Shot in stark black-and-white by Giorgos Arvanitis, the cinematographer Angelopoulos worked with through the late 1990s, this first feature, a crime story set in the present, introduces Angelopoulos’ visual strategy and his core theme. Under rain clouds and mountains, the disenfranchised inhabitants of a forsaken village reenact Greek tragedy as the economy and the police herd them to destruction. This true-crime tale, influenced by the interrogation scenes in Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil and his version of Kafka’s The Trial, combines film noir, neorealism and alienation. Reconstruction signaled a decisive break in Greek cinema from its Golden Age of the 1950s and ‘60s, the Melina Mercouri and Zorba the Greek period of high-grade international entertainment that brought Greece to the world stage and into pop-culture consciousness.