Cinema: Saturday's Children

Saturday Morning is a documentary, scarcely 90 minutes long, that depicts an encounter session involving a group of California teenagers. It is so deeply felt and subtly crafted that it imparts, despite the short running time, a sense of participation in the group experiment. But all this says nothing of the film's human impact: its unrelenting urgency in conveying the depths of the emotional problems that brought the teen agers together. Saturday Morning is, in short, a rare cinematic record of sorrow and discovery.

Producer-Director Kent Mackenzie spent a year interviewing the kids,...