O melissokomos (1986)

A bee keeper, Spiros, travels from the north to the south of Greece with his bees to meet the spring.

Director:

Theodoros Angelopoulos

Writers:

Theodoros Angelopoulos, Tonino Guerra

Stars:

Marcello Mastroianni, Nadia Mourouzi, Serge Reggiani

1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Marcello Mastroianni	...	Spyros
Nadia Mourouzi	...	The Girl
Serge Reggiani	...	Sick Man
Jenny Roussea	...	Spyros' Wife
Dinos Iliopoulos	...	Spyros' Friend
Vasia Panagopoulou
Iakovos Panotas	...	Solder / The Girl / Side Boyfriend
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Stamatis Gardelis
Mihalis Giannatos
Karyofyllia Karabeti
Konstandinos Konstandopoulos	...	(as Kostas Konstadopoulos)
Nikos Kouros
Christoforos Nezer
Stratos Pahis
Dimitris Poulikakos

Storyline

Spiros retires as a schoolteacher, his daughter is married, and he starts his annual journey with his bees to get honey from different areas. In his truck he finds a young girl who has just been abandoned and has no roots. Spiros lets her follow for a day. Seeing her difficulty in getting further hitch-hiking, he takes her back. They will meet and part several times. Later she will say that Spiros is the only one who has ever been kind to her. But his emotions are so restrained that he cannot show anything until a volcanic eruption breaks through. He does not seek serious contact until the eruption makes him drive the car right through the glass wall of the café in which the girl is sitting. She immediately follows him. But after this criminal event they can no longer live at hotels. From the beginning she was willing to sleep with him. But when he finally kisses her, her justified reaction is to repeat "Not in this way!" A friend had a shut down cinema where they could sleep. ...

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Plot Keywords:

bee | cinema | road movie | hitchhiker | suicide | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

Greece France

Language:

Greek French

Release Date:

21 August 1987 (UK)

Also Known As:

El apicultor

Filming Locations:

Ioannina, Greece

Company Credits

Production Co:

Greek Film Center,ERT1,Theo Angelopoulos Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Part II of "A Trilogy of Silence".

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Connections

Referenced in Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que le film commence (2007)

User Reviews

Stung by the bite of alienation..

"The Beekeeper" (1986) is Theo Angelopoulos' seventh film and features leading man Marcello Mastroianni. The minimal and meaningless plot (following the disintegration of his family, a beekeeper embarks on a trip and has an on/off affair with a young girl) is an excuse for Angelopoulos to indulge in his trademark semi-poetic images of Greek rural and urban landscapes.

A few of the sequences stick out, but most are unremarkable (and there's too much deja-vu about them, all Angelopoulos films are pretty much the same). There is very little action, very little dialog, too much boredom, too much doodling. This is the definition of pretentious art-house pomp.