(Anaparastassi). In a remote mountain village in Northern Greece, a woman and her lover murder her husband on his return from Germany, where he has been working as an immigrant laborer. When the lovers are arrested after an aborted flight, the examining magistrate attempts to reconstruct the crime, with the help of a documentary filmmaker (Angelopoulos himself). Reconstruction has been called a film policier in reverse (the crime, and even less its motives, are never in question). But investigation only proves the impossibility of reconstructing a reality; one invariably creates a new reality, or multiple realities, in its place. Thus in his first feature Angelopoulos challenges the most basic tenets of cinema, and of journalism (the screenplay is based on a true incident.) The pompous psychology of the police inspectors, as well as the matter-of-fact sincerity of the journalists, are challenged and easily overwhelmed by Angelopoulos' quiet observation of the village itself, abandoned as most modern villages are, its silences deafening, its isolation so complete as to envelop the remaining inhabitants in a futureless present-the death throes of a landscape. And that may be motive enough.