Young Aphrodites
(1963)
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Young Aphrodites
(1963)
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| Credited cast: | |||
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Eleni Prokopiou | ... |
Arta
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Takis Emmanuel | ... |
Tsakalos
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Kleopatra Rota | ... |
Chloe
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Vangelis Ioannidis | ... |
Skymnos
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Zannino | ... |
Molossos
(as Giannis Zannino)
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Anestis Vlahos | ... |
Erster Hirte
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Kostas Papakonstantinou | ... |
Stummer Hirte
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| Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
| Stathis Giallelis |
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Vasilis Kailas | ... |
(as Vasilakis Kailas)
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Parallel stories of Eros set in 200 B.C. Nomadic shepherds, plagued by drought, happen on a fishing encampment with plentiful fresh water. The local men are away but will return when it rains; the shepherds stay to refresh their flock until the rain comes. A shepherd lad and a local girl, both on the verge of puberty, start a mating dance. Also, one of the shepherds approaches a beautiful local woman, inviting her to sleep with him. How will she respond? She's married, her husband at sea for the week. Is love forever or temporary? A subtext dramatizes the capture of fish, birds, foxes, and other animals: their fates seem arbitrary. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>
Okay - I'm a USAian, and not particularly ashamed of it. I like my movies with characters I can care about, a story that interests me, filmed in a visually pleasing fashion.
The B&W photography was okay - some good scenery, some solid storytelling, but several shots either poorly framed, or in such close-up that it was hard to tell what was being shown - or why.
The characters were, I'm afraid, little more than cardboard cutouts - the young girl who showed much skin, even more indecision about the boy who she fascinated, and a remarkable lack of background or depth. The love/lust-crazed adult shepherd and his paramour, the wife of an absent fisherman - the story they told can be seen in almost any cheap neighborhood bar almost every week - and seeing the couple in the bar will give you more insight into why they're doing this dance than this movie will.
The older, bullying boy remained a cipher. The crutch-using leader, the other shepherds, the rest of the fisher-folk village - either didn't get enough screen time to fill out their characters, or too much screen time for the set-dressing they were. The primitive instruments and folk dances were interesting, but took away from the story rather than adding to it - the right television commercials would have fit in better with the story.
A side note to European filmmakers - symbology is representative. Symbols can be a marvelous way to enhance storytelling, but they are never, in themselves, the story.
I'll give it a 4 for visual interest and the bit of dramatic tension that was achieved, and remain mystified as to why anyone would consider this masterful film-making. I guess I'm just a Philistine.