A group of eight actors travels across Greece between 1 9 3 9 and 1 9 5 2 to perform their play “Golfo the Shepherdess”. During their journey, they witness history in the making: the invasion of Italian fascists; the occupation by the Nazis; the clashes between communists and democrats after World War II, leading to the follow-up Greek Civil War; and finally, the ‘52 elections in which the anti-communist leader Papagos was elected. Several of the actors join this or that cause during these years, and get either killed or disappointed.
Theo Angelopoulos’ most famous film, sometimes even regarded as the best Greek film of the 20th century, "The Travelling Players" is an overlong and overrated historical allegory, yet due to its contemplative amalgamation of important historical events and evocation of the cultural heritage of the wisdom of the Greek myths, it deserves to be seen at least once. Angelopolous crafts only 80 scenes across the running time of 230 minutes, relying on Tarkovsky-style long takes, yet, as elegant and aesthetic as these are, they are of rather standard fibre, without that much true ingenuity. The major problem in this approach is the lack of investment in the characters: while in his other films, such as "Landscape in the Mist", this worked because he had only three main characters and thus their identification was easy, here Angelopoulos presents eight characters—all nameless performers, and shows them all in shared wide shots, without cross-cutting or close-ups to introduce each character, aggravating the efforts of the viewers to figure out who is who. Only certain scenes manage to distinguish them, such as the one which shows the determination of a young actress who is willing to sing topless in front of a man masturbating on a rocking chair in order to get a bottle of wine for her troupe. Instead, it seems that the entire Greek nation during this era is the main protagonist, in a sort of collective observation.
The leader of the performers is a modern Aegisthus, a Nazi sympathizer, and snitches a man, the modern Agamemnon, an anti-fascist sympathizer, who is thus executed by the Nazis—in order for Aegisthus to have an affair with Agamemnon’s wife, the modern Clytemnestra. Her daughter, the modern Electra, thus summons her brother, the modern Orestes, a communist resistance fighter, who shoots Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, while performing live on stage—but the audience just erupts in applause, thinking it is all part of the play. It may have been that all the protagonists are deliberately one-dimensional because, as film critic Roderick Heath observed, the intent was to show how these characters are reduced to archetypes—they are interchangeable performers, only their roles are permanent. In one scene near the opening act, the performers are seen walking from the right side of a street, while a truck with a man throwing leaflets is shown, and a loudspeaker announces that people should vote for Papagos, indicating that the setting is ‘52. However, just a couple of moments later, the performers are seen walking on the other side of the street, while a man announces Goebbels’ visit to Olympia in ‘36. This demonstrates how different time eras can overlap on the same location, whereas the first scene is also the film's last scene, coming full circle, to bring the theme across: there is no history, events fluctuate, and some archetypal human cycles (loyalty, betrayal, scramble for power, greed...) are repeated again and again through time, just with different names and peoples.
Grade:++
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