Angelopoulos and Collective Narrative

This chapter examines the role of collective narrative in Theo Angelopoulos' films from the 1970s. It begins with the premise that ‘our failure to grant Theo Angelopoulos the position he deserves in modern cinema’ stems from the fact that modern Greek history remains ‘far less familiar than that of the Western European countries’. It argues that ‘Greece has gone through a collective experience of which most other modern nations have only known bits and pieces’, and considers some of the ways that Angelopoulos depicts this experience as a kind of modern epic. The chapter analyses some of Angelopoulos' first films, including The Travelling Players, Reconstruction and The Hunters.