Review by John Adams

Although it is a documentary about the 1960s, don't expect to see hippies and Woodstock in A Cat Without A Grin. Those tired American stereotypes play no part in Chris Marker's four-hour, three-ring-circus of a film. The main attraction in A Cat Without A Grin is Paris in May of 1968... which was a sort of a French Woodstock in that it's a watershed event by which all others are judged. Student demonstrators took to the streets and battled with police and a general strike almost toppled the government.

Marker is an accomplished filmmaker... he directed La Jetée (1962, the inspiration for12 Monkeys), Sans Soleil (1983) and the Akira Kurosawa documentary AK (1985). In the 1960's he was making Left-looking documentaries on politics in France and Europe and of course filming on the streets during May '68.

Crowded onto the same stage of A Cat Without A Grin are Russian tanks in Prague, Che Guevara in South America, the American War in Viet Nam and Chairman Mao's Red Guards in China. The common thread connecting all of them was the sudden appearance of a new international Leftist movement hell bent on confronting the conservative "Establishment"... whoever that might be.

The film is one long montage of images and impressions from around the years 1967 to 1973. Unless you are really up on your history, most of it will be a jumble of people marching in the streets and cops cracking heads. Occasionally I would see a scene I recognized ... National Guard troops marching across the lawn at Kent State, Ohio, and the effect on me was electrifying. To a French audience familiar with the history, the film as a whole must be quite a ride. This will probably confuse an American audience whose repressed understanding of history can allow the names 'socialist' and 'fascist' to be equated without a blush.

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