Cinephilia Lives

On the February 18 Film Week, I offhandedly commented on the radically diminished U.S. audience for foreign language movies. As an example, I mentioned French filmmaker Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973), which at nearly four hours of scenes of subtitled conversations, had people lined up at theaters. Nothing like that, I mournfully said, would happen nowadays.

Unknown to me, Cinefamily had booked Eustache's movie for a one-night run just six days later at their home, The Silent Movie Theater. I shuffled on over to see it and luckily bought my ticket an hour before the show was scheduled to start. Lo and behold, the show sold out and the audience was overwhelmingly composed of young men and women in their 20s.

I've rarely been happier to be wrong. Finally, there's a new generation of film lovers who are intelligent, curious, and energetic.