The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991)

A reporter stuck in a border town with an overcrowding of refugees sees a man he believes to be a long lost politician.

Director:

Theodoros Angelopoulos

Writers:

Theodoros Angelopoulos (idea), Theodoros Angelopoulos

Stars:

Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Gregory Patrick Karr

2 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Marcello Mastroianni	...	Missing Politician
Jeanne Moreau	...	The Woman
Gregory Patrick Karr	...	Alexandre the Reporter (as Gregory Karr)
Ilias Logothetis	...	Colonel
Dora Hrisikou	...	The Girl
Vasilis Bouyiouklakis	...	Production Manager
Dimitris Poulikakos	...	Chief Photographer
Gerasimos Skiadaressis	...	Waiter
Tasos Apostolou	...	Perchman
Akis Sakellariou	...	Sound Operator
Athinodoros Prousalis	...	Hotel-keeper
Mihalis Giannatos	...	Shopkeeper
Christoforos Nezer	...	Parliament's President
Yilmaz Hassan	...	Hanged Man
Benjamin Ritter	...	Sound Operator

Storyline

Alexandre, a TV reporter, is working for a few days in a border town, where a lot of refugees from Albania, Turkey and Kurdistan are packed in. Among them, he notices an old man and thinks he is an important Greek politician who disappeared mysteriously a few years ago. Back in Athens, he asks this politician's former wife to come and identify him. A slow and dry meditation about inhumanity of borders.

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Plot Keywords:

border | politician | refugee | part of trilogy | animal in title | 

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Did You Know?

Trivia

Film debut of Dora Hrisikou.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Alexandre the Reporter: Travelling on an assignment to the frontier, I kept thinking about the incident at the Pireas. Bodies of Asian refugess in the sea, after Greek authorities refused to grant them political asylum. Their determination to jump to their deaths, from a Greek ship, in the open seas after they had been diiscovered, while crossing the Pacific... How does one leave? Why? Where to? Is it like in that old poem? "And don't forget that the time to leave has come. The wind will carry your eyes ...

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Connections

Referenced in Yperoha plasmata: Sta gipeda i Ellada anastenazei (2007)

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Soundtracks

Silent Night
Written by Franz Xaver Gruber and Joseph Mohr

User Reviews

A Soul in Suspended Animation

Having only ever seen one Angelopoulos film before - The Travelling Players, which thrilled me about as much as paint drying on a wall - I was unprepared for the revelation that is The Suspended Step of the Stork. Shot over a decade ago, this long metaphysical tale of desperate refugees and disenchanted politicians has become more contemporary with each intervening year. As if a lone Greek film-maker had somehow prophesied the horrors of Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq - and the creeping paralysis that has overtaken Western democracy.

It begins in a refugee camp on the Greek-Albanian border, where a TV journalist spots an elderly man (Marcello Mastroianni) and decides he is a leading politician who went missing years before. Tracing the man's 'widow' (Jeanne Moreau) the reporter gropes his way towards the film's central dilemma. What could make a progressive intellectual lose all faith in humanity, to the extent that he gives up not only his political career but also his very identity?

This sounds like dry stuff indeed, and so it might be without the alchemical power of Angelopoulous's camera. There are sequences here that beg for inclusion in an anthology of all-time cinema greats. The tracking-shot along a disused train, each carriage inhabited by a penniless refugee family. The wedding across the river, with bride and groom stranded on opposite sides by the arbitrary idiocy of national borders, which veers perilously close to kitsch but never succumbs.

Moreau is magnificent, Mastroianni his genial hangdog self, but neither actor could ever mistake this film for a star vehicle. If there is a star here, it's the soul of humanity itself. A soul neither living nor dead, but held in suspended animation.

Details

Country:

France Greece Switzerland Italy

Language:

Kurdish Persian Turkish French English Greek

Release Date:

4 December 1991 (France)

Also Known As:

Le pas suspendu de la cigogne

Filming Locations:

Florina, Macedonia, Greece

Company Credits

Production Co:

Arena Films, Theo Angelopoulos Films, Greek Film Center

Technical Specs

Runtime:

143 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1