AllMovie

This dramatic retrospective from Marco Ferreri eulogizes the passing of cinema as a culturally vital art form. While not all will agree with Ferreri's thesis that cinema for the masses is a lost art and has become an elitist endeavor, the director, using a combination of archival documentary footage, wide-ranging snippets from old and new films, and reenactments, makes some compelling arguments. One of his chief theses is that the decline of cinema was marked by the loss of the great movie houses where people from all walks gathered to form a unique, transitory microcosm of society that abided, if only briefly, by different rules from those in the "real" world outside.