Taking Off
We had the unexpected treat of watching the first American film by Miloš Forman, Taking Off, at the Wexner Center last night as part of a traveling retrospective of his work.
The director was present to discuss this satire from the early seventies about parents struggling to make sense of the counterculture which seemed to be driving their children away from them.
Mr. Forman told the audience about one of his earliest memories of the cinema. When he was a little boy living in Czechoslovakia, his parents took him to the city on a Saturday evening to see a film. It was a documentary about The Bartered Bride, an opera by Bedřich Smetana. But the film was silent. The way the singers mouths opened wide reminded him of fish. The opera was so familiar to the audience that they gradually began to sing the songs until the room was filled with their voices and emotion.
[Fresh Air interview from Feb. 15, 2008]
