14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Toronto Star
TIFF's 50-film anniversary series kicks off with ‘The Princess Bride,' while adding many surprises
The influential French critic André Bazin once posited that for a certain kind of moviegoer, film festivals represented a form of sanctuary: a sacred space, separated out from regular society and predicated on devotion and defined by ritual and routine. 'Fully fledged participation,' he wrote, 'is like provisionally being admitted to convent life.'
He wrote 'The Festival Viewed as a Religious Order' in 1955, from the sunny climes of Cannes, which was then celebrating its tenth anniversary. Two decades later, in 1976, the Toronto International Film Festival launched its inaugural edition, attracting 35,000 attendees. In lieu of a cloistered, monastic order, the festival's founders cultivated their start-up as party central; contra Bazin's pious allegory, most of TIFF's downtown revelers would more likely be seen at last call than morning Mass.
