Introduced by Yvette Biro (O Thiassos). One of the major works of postwar European cinema. On its original presentation at the London Film Festival, David Robinson, critic for The Times, London, wrote: "The Traveling Players is a panorama of Greek history from 1936 and the Metaxas dictatorship, (through the Nazi occupation) to 1952 and the American domination of Greek politics, as reflected in the odyssey of a little troupe of actors who tour with a sentimental nineteenth century melodrama, a village Romeo and Juliet called Golfo the Shepherdess. They never get to finish the play, and the tranquil sheep painted on their backcloth gaze down upon generations of anguish and bloodshed. At another level, these sad, shabby, often hungry folk act out the (House of Atreus) myth. Epic in scale, the film is also epic in the Brechtian sense in its treatment. The action is seen as a series of individual, often inexplicable events or tableaux, commentated by monologues, by slogans written on the walls, or by songs. The passage of history reverberates in individual incidents or is summarized in symbols; a straying hen provides a metaphor for the disastrous famine of the 1940s...The Traveling Players unfolds its secrets and its meanings gradually, together with its suspense, so that at the end of its four hours you are left eager to be told more. There are few enough films of half the length of which this could be said." Like Days of '36, this was a film that, in the director's words, "brought to light a forbidden part of history," made under the noses of the Colonels through various subterfuges that relied heavily on the artistic stupidity of Papadopoulos' agents. The fall of the dictatorship halted filming for some five months but, on completion, The Traveling Players incurred the disfavor of the new government, as well, and had to be virtually "smuggled" into Cannes.