Alexander the Great (1980 movie)

Alexander the Great
Directed by	Theodoros Angelopoulos
Produced by	Theo Angelopoulos Nikos Angelopoulos
Written by	Theo Angelopoulos Petros Markaris
Starring	Omero Antonutti Eva Kotamanidou Mihalis Giannatos
Music by	Chalaris Christodoulos
Cinematography	Giorgos Arvanitis
Edited by	Giorgos Triandafyllou
Production companies	Theo Angelopoulos Films Radiotelevisione Italiana Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen Greek Film Center
Distributed by	IFA (Argentina) (Switzerland, Austria, Germany)
Release date	July 1980 (1980-07)
Running time	235 minutes
Country	Greece, Italy, West Germany
Language	Greek English

Alexander the Great (Greek: Ο Μεγαλέξανδρος) is a 1980 Greek film directed by Theo Angelopoulos.

The film is based on the Dilesi Massacre of 1870 during which several bandits kidnapped British tourists and demanded a ransom. The film opens with a character named Alexander the Great who is the leader of the bandits being freed from prison.

Alexander and the bandits have kidnapped a group of British aristocrats and bring them to an agrarian community in the mountains that Alexander, the villagers, and a group of Italian anarchists (who arrive later in the film) are trying to build on a system of public ownership and egalitarian beliefs. They demand that the aristocrats return the land to the villagers but their demands are not met when soldiers surround the settlement.

The anarchists, at differences with Alexander, try to leave but are killed by the soldiers. The soldiers also kill Alexander's original comrades. Alexander kills the hostages, and the villagers murder Alexander, in what Vrasidas Karalis notes as a practice of theophagia, or god-eating. The only survivor is a child. The camera pans over Athens and a voice-over states: "This is how Alexander entered the cities...."

The film was financed by Angelopoulos himself along with the help of German and Italian television. The source text was The Book of Megalexandros and the Dilesi Massacre in 1972.

Angelopoulos has said on his own film: "The first thing to be said is that it's the most simple film I've made so far. Its progress is linear, and it hasn't developed its stylistic form in the course of editing like the other films. There are no chronological jumps--the film begins on New Year's Eve in 1900 and proceeds from there, except for the final sequence when the little Alexander becomes Megalexandros and goes towards the city. Which is a modern city--present-day Athens, in fact--in contrast to the rural, turn-of-the-century world of the rest of the film. When the little Alexander enters the city, he brings all the experience of the century with him. He has gained a total experience of life, sex and death, and over it there is a great question mark. How long will the night last, and when will a new day break?"

The film has been well-received at international festivals. Yet, it still does not have a Region 1 release. In a program note, a critic named K.J. notes that "Only a filmmaker with Angelopoulos' daring would attempt to translate his epic vision of Greece to film."

Dougal MacDonald review less favorably: "It is this [technique of long shots and slow pans] which has driven many festival-goers to a state of ecstasy, to assertions that this is imaginative and what filmmaking is really about. There is also a small band (of which I am one which holds that once is imagination, twice is repetition and thrice and after is a mixture of pretentious and boring. One can make such a shot clockwise or counter-clockwise in one dimension. Thereafter, the eschewing of boredom insists either on movement in another dimension or discovery of a new creative toy. By failing to realize this, Angelopoulos has marred his film by what he patently intended to be its major creative feature."