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The auteur theory, of which film criticAndrew Sarris was the leading American proponent, holds that artistry in cinema can be largely attributed to film directors, who, while often working against the strictures of studios, producers, and scriptwriters, manage to infuse each film in their oeuvre with their personal style. Sarris's The American Cinema, the bible of auteur studies, is a history of American film in the form of a lively guide to the work of two hundred film directors, from Griffith, Chaplin, and von Sternberg to Mike Nichols, Stanley Kubrick, and Jerry Lewis. In addition, the book includes a chronology of the most important American films, an alphabetical list of over 6000 films with their directors and years of release, and the seminal essays "Toward a Theory of Film History" and "The Auteur Theory Revisited." Over twenty-five years after its initial publication, The American Cinema remains perhaps the most influential book ever written on the subject.
The bible of film criticism...
| Customer Rating:  | If you don't know this book, buy it immediately. It takes American film criticism up to about 1970 and coincides with the time Sarris was involved with the (real) Village Voice, Jonas Mekas, American Cahiers,and the founding of the NY Film Festival and the national society of film critics. It took me about five years of reading his reviews until I finally got it - Sarris had understood that the most profound thoughts and themes were played out with style and panache by genre filmmakers with personal obsessions and ideas that did not require Western Union to spell it out.
There's some things to quibble about (I never could see why he thought so highly of Blake Edwards, but I keep trying because I trust his insight. Even Sarris can change his mind as he did on Billy Wilder a few years back).
If you are a film buff and have not discovered his work (also recommended:
Confessions of a Cultist; The John Ford Mystery Book; You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet are among the best) start here. That goes double if you experience guilty pleasure and see things no one else does in people like Anthony Mann, Michael Powell, Sam Fuller, Max Ophuls, Budd Boetticher or James Whale. I have often given this book as a gift to film loving friends. It opens a world of discovery and rapport when a friends "gets it" and suddenly, you both have a shared sensibility and frame of reference.
Also, check out his website for yearly top ten lists and also the work of his wife Molly Haskell (especially good on Howard Hawks). |
Infuriating and Indispensable.
| Customer Rating: | | This volume parses the good guys from the bad guys, tells you whom you should love and why, and summarily dismisses the ones not worth taking seriously. In other words, for good or bad, it arms you, as will no other film book ever written, with a set of eloquently-stated prejudices that may seal off certain directors from your serious consideration for all time. (It would be too glib to say that this is the books best and worst point.) Suffice to say, it has taken years for me to tear down the wall Sarris built between me, as a budding cinephile, and William Wyler, Billy Wilder, John Huston and even John Frankenheimer, for that matter. (These are just a few of the ones I think he was, or may have been, wrong about.) But I love this book and always find it worth picking up to reread a few entries, for two or three reasons that never grow old: 1) Sarris IS an absolutely remarkable writer. His prose bristles with alternately apt and acid phrases and insights. The parallel between Ambrose Bierce and Sarris has grown on me through the years. (I think it was Sarris who brought currency to the word "pretentious"-- possibly THE serious put-down word from the 70s to the 90s, possibly to the present-- by the way. He used it with unerring surgical delicacy, as a bludgeon.) 2) He is hard to argue with in his negative evaluation of certain other respected directors. Thirty-five years ago, Sarris renounced Kubrick, noting, in typical form, that the very fact that he made one film every 5 years seemed to be all the proof his advocates needed of his integrity. Ouch! And he said that Kubrick is the director of the best coming attractions in the business. This last is highly prophetic of the present general situation, when Hollywood has made a sort of science of over-selling weak films with absurdly hyperbolic trailers that often have little to do with the tone or experience of the films they advertise. This comment indicates also how much of Sarris is audaciously arguable, and out of synch with conservative academia re Kubrick and just about everything else. --Not a bad thing, as far as I am concerned.) And I think he was also decades ahead of the curve in recognizing Keaton as Chaplin's better. 3) He has been, for decades, an antidote to Pauline Kael. Period. If you know the directors covered well enough to take it all with a grain of salt where needed, this book is probably the best read on movies and their directors from the second and third quarters of the 20th Century that will ever be written. THE great mapping out of this seminal period by the auteur theorys chief surveyor-- and a fun and drolly amusing place to pick up your snazzy-looking anti-philistine, anti-pretentious attitude off-the-rack. |
The American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929-1968
| Customer Rating: | | There are few books on cinema that are more important than this title. To any serious student of film this book is perhaps the only book that you will refer to as long as you watch films. |
Indispensable
| Customer Rating: | | Extolling the virtues of The American Cinema would be too hard. Beside being an invaluable reference for cinema between 1929-1968, it also contains wonderful peices of film theory. Because of this The American Cinema can be read a few pages at a time or you can completely dwelve into the material. No matter the method, Sarris will engage you in a meaningful dialogue of film. Film literature is rarely able to be this give and take. Those with an above average inclination toward cinema should purchase. |
The single most important book of American film criticism.
| Customer Rating: | | When it first appeared in the late '60s, Sarris' book was literally memorized by critics, students and teachers. It provided a root approach to discussing film, quickly absorbed, and readily shaped to one's personal tastes. A beautiful combination of reference and aesthetic, it ushered in the era of "the director as superstar," and was completely absorbed by everyone in film. Unfortunately, its absorption was so complete, the author, Mr. Sarris, was for the most part uncredited and unrewarded. |
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