Reconstruction

Director: Theo Angelopoulos
Cast: Toula Stathopoulou, Yannis Totsikas ,Thanos Grammenos, Petros Hoedas
Greece, 1970, 98’, DCP, b&w
Greek, with English and Turkish subtitles

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 and calls his wife: Eleni! She does not answer; the reason: she is hidden behind the kitchen’s door with 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.