>In the "Magnificent Seven" everything is built according to canons that cannot be destroyed. Everything is already known in advance. The audience knows what is going to happen, but still watches as it all neatly resolves in typical Western manner. This is not art. This is a commercial enterprise, no matter what marvelous ideas you embellish it with. Everything is false and absurd.
>In Venice I saw the Anglo-American film "Lolita", a tale about the love between a forty-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl. The film is empty from beginning to end, and I didn't feel anything but sadness and disgust as I watched it. The cinema of the future must certainly move away from this abyss.
>"2001: A Space Odyssey" is phony on many points, even for specialists – an intricate 'examination' of the technological processes of the future which transforms the emotional foundation of a film, as a work of art, into a lifeless schema with only pretensions to truth.
>"The Godfather" seems to me, in general, boring, unoriginal, and extremely unimaginative in its means of expression.
>I watched Coppola's "Apocalypse Now". Very weak lead actor and a misguided dramaturgy, like a cartoon.
>We attempted to watch "Manhattan". I left in the middle. Monstrous boredom and a totally unglamourous actor [Woody Allen] who tries too hard to be charming.
>I watched the monstrously disgusting "Possession". Money, money, money, money... Nothing real, nothing true. No beauty, no truth, no sincerity, nothing. Made just for money's sake... It's unbearable to watch.
>"Amadeus" – 8 Oscars, and so mediocre! Not terrible, but not very human either.
>I watched the much talked about "The Exorcist". Scary stuff. Von Sydow plays one of the leads. Very good.
>The brutality and low acting skills in "Terminator" are unfortunate, but, as a vision of the future and the relation between man and his destiny, the film pushes the frontiers of cinema as an art form.
