Given the current state of international cinema, where
titanic auteurs and formidable national cinemas in numerous countries largely
belong to the realm of memory, it’s understandable that some artistically
ambitious European directors would consciously refer back to what has been
called the Golden Age of the Art Film (roughly the 1950s- 70s). Happily, the
result of such retrospective awareness can be both impressive and invigorating.
Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Great Beauty” and Pawel
Pawlikowski’s “Ida” are recent examples of films that look to cinemas past (of
Italy and Poland, respectively) for inspiration yet are so full of their own