Jerzy Skolimowski's "Le Départ" is the best the "new cinema" has come up with thus far…. It is the kind of film that makes one forget tedious hours of watching tedious miles of young filmmakers' attempts; the kind of film that in one blow justifies it all….

"Le Départ" is modern cinema—digested and carried forward. Skolimowski accomplishes the feat of playing on what is evident and what is arbitrary in cinema, moving his audience forward with shots that begin as one thing and reveal quite another, with attitudes and lines of dialogue that question themselves, the film, and us…. Skolimowski is modern in the most post-McLuhan sense of modernity—everything can be true. Certainties and conditioned reflexes turn into question marks and puns, our points of reference are ridiculed…. The shocks and visual inventions are never gratuitous, really, and Skolimowski even brings home his message...