Tasos2

(Note: This review was written in 1988). A wonderful film by Tassos Psarras, which won the Best Film prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. This is an interesting humanist look at the conditions of life of simple and unsuspecting people who are uprooted by the civil war and live in the "Karavan Sarai" building of Thessaloniki. The film impresses with its tight script and its refusal to end up in a revolutionary manifesto of the left (as in Bertolucci's "1900", for example), although the story lends itself to such an ending.

Above all, however, the film attracts the viewer with its skillful look at the Greek everyday life of the 1950s, a world that has been lost, and therefore its representation is more folklore rather than realistic. Psarras does a great job in this attempt and, in our view, the main theme of the film is this outline of Greekness in a simple way that has been lost to "academic" directors over the last fifteen years. If one adds Voulgari's "Stone Years" (and much of the "Voyage to Cythera" by Angelopoulos) there is a whole tendency in the Greek cinema which is almost romantically focused on the examination of "Greekness", beyond political ideologies and easy preaching. When this examination is done by auteurs who look at life with love (as the three above mentioned), the result is a genuine work of art. Last but not least, let's not forget to mention the amazing acting of Thymios Karakatsanis, which brings the film to higher dimensions of liveliness.

Note: This review was written in 2004. Jancso's famous poetic film that was so much debated in our overly-politicized youth when it first appeared. A work flooded with music and singing, a continuous choreography-hymn to the revolution that wins the viewer overcoming rational resistance. Of course, the film is viewed very differently now in the years of a single world superpower than thirty years ago in the years of fermentation and hope. There is now a widespread disappointment about the film's issues, a skepticism about what it claims, and its optimistic finale is rather received with a sigh ... The issue of the rebellion of oppressed peasants seems to belong to a very distant past, and the historical victory of the "people," where it happened anyway, did not evolve as its prophets dreamed of. It is also remarkable that the film seems to support a non-Soviet version of the revolution, where, as its leader states, "the land belongs only to those who cultivate it", meaning of course that it does not belong to the landowners - neither to the State, we conclude! Also noteworthy are the religious connotations that (inevitably?) the revolutionaries give to their actions: after resisting the priests, as collaborators of Power, and after burning a church in a choreographic way, they set their own ritual: a People's "Sunday Prayer" a "confession and repentance" of the deceived villager who collaborated with the authorities and returns to the "People", a pagan funeral, etc. Obviously, at the time of the film (1972), all of these were part of the communist practice that tried to uproot the faith of the simple people, but also needed to devise ritualistic substitutes. Today, they are viewed as just another failed anti-Christian effort of a rigid ideological system.

Overall, Jancso's film is an enviable achievement of poetic cinema, where human characters are absent, since every person appearing is nothing more than a "bearer of ideology and history". With the continuous movement of the camera, the complete absence of interior scenes (the entire, absolutely entire, movie is filmed outdoors, in the endless Hungarian plain), music and dance, it captivates the viewer, apparently showing the way to directors who followed, like Bertolucci and Angelopoulos. Unfortunately the passing of time left its mark on the film copy and all its wonderful colors have degraded to a monochrome brownish. A film certainly worth the 1972 Cannes Film Prize.