Jan 25
Francine & Colette Bergé screentest for Les Abysses (1963) dir. Nikos Papatakis
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Colombia
seen from Netherlands
seen from Indonesia
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from Yemen
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Argentina
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from China
seen from Germany
Francine & Colette Bergé screentest for Les Abysses (1963) dir. Nikos Papatakis
Thanos and Despina (Papatakis, 1967)
Les Abysses screenplay, Jean Vauthier // Les Abysses (1963) dir. Nikos Papatakis
Mind you this happens during the first 5 minutes of the film and they proceed to do that for the entirety of the runtime.
I want you to hit her, you hear ? Hit her right now. Hit !
Thanos and Despina (Oi Voskoi), 1967, dir. Nikos Papatakis
United against life as we know it.
Les Abysses (1963) dir Nikos Papatakis // Ginger Snaps (2000) dir. John Fawcett
OI VOSKOI - ("The Shepherds of Calamity" aka "Les Pâtres du Désordre"; Nikos Papatakis, 1967).
That's a good Greek movie (filmed as a sort of modern epic); here is the shorted synopsis: Thanos is a Greek shepherd who has come back to his homeland after a stay in Germany where he was unsuccessful to find a job; he is now willing to flee to Australia but his mother, to oblige him to remain home, arranges his marriage with Despina, the beautiful daughter of Thanos' master. As the man refuses to give his daughter to the penniless young man, Thanos becomes a rebel against the whole world and begins, with Despina, his private desperate war against the rural society where they live... (I stop here). Papatakis reached an international reputation by his "disputed" (and censored) film about the use of torture: "Gloria Mundi" (2004) but, also in his following movies, he never ceased to be concerned about many political themes; well, rarely, as I know, cinema captured with such ethnographic and ceremonial savagery the oppression of multiple social structures. This pastoral symphony of evil, as the master-slave dialectic that is doubled at every turn and catapults the tragicomic couple to a particular genre of 'freedom', is told by visceral, and highly metonymic means, rendering with untold audacity and skill the plight of a colonized country an "orderly disorder". Interesting movie by a (very) interesting filmmaker.
r.m.