It wasn't the sort of place people usually see a movie in. No boorish
Moorish architecture, no chewing gum under the seats. Instead, the hall
was a deep blue nave, immensely high and still, looped gracefully with
golden galleries. And the images on the screen were not the sort one
sees at the average alhambra. No Tammy, no Debbie, no winning of the
West. Instead, a bear roamed and roared in a Mexican mansion and a
regiment of French actors fought the American Civil War and a samurai
disemboweled himself right there in front of everybody. The first New York Film Festival, now at Lincoln Center's Philharmonic
Hall, must confess its infancy compared to Cannes and to Venice, which
had its first film festival in 1932. But by its taste and high
excitement, by the quality of its films and the intelligence of its
sellout crowds, it may well mark for Americans a redefinition of what
movies are and who it is that sees them. For in the decade since
Hollywood came unstuck and television became the reigning medium of
mass entertainment, the movies have suddenly and powerfully emerged as
a new and brilliant international art, indeed as perhaps the central
and characteristic art of the age. All the World's . . . The new status of cinema has largely been achieved
by movies from abroad, by an array of vigorous and original creators
who live and work in every quarter of the globe. At the heart of the new
movement is a hardy little band of inspired pioneers: Japan's Akira Kurosawa
; Sweden's Ingmar Bergman ; France's Alain
Resnais and Francois Truffaut ; Italy's
Federico Fellini , Michelangelo Antonioni and
Luchino Visconti ; England's Tony Richardson
; Poland's Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski
; Argentina's Leopoldo Torre Nilsson ;
India's Satyajit Ray . Their imitators are legion. All over the world—in Canada, Greece,
Brazil, Japan, Israel, Hungary and both Germanys, even in Moscow and
immoderately in Manhattan—cinemania has descended upon the rising
generation. Young men at all hours of the day and night stalk through the
streets clutching fleaweight cameras and proclaiming prophetically a new
religion of cinema. Its creed has been passionately enunciated by Director
Truffaut. “It is necessary,” he once cried, “to film another thing
in another spirit. It is necessary to abandon these expensive,
disorderly, insalubrious studios. The sun costs less than a battery of
lights. A borrowed camera, some cheap film, a friend's apartment,
friends to play the parts, and above all the faith, the rage of the
cinema—the rage to storm the barricade, to use this way of
expression—the way of the future, the art of the future. A revolution of
intentions is beginning. No longer do we trust in the old labels, the
established themes. To express ourselves! To be free, free of
prejudice, free of the old cult of technique, free of everything, to be
madly ambitious and madly sincere!”
