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With great comic set-pieces, Forman's first American film is an astute exploration of the sixties generation gap. It's like an American Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, says Julian Upton.

When teenager Jeannie Tyne ‘takes off’ without a word, her baffled parents embark on a raucous journey not just to find her, but to understand the youth culture that seems to have claimed her. So begins Milos Forman’s first US film, a hippie-era classic that rivals Mike Nichols’ The Graduate as an astute exploration of how the late-sixties generation gap affected middle-class American mores (and surpasses that film for laugh-out-loud comedy).

Another link to the Nichols movie is Buck Henry - the mildly deviant person’s Jack Lemmon - as Jeannie’s stiff-collared father (Henry co-wrote and appeared in The Graduate). His deadpan versatility shines as he and Mrs Tyne (Lynn Carlin) submit to the counterculture; the scene where they join a group of similarly bemused parents to learn how to smoke a joint is one of the great comic set pieces of seventies’ American cinema. For all that, Taking Off feels like a very European film. One of its screenwriters is Jean-Claude Carriere, who the following year scripted Bunuel’s highly comparable The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

 

Julian Upton on 13th September 2011
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