| RECONSTRUCTION
1970
(Greece,
1970. 110 minutes. B&W)
Directed
by : Theo Angelopoulos
Screenplay by : Theo Angelopoulos with
Stratis Karras and Thanassis Valtinos
Cinematography by : Giorgos Arvanitis
Sets by : Mikes Karapiperis
Sound by : Thanassis Arvanitis
Edited by: Takis Davlopoulos
Produced by : Giorgos Samiotis
With : Toula Stathopoulou
(Eleni Gousis), Yannis Totsikas (Christos Grikakas),
Michalis Fotopoulos (Costas Gousis), Thanos Grammenos
(Eleni's brother), Alexandros Alexiou (Police Inspector),
Theo Angelopoulos, Christos Palighianopoulos, Telis
Samandis, Panos Papadopoulos (Journalists), Petros Hoidas
(Judge), Yannis Balaskas (Police Officer), Mersoula
Kapsali (Sister-in-law), Nikos Alevras (Assistant to
prosecutor)
Synopsis
The film is based on an actual event, the murder of
a Greek worker living in Germany by his barmaid wife
Eleni and her lover Christos, who falsify the evidence
of the husband's return to Germany but are suspected
by a sister-in-law and eventually accuse each other
of the crime. A woman murders her husband, upon his
return home after a long absence, with the complicity
of the lover who has relieved her loneliness. Costas
Ghoussis, an emigrant recently returned to his native
country, is coming back from the fields, a shovel on
his shoulder. He pushes open the garden gate in front
of his house and calls his wife: Eleni! She does not
answer; the reason: she is hidden behind the door of
the kitchen with another man, Christos, a gamekeeper,
the lover that she took during her husband's absence.
Just as Costas crosses the threshold he is attacked
and strangled. Despite their precautions, a relative
of the victim suspects them and alerts the police. The
criminals confess their crime. The reconstruction is
that of the examining magistrate, whose inquiries are
interspersed with sequences of the crime - although
the actual murder is never shown - and with a social
documentary which a TV unit (including the director
himself) is making about the crime and the village.
From the very first sequence, audience knows who was
killed and how and who did it. The film closes as it
began, cutting back to the husband's return to indicate
an order which has been ruptured.
RECONSTRUCTION
uses the actual event - a local murder - as a point
of departure for a devastating view of something far
more important: the death of a village, of a whole world.
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