"Theodoros Angelopoulos’s considerable achievements in cinema during the 1970s and 1980s have made him not only the most important Greek filmmaker to date, but one of the truly creative and original artists of his time… If his style shows some influences—particularly Jancsó’s one reel-one take methodology and Antonioni’s slow, meditative mood—Angelopoulos has nevertheless created an authentic epic cinema akin to Brecht’s theatre in which aesthetic emotion is counterbalanced by a reflexive approach that questions the surfaces of reality. The audience is not allowed to identify with a central character, nor to follow a dramatic development, nor given a reassuring morality." - Michel Ciment (updated by Tina Gianoulis), International Dictionary of Film and Filmmakers