In a 10.18 piece about the BAM/NYFCC 1962 tribute, which starts on 10.23, N.Y. Times critic A.O. Scott writes that “one lesson of the great films of 1962 is that the old is always sending out a few flickers of glory even as the new is restlessly being born…the moment of change is always now.”
That’s a rich and exciting thought, but otherwise Scott’s article is an elegantly phrased hand job. The BAM/NYFCC ’62 tribute is far too modest — almost a token shell of a program. As I pointed out in a 10.6.09 HE article, Armond White’s selections — for the most part well chosen — represent only a fraction of the 1962 films that could still be called stirring and provocative. With at least 35 or 36 such films overlooked, the tribute won’t even screen half of the ’62 films that should have been shown. As I mentioned earlier, it’s like issuing an album of Rolling Stones greatest hits and ignoring everything they recorded after 1965.