Theo Angelopoulos’s visually striking political thriller focuses on the events that transpire after a trade unionist is assassinated at a rally. A former police informer is arrested for the murder, and he manages to create a governmental crisis by holding a conservative MP as hostage in his prison cell. The film was made under threat of censorship, which, according to Angelopoulos, led him to change the film’s formal structure to emphasize what is unspoken; the attractive use of composition often suggests the work of Antonioni (1972). (JR)