Best of Youth

~ Lincoln Spector

Just a quick, off-schedule announcement. I went to the Balboa yesterday and finally saw The Best of Youth. It is, quite simply, fantastic–the best two-part, six-hour movie since Godfather I and II. Originally made for Italian television, it follows the fortunes of one family, a close circle of their friends, and the Italian people as a whole, from 1966 to 2003.

Okay, I’m a sucker for historical epics. I love to sit in a theater for hours, watching fictitious people cope with the changes brought about by actual historical events. I’m no expert on recent Italian history. I remember the Communist terrorists who made headlines there for many years, but I have no idea whether the movement to reform insane asylums that provides one subplot is historical or entirely fictitious (I suspect it was historical). But during that time in the Balboa, I felt that I had lived with these people through all those dramatic decades. But it was life, as Alfred Hitchcock said, “with the boring bits taken out.”

Best of Youth plays at least through Thursday at the Balboa. I should know in a few days if the run will be extended another week after that. Parts 1 and 2 require separate admissions, and the schedules switch from day to day, so you can see, for instance, Part 1 at 7:45 tonight and Part 2 at 7:45 on Monday. The Balboa’s Reel San Francisco festival runs on the theater’s other screen.

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Published by Lincoln Spector

Lincoln Spector writes about cinema, technology, and cinema technology. From 1986 through 2008, he wrote Gigglebytes, the first technology-oriented humor column. From 1977 through 2016, he wrote PC World's Answer Line column and blog.