Heroic Identity in the Dilessi Affair, Aris Velouhiotis, and Alexander: A Reading of Angelopoulos's Megalexandros
Theodoras Angelopoulos's 1980 film Megalexandros has been linked to a variety of influences, from the homecoming of Agamemnon to the shadow puppet theater of Karagiozis, but with little attempt to puzzle out the nature of those influences or how they work in the film. The film itself, while appreciated for its striking photography and its powerful mise en scene - almost sufficient in themselves to carry the film - is characterized by an almost incomprehensible plot line, even if one avails oneself of Angelopoulos's coauthored print version of the script. It is interesting in this regard to trace the scenes that the script indicates have been cut from the film but which nevertheless are reinserted in some form to rescue the film - unsuccessfully some might say - from almost total incoherence.The purpose of this paper is to clarify the many influences - the Dilessi affair, the historical events of Megalexandros, the resistance figure Aris Velouhiotis, and the Karagiozis shadow puppet theater performance (the classics we shall leave to other hands) - and while doing so to provide an informed reading of the film's treatment of heroic identity. To avoid confusion, I shall refer to the bandit figure in the film as Alexander and to the Hellenistic hero as Megalexandros.I. The Dilessi AffairAngelopoulos's film relies upon two significant events in Greek history, the life of the Helienistic hero Alexander the Great (largely through Byzantine myths and popular tales) and the nineteenth-century kidnapping by bandits of elite English visitors to Greece in 1870, called the Dilessi affair after the name of the town on the east coast of mainland Greece where the hostages were murdered. The events of the Dilessi affair structure the events of the film, while the Alexander myth informs the construction of the hero. The modern guise of the hero incorporates, as well, elements of a hero of the twentieth-century popular front resistance movement (Aris Velouhiotis) and techniques of the Greek shadow puppet theater (Karagiozis).The events of the Dilessi affair offer the kidnapping, ransom demands, and negotiations over the fate of the hostages and amnesty for the band; the presence of spies, intermediaries, and behind-the-scenes forces; and a set of primary players who include the Greek government, the English ambassador, the bandit chief, the landowners, and the political party in opposition to the government (which, in the film, operates largely as an unseen force). Unlike the historical case, the goal of the hostage-taking in the film is to force the government to return land taken from the peasants by the landlords in collusion with the state and foreign business interests. Alexander describes his justification for his banditry as state tyranny, having taken to the mountains because he could not find justice. In line with this construction, the hero does not demand ransom but, rather, asks for amnesty for himself, his band, and all those jailed in the struggle against the state.1 Like the Dilessi affair, the government in the film uses the excuse that the Greek constitution prohibits amnesty and, as the original bandits - the Arvanitis brothers - did in Dilessi, the bandits respond that if the people made the constitution, they can unmake it. The Engish ambassador's position is essentially adopted from the facts of the original case as well, for, as he claims in the film, the English have no interest in the Greek constitution, but only in the lives of the "subjects of the queen," warning Greece of the consequences should any harm befall them.From this point, the film essentially departs from the Dilessi script. Alexander astutely reminds his adversaries in the film that anti-European sentiment runs high among the common Greeks2 and that as time drags on the hostages are more likely to be sacrificed "for the prestige of the nation." The Prime Minister, with his army humiliated in a falled attempt to rescue the hostages and facing international pressure, gives his personal guarantee to an alternative plan: whereas Alexander cannot be amnestied, if he and his men submit to a trial they will be pardoned. …
Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend
Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.E.) precipitated immense historical change in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. But the resonance his legend achieved over the next two millennia stretched even farther - across foreign cultures, religious traditions, and distant nations.This engaging and handsomely illustrated book gathers together for the first time hundreds of the colourful Alexander legends that have been told and retold around the globe. Richard Stoneman, a foremost expert on the Alexander myths, introduces us first to the historical Alexander and then to the Alexander of legend, an unparalleled mythic icon who came to represent the heroic ideal in cultures from Egypt to Iceland, from Britain to Malaya.Alexander came to embody the concerns of Hellenistic man; he fueled Roman ideas on tyranny and kingship; he was a talisman for fourth-century pagans and a hero of chivalry in the early Middle Ages. He appears in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic writings, frequently as a prophet of God. Whether battling winged foxes or meeting with the Amazons, descending to the underworld or inventing the world's first diving bell, Alexander inspired as a hero, even a god. Stoneman traces Alexander's influence in ancient literature and folklore and in later writings of east and west. His book provides the definitive account of the legends of Alexander the Great - a powerful leader in life and an even more powerful figure in the history of literature and ideas.
The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation.
With the exception of Michael Cacoyannis, the director of Zorba the Greek [1964], Theo Angelopoulos remains the best-known filmmaker working in Greece today. In fact, along with Cacoyannis, he is likely to be the only Greek director familiar to informed audiences outside his homeland. It is a measure of Angelopoulos's acclaim that Bernardo Bertolucci has acknowledged Angelopoulos's influence on his work and conceded that his Greek contemporary ranks as one of the most original filmmakers of his generation. In 1990 a major retrospective of Angelopoulos's work took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, while Ulysses' Gaze, starring Harvey Keitel, won the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix in 1995. Angelopoulos's standing was assured in 1998 when Eternity and a Day was awarded the Cannes Palme D'Or at the 51st Festival. As part of the 'Greece in Britain' celebrations, a retrospective was hosted at the Riverside Studios in London, which spanned the breadth of the director's career from his early short The Broadcast [1968]. Andrew Horton's unashamedly celebratory study The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: A Cinema of Contemplation is the first survey in English of Angelopoulos's oeuvre and, together with The Last Modernist: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos, a companion collection of essays edited by Horton, fills an important gap. Neither volume presumes any prior knowledge of the subject. Instead, both books are conceived as user-friendly introductions to Angelopoulos's cinema designed for an English-speaking audience receptive to, but with little in-depth knowledge of, Angelopoulos's work, or of Greece's cultural and political history. As a film scholar and screenwriter with a longstanding interest in Greece, Horton is exceptionally well qualified to write about his subject and combines a passion for Angelopoulos's work with a detailed knowledge of the practical dynamics of filmmaking. The task Horton sets himself in The Films of Theo Angelopoulos in addressing his target audience, however, is formidable. In the first section he endeavours to situate Angelopoulos's art within the discursive context of over 3,000 years of Greek cultural and political history from antiquity through Byzantium to the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991. Concomitantly, Horton explores Angelopoulos's cinema in relation to other cinematic traditions which have influenced him (French, Italian, Balkan, Japanese, American, Soviet). The second and third sections of Horton's study focus on five of Angelopoulos's feature films from Reconstruction [1970] to The Suspended Step of the Stork [1991], while the book ends with an account of Ulysses' Gaze and an interview conducted by Horton with the director in 1993 during the pre-production phase of the film. Aware that most of the films discussed will be unfamiliar to an American audience, Horton provides lengthy synopses. Inevitably for a study with such a wide scope, the contextualisation can, at times, become frustrating. The emphasis is on description, rather than in-depth analysis. Provocative connections are touched upon but the author's race to cover