Review

Chris Marker’s epic, lyrical A Grin Without a Cat is a documentary-essay of enormous power that tracks the political upheavals of the sixties and seventies both in the United States and abroad. And we love it all the same! Originally released in 1978 and now screening as part of Lincoln Center’s “1968: An International Perspective” film series, it consists of hundreds of grainy clips of police combating rioting demonstrators and guerrillas crawling through untamed forests (with laconic voice-over from the director himself). The film attests to Marker’s eye for startling images and characteristic details, and the violence and strange beauty of those images is overwhelming to behold. — Tayt Harlin