Taking Off

The long audition sequence that opens the film is not staged. Forman placed a real casting call, hundreds of young women turned up, and the camera recorded them singing one after another. Among them was an unknown Kathy Bates, credited as Bobo Bates, performing a song called Even Horses Had Wings. It was her first film work. This was Miloš Forman's first American picture, made after Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball: a director newly arrived from Czechoslovakia looking at the American middle class from outside. A couple search for the daughter who has run away from home and lose themselves in the process. Lynn Carlin and Buck Henry play the parents. It won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes in 1971, shared with Johnny Got His Gun. Critics liked it; the box office did not. Who it is for: viewers who want the late-sixties generation gap seen from the bewildered parents' side rather than the children's. Who it is not for: anyone needing a plot. It advances by observation, the scenes connect loosely, and it has no interest in arriving anywhere.