If you are a film buff of a certain age, you almost
certainly have somewhere on your bookshelf a battered, well-thumbed paperback copy
of Andrew Sarris’
The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, one of the handful of truly indispensable
books about movies ever published. I’m the proud owner of a first-edition copy,
purchased back in the day for the princely sum of $2.95, and I can’t begin to
tell you how many times I have stolen from… er, referenced it, and been
inspired by it, during the past several decades.
It’s the book that more or less established the ground rules
for judging the works of key American film directors (and foreign filmmakers
who dabbled in English-language cinema) according to the standards of
the auteur theory, a still-controversial concept -- despite the
contributions of myriad collaborators, every significant film ultimately
reflects the vision of one individual, its director, who is that film’s sole “author”
– that originated with French critics (and future filmmakers) such as
Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, but was popularized on these shores by the
esteemed Andrew Sarris himself. Like millions of other academics, film critics and plain ol' movie buffs, I devoured the volume at an impressionable age, and took Sarris' judgments (even those I disagreed with) to heart.
I was honored to meet Sarris on just a few occasions, most memorably
during a panel discussion at the
1989
Sarasota French Film Festival, when I found myself on stage next to him and
Molly Haskell, his lovely wife and fellow cineaste, and silently
thanked God that the festival organizers inexplicably considered me worthy to
be seated up there alongside them (and a few other august folks). The effortlessly ingratiating couple
actually made me feel, fleetingly, like an equal – but, of course, I knew, and
know, better.
At the time, I asked Sarris, politely but eagerly, when he might be
writing a sequel to his masterwork. Sarris smiled warmly – as I’m sure he
smiled the zillion or so other times some acolyte posed the same question – and
offered a vague promise of “considering” the idea. Truth to tell, though, I
always suspected that, like most film critics, he had a natural-born aversion
to sequels.
Andrew Sarris
died Wednesday at the age of 83 – decades after solidifying
his position among the pantheon of influential and essential American film
critics, and after more than six decades of offering erudite, perceptive, and
just plain fun to read essays and reviews for The Village Voice, New York
Observer and other outlets. To give you some idea of his range: He was one of
the first U.S. critics to recognize
the
greatness of Psycho – his
annual Ten Best
lists routinely embraced a stunning diversity of films and filmmakers – and
nearly 50 years later, he chose, with an almost gleefully defiant fervor,
Juno as the best American movie of 2007.
My deepest sympathies and best wishes go out to Molly
Haskell, and to those friends and colleagues who knew Sarris intimately. As for
myself, I feel disconsolately melancholy right now, as I consider
that halcyon era
– roughly speaking, the early 1960s to the late ‘70s – when film critics like
Sarris, Haskell, Pauline Kael,
Stanley Kauffmann,
Judith Crist and a young
whippersnapper named Roger Ebert wrote passionately and provocatively about
cinema as art and entertainment. At the risk of sounding like someone besotted
with nostalgia: It was a time when films and the people who wrote about them
seemed a great deal more substantial, and were taken much more seriously, than
they are in our present time.
At the same time, though, I think of Sarris maintaining his
enthusiasm and optimism for cinema as long as he did. And I think of my friend
Roger Ebert turning 70 a couple days ago, still going strong and writing
brilliantly. With those two inspiring examples to guide me, how can I let a
little thing like my upcoming 60th birthday slow me down? Besides, I should remind myself, as I often remind my students, that great movies still are being
made. And today, arguably now more than ever, those great movies – and the auteurs who make them – still need dedicated
champions to keep spreading the good word.
