City’s First Festival Ages Well
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Back in the dark and wild years before YouTube, marathons like the New York Film Festival served as essential cultural portals for the would-be cinematic wonderkids of the world. Every nouvelle vague first lapped at American shores each September at Lincoln Center, whose film society began producing the event in 1962 — concluding just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis — and has unspooled more than a thousand films since.
The 44th annual showcase opens tonight with screenings of “The Queen,” Stephen Frears’s nimble social study that redeems comedy from tragedy — the 1997 death of Princess Diana — in its portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) reluctantly defrosting herself to deal with a nation’s outpouring of grief. Ms. Mirren, who can do regal even when fluffing around in a nightgown, is the perfect opening night star. She’s the graciously accessible grande dame-in-the-making whose face betrays no touch of Botox, and when, as Her Royal Highness, her stiff upper lip finally quivers, that minute tremor is a necessary reminder: They had faces then, but a few still have faces now.
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