
While randomly browsing the online archives of Harper’s Magazine, a perk affixed to my print subscription and something of a problem when real work needs to be wrapped up, I happily stumbled into this:
“A director,” Lang said one day while leaving the Palais at Cannes, “should lead a full life. The trouble with some directors today” –here he gestured back at the film he had just seen– “is that their experience is too narrow. All they seem to know is other movies.”
The above makes an appearance in a piece titled, “The Annual Rites at Cannes,” by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. The Lang mentioned is, of course, Fritz, who was president of the competition jury in 1964, the year the article was written.
A fun game: replace “director” with “film-critic” in the above and you have, I don’t know, something of an idea of what it feels like reading reports coming out of the festival this year. Or most years, for that matter.