Film Forum

(1970) Marcello Mastroianni’s aristocratic ornithologist, living passively in a Notting Hill mansion he inherited in the middle of a ghetto, is awoken from his idle lifestyle when he witnesses the exploitation of his West Indian neighbors – and he hatches a plan to level the playing field. Boorman’s experimental socio-economic satire was rewarded with the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival.   Approx. 103 mins. 35mm.

Reviews

“Strange and wonderful. This is one of the treasures of the series, a sociopolitically astute European art film made by a man with the heart of an Irishman… A visually magnetic, diamond-edged essay about voyeurism, alienation, and painful class divisions, like a cross between REAR WINDOW and THE LANDLORD – (it) isn’t about the magnanimous white savior, but about the necessity of almost literally exploding everything we think we know about race and class.”
– Stephanie Zacharek, Village Voice

“A most engagingly shy and sensitive Marcello Mastroianni, in a performance of great self-effacing intelligence.”
– Roger Greenspun, The New York Times

“A very fine, neglected and stylish 1970 movie… Boorman's movie, which won him Cannes' Best Director prize, has satiric, serious and romantic sides. And though it drove Fellini crazy when Mastroianni praised it, it's also the most Felliniesque of Boorman's films.”
– Michael Wilmington, The Chicago Tribune