New York Film Festival

After gorging on the sort of films that are available, nay, mandatory, at the New York Film Festival (which unreeled in late September at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center), the viewer should probably mistrust his eyes, mind and prose style for weeks to come. To attend, and then comprehend, all of the footage shown during the Festival requires preternatural gifts, among which bilocation is the least taxing. To then write about the experience with any clarity and compassion is an almost impossible task. Something tends to split in the critic: if not his personality, then at least his infinitives. The reviewer’s mind is bombarded by so much “plastic material” that it runs the risk of turning into it.

But enough critical kvetching. The Sixth New York Film Festival presented 24 feature films in Philharmonic Hall, and many more features and shorts in an adjacent auditorium during these twelve days of chaos. Half of the Philharmonic films were of French origin; of the others, three were German, three Czech, two American; Brazil, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Sweden each contributed one. In keeping with the aesthetic, if not ascetic, tone of the place and purpose, the films were mostly “difficult.”

RC

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Richard Corliss

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After gorging on the sort of films that are available, nay, mandatory, at the New York Film Festival (which unreeled in late September at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center), the viewer should probably mistrust his eyes, mind and prose style for weeks to come. To attend, and then comprehend, all of the footage shown during the Festival requires preternatural gifts, among which bilocation is the least taxing. To then write about the experience with any clarity and compassion is an almost impossible task. Something tends to split in the critic: if not his personality, then at least his infinitives. The reviewer’s mind is bombarded by so much “plastic material” that it runs the risk of turning into it.

But enough critical kvetching. The Sixth New York Film Festival presented 24 feature films in Philharmonic Hall, and many more features and shorts in an adjacent auditorium during these twelve days of chaos. Half of the Philharmonic films were of French origin; of the others, three were German, three Czech, two American; Brazil, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Sweden each contributed one. In keeping with the aesthetic, if not ascetic, tone of the place and purpose, the films were mostly “difficult.”