1961-1970 Crime Film Noir Greece Vangelis Serdaris

Vangelis Serdaris – Listeia stin Athina AKA Robbery in Athens (1969)

adminApril 5, 2021

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Three young people have decided to rob the safe of the estate agent Thomas Christidis, whose office is in the center of Athens. The first of them is Ntinos, who is Christidis’ clerk, the second one is Stavros, Ntinos’ younger brother who works as a book representative, while their friend Michalis is a pirate taxi-driver. The robbery is successful, and they feel excited (tainiothiki.gr)

Vangelis Serdaris’ Robbery in Athens (Listeia stin Athina, 1969) was an accomplished and masterful attempt to reinvent film noir by infusing it with a new sense of filmic temporality through an elongation of time, a slowing down of action, and a prolonging of silences (not unlike Jules Dassin’s 1955 Rififi).

In his film debut, Serdaris explores the underworld of Athens with remarkable honesty, psychological characterization, and impartiality. His camera discreetly pans in and out to capture an unpredictable contrast between internal and external space, employing expressionist techniques, which transform the urban landscape into a surrealist nightmare.

Unfortunately, the film didn’t receive the attention it deserved, not evenfor its delirious music by Nikos Theodosiadis. Given also the fact that some of the most important representatives of the new cinema contributed to its making (Theo Angelopoulos, Pandelis Voulgaris, Dimos Theos, and others), one could claim that Serdaris’ movie was one of the main links between the commercial cinema of the 1960s and the aesthetics of the New Greek Cinema that was to emerge several years later (Vrasidas Karalis – A History of Greek Cinema)