The Gestus of Showing: Brecht, Tableaux and Early Cinema in Angelopoulos’ Political Period (1970–80)

This chapter examines the work of Bertolt Brecht as a source of formative energy for Theo Angelopoulos. It reads Angelopoulos' 1970s films with an eye for Brechtian forms and tropes, focusing specifically on the Brechtian concept of Gestus and its application within the filmic medium. The chapter first considers Brecht's insistence that film should be seen like a a series of tableaux, which do not produce ‘wirkenden Handlung’ (plot development), but have a sense of autonomy. It then explains how Angelopoulos' cinema bridges the early and the late period of cinematic modernism, how he thematises the act of representation in his films, and his employment of a recurring theme in modernist cinema: the ‘circular trajectory’. It also analyses the Fabel, or collective narrative, in Angelopoulos' historical tetralogy (Days of '36, The Travelling Players, and Megalexandros).