One of the major subversive works of postwar European cinema was made under the noses of the Colonels (even after the fall of the Junta it had to be smuggled into Cannes). David Robinson, critic for The Times, London, wrote: "The Traveling Players is a panorama of (modern) Greek history as reflected in the odyssey of a little troupe of actors who tour with (an archetypal Greek idyll) 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. 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 in symbols. 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."