The 11th New York Film Festival was one of the shortest (18 films, most of them shown twice) in the Festival's history and one of its least spectacular, yet it sold out immediately, mostly through advance mail orders from people on the Festival's own mailing list. What was good in this year's program was very good, but it had more j than its share of dreck and pretentious dreck at that, even the most deadly of which was screened to a capacity audience. Are people so starved for classy films they'll go see anything the Festival offers up? Yes, even if it means paying for the privilege of booing in comfortable seats. There are so few elite " activities left these days. But the Festival does provide a service even for those who can't get in by introducing new directors (although too often they're the same new ones all the time) and spurring interest in old ones. If distributors seem to have lost interest in the careers of Satyajit Ray, Joseph Losey or Ermanno Olmi, the Festival can usually be depended upon to keep us up to date and give the distributors a nudge at the same time.

As with programs in the past, a good number of the films screened this year will not be given a general release — some we are being spared, but others we are being greatly deprived of. Jean Eustache's extraordinary The Mother and The Whore, for example, is terrifically demanding, not only because of its length (3 Vi hours) but its relentless talk, and for that reason is unlikely to be shown in this country. Yet it was one of the Festival's best films and probably one of the best films to come out of France in the past year. Oh well.