Just to take in Grin's first few moments, a mash-up of Battleship Potemkin and police whacking May '68 protesters, is to see a mind sifting through chaos and making beautiful, critical sense of it.

A masterpiece among masterpieces, the two-part, three-hour A Grin Without a Cat is Chris Marker's most ambitious, clear-headed string of cinematic clauses and ideological couplets, and also his most impenetrable.

While it regards 1967 as the key turning point of the 20th century, and returns again and again to images of dissidents in the streets, it's alarmingly current.

A Grin Without a Cat is a potently poetic diatribe regarding political fervor, social upheaval, and oppression of all kinds.