim?
The transfer of the Region 2 DVD, from the Greek company New Star, is better than the version of Days Of '36 that they released. It is nearly pristine. There are no extra features to speak of, save for colored subtitles which allow for easier reading. The film is in a 4:3 aspect ratio. The scoring by Loukianos Kilaidonis rarely is extra-diagetic. Most of the music ushers forth from the characters and their natural surroundings, which only adds to the Symbolic quality of the film. The screenplay by Angelopoulos alone, is a damned good one, as described above. The only flaw being its length, one wonders if a more experienced (at that time) screenwriter could have convinced Angelopoulos to trim the script and film down into unequivocal greatness.
The cinematography, by longtime Angelopoulos collaborator, Giorgos Arvanitis, is superlative. There are scenes in the real world that feel otherworldly, and there are scenes that are symbolic that look real. Arvanitis makes beauty out of grubby alleys, twisted garbage and debris, and evokes emotions with long dolly shots, often looking away from the seeming main action of a scene to focus on a seemingly minor thing. He also will have the camera linger on a character's reaction to something, without showing us the thing, or showing it only later than expected. There are also very few sunny shots in this film. In fact, the whole Angelopoulos canon has few shots that are sunny in it. Hibernal dawns and dusks, earth tones, and cool blues, abound. The man seems to relish the hues, real and psychological, that are evoked by overcast skies. It is also claimed that the whole 222 minutes of the film is wrought with less than a hundred individual shots- a remarkable show of formal patience, and trust in the images and audience's appreciation for them, on the part of the director.
The Travelling Players should also be commended for not falling into the trap of caricaturization, which often happens with clumsily deployed symbolism. No group- not Nazis nor Communists, British nor Italians, Nationalists nor Americans, are shown as without blame in the Greek situation. This is because the film, despite its abundant use of political symbols, is definitely not a political film, but a Symbolic one. The Symbolism dominates the political content for the focus is on illustrating human behavior in extremis; a condition brought about by the politics of the time. But, it could just as easily have been brought about by religious oppression, natural disasters, or disease. A final point about this remarkable and daring film is that, despite its length, and despite its deployment of Symbols, it is, unlike the films of David Lean, definitely not an epic. In fact, the film deliberately miniaturizes history into the small moments, a collage of indignities, that define the lives of the players, and in that miniaturization, it maximizes the human experience for its audience. How many films, great or not, can stake that claim?