Review of the Elgin Festival at the Elgin Theatre, where Keaton films are being shown. All ten of his full-length features and a lot of his rare two-reelers are included. Gilliatt tells about this Keaton’s work and about an interview she had with him in 1964, when he was 69, two years before his death.
The above headline is taken from Dr. David Reuben’s book Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex but Were Afraid To Ask, a waggish tome now turned into a cockeyed and sometimes insanely funny film of the same name, written and directed by Woody Allen.
The key of the brilliant comic tone of the film is in the title. What makes the picture so funny, terrifying and horribly believable is that everyone in the film really has learned to stop worrying, as smokers do about lung cancer after living with the statistics for a bit.
Penelope Gilliatt interview with Vladimir Nabokov, for American Vogue, 1966
I think Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is some sort of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor.