Costas Messaris

A provincial café owner, Mimis, abandons his village in Chalkidiki and comes to Athens in search of a better life. He pretends to be a tough guy, a know-it-all, and behaves like an “antisocial”. With the help of a friend of his from the army, Aristeidis, he tries to set up his own business. At the same time, he falls in love with a seamstress, Toula, who is the sister of Aristeidis’ wife. Then comes the wedding, the everyday obligations, and Mimis is forced, with great resentment, to work as a waiter to make ends meet. When he get fired, however, his relationship with Nitsa is put to the test.

This expansive Greek drama follows a troupe of theater actors as they perform around their country during World War II. While the production that they put on is entitled "Golfo the Shepherdess," the thespians end up echoing scenes from classic Greek tales in their own lives, as Elektra plots revenge on her mother for the death of her father, and seeks help from her brother, Orestes, a young anti-fascist rebel.

At midnight, on a deserted Athenian street, a beautiful woman named Eleni Chalkia is fatally stabbed by a stranger, who immediately disappears into the shadows. The murderer is Ioannis Zachos (Manos Logiadis), a young man lacking in both mental and sexual stability, who lives out his erotic fantasies through purifying violence. He often fantasizes about killing beautiful women, in this way compensating for his deficient manhood and satisfying his passion for power. When he is arrested, he immediately confesses his crimes, which is a relief to the police, who have been accused of gross ineptitude by the press. During the trial that follows, the relentless question, “who is ultimately guilty? Man or society?” is again raised.

The film’s main theme is the temporary affair of a professor of English (Kostas Messaris) with the daughter of a wealthy family, whom he tutors in order for her to marry an English businessman. The hero’s disappointment and his lost dreams make him blame his employers for his personal failure, but his need makes him accept their offers. In his dreams he identifies them with the Germans during the Occupation. Besides his love affair with the daughter Varvara (Eleni Stavropoulou), which stops abruptly after the arrival of the Englishman, the professor succumbs to another affair with the mother (Theano Ioannidou).

In Cyprus, an EOKA fighter (against the British Administration), Kyriakoulis, is imprisoned by the British. His comrades kidnap the son of a friend of the British Administrator in retaliation. Plans to help Kyriakoulis escape fails and the British hang him. Kyriakoulis mother intervenes magnanimously and the fighters free their prisoner.

During the cold spring of 1941, with Greece already under German occupation, a long-suffering squad of war-battered soldiers receives orders from the headquarters in Athens to fall back, leaving behind the Albanian Front. As the men retreat through the snow-covered landscapes of the bomb-scarred Greek countryside, the terrifying certainty that nothing will ever be the same again crushes their weary human souls.