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Andrew Sarris has long been one of America's most celebrated writers on film, author of the seminal work The American Cinema, and for decades a highly regarded critic, first for The Village Voice and more recently for The New York Observer. Now comes Sarris's definitive statement on film, in a masterwork that has taken 25 years to complete.
Here is a sweeping--and highly personal--history of American film, from the birth of the talkies (beginning with The Jazz Singer and Al Jolson's memorable line "You ain't heard nothin' yet") to the decline of the studio system. By far the largest section of the book celebrates the work of the great American film directors, with giants such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks examined film by film. Sarris also offers glowing portraits of major stars, from Garbo and Bogart to Ingrid Bergman, Margaret Sullavan, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. There is a tour of the studios--Metro, Paramount, RKO, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal--revealing how each left its own particular stamp on film. And in perhaps the most interesting and original section, we are treated to an informative look at film genres--the musical, the screwball comedy, the horror picture, the gangster film, and the western.
A lifetime of watching and thinking about cinema has gone into this book. It is the history that film buffs have been waiting for.
Interesting in places
| Customer Rating:   | | I'll never quite understand why Sarris is held in such regard as a critic. I know he "introduced" auteur theory to the states and he certainly seems intelligent enough. His writing, though, is frequently almost incomprehensible. I don't mind a meandering style, but these essays seem barely planned. The utterly pointless academespeak (Buster Keaton saving his father in "Steamboat Bill Jr." is termed "reverse Oedipal" for no clear reason) would lead one to expect a little more structure. I'm still giving this 3 stars though, because there do appear to be some interesting ideas here; they're just hopelessly buried. Case in point is his article about Harold Lloyd. I do understand BASICALLY what Sarris is trying to get at, but it could have been said in a paragraph or so. Towards the beginning of that essay, the reader runs across this unadorned doozy of a line - "It is hard to believe but Getting the Girl [his caps] was once interpreted as a convention that implied acceptance of the capitalist system". Oh really? And we're trying to CONTRAST Lloyd with Keaton and Chaplin? Sarris does manage to make the point that Lloyd was a more conventional figure than the other great silent comedians throughout the essay, but only just barely and only if you keep a close eye on exactly how many times he contradicts himself. I much prefer his "The American Cinema, Directors and Directions 1929-1968". The much shorter essays in that previous book are models of clarity in comparison. |
Sometimes Provocative Opinions But Never Ambiguous
| Customer Rating: | | This is indeed a book for film buffs. It is chock full of opinions, many of which you may disagree with. So what? Sarris examines a wide range of subjects (covering the 1927-1949 timeframe) which are organized within five chapters: The Hollywood Studios ["The Golden Age" at MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th-Century-Fox, RKO, Universal, and Columbia] Genres [e.g. the musical, gangster film, the horror film, the screwball comedy, the western, the film noir, the war film] Directors [e.g. Chaplin, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Welles, Sturges, Wilder, Capra, and Stevens]
Actors and Actresses [e.g. Garbo, Cagney, Bogart, Davis, Grant, Bergman, Harlow, Fields, the Marx Brothers, Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Lombard] Guilty Pleasures [e.g. the "B" picture]
Sarris then provides four appendices: Academy Award nominations and winners (1927-1949), New York Critics Circle Awards (1935-1949), Best Directors (1927-1949), and Best Performances (1929-1949). The various lists are interesting but the book's greatest appeal derives from the comprehensive coverage of 22 years of the American talking film's history in combination with Sarris' own opinions about most of those who created that history. I highly recommend this book to film buffs, not as a definitive history of the period (there is none) nor as the single best source of film criticism (there is none); rather, as a collection of thoughtful, generally well-written essays which inform as well as entertain. If you are a film buff and if, after reading this book you are motivated to see films you have not as yet seen or to see once again films you last saw years ago, Sarris will have achieved what seems to be his primary objective. |
A Subjective But Knowledgable Perspective
| Customer Rating: | | This is a book for film buffs. It is chock full of opinions, many of which you may disagree with. So what? Sarris examines a wide range of subjects (covering the 1927-1949 timeframe) which are organized within five chapters: The Hollywood Studios ["The Golden Age" at MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th-Century-Fox, RKO, Universal, and Columbia] Genres [eg the musical, gangster film, the horror film, the screwball comedy, the western, the film noir, the war film] Directors [eg Chaplin, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Welles, Sturges, Wilder, Capra, and Stevens] Actors and Actresses [eg Garbo, Cagney, Bogart, Davis, Grant, Bergman, Harlow, Fields, the Marx Brothers, Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Lombard] Guilty Pleasures [eg the "B" picture] Sarris then provides four appendices: Academy Award nominations and winners (1927-1949), New York Critics Circle Awards (1935-1949), Best Directors (1927-1949), and Best Performances (1929-1949). The various lists are interesting but the book's greatest appeal derives from the comprehensive coverage of 22 years of the American talking film's history in combination with Sarris' own opinions about most of those who created that history. I highly recommend this book to film buffs, not as a definitive history of the period (there is none) nor as the single best source of film criticism (there is none); rather, as a collection of thoughtful, generally well-written essays which inform as well as entertain. If you are a film buff and if, after reading this book you are motivated to see films you have not as yet seen or to see once again films you last saw years ago, Sarris will have achieved what seems to be his primary objective. |
An Idiosyncratic Tour of Golden Age Hollywood
| Customer Rating: | | This book is a delight for anyone who loves the films of Hollywood's studio-driven "golden age" of the 1930s and 40s. Reading Sarris's (mostly) short essays is like being walked through a film storage vault by a knowledgeable, opinionated old tour guide who's seen every picture and seemingly met everyone who helped to make them. You may not always agree with his take on the pictures you know well, but he's always worth listening to. And you finish the tour ready to spend the next several weekends watching all the great movies that he's pointed out to you. Sarris's treatments of individual directors are, by a long shot, the best part of the book. His essays on actors, mostly shorter and less comprehensive, are also well worth the reading. The observations on genres and studios seem sketchy by comparison, especially by comparison with books like Ethan Mordden's _Hollywood Studios_. The essays stand well on their own, which makes the book ideal for reading in essay-at-a-time chunks, but keeps it from being a comprehensive introduction to the period. If you want to read one and only one book on classic Hollywood movies, this isn't it. If you want to read, several, this should certainly be one of them. |
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