SOURCE: Wilson, David. Review of Taking Off, by Milos Forman. Sight and Sound 40, no. 4 (autumn 1971): 221-22.

In the following positive review, Wilson discusses Forman's understated directing technique in Taking Off.

‘I think I speak English well enough to understand the “first row.” But what's behind that, the double meanings, and all the nuances, which are very beautiful, always this is difficult for me.’ Milos Forman needn't have worried about those nuances. Taking Off, which he made in America last summer, is replete with them.

We say we'd like to see ourselves as others see us, but we don't always like what we see. The Czech firemen weren't too pleased about The Firemen's Ball, and Americans—to judge at least from American critical reaction—are somewhat disgruntled by Taking Off. Forman himself tells a story which illuminates the wrongheadedness of this reaction (life, as always, imitating art): when he...