The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968

by Andrew Sarris

Since its publication in 1968, The American Cinema has been the manifesto of the auteur theory. Written by Andrew Sarris, the theory's chief advocate, the book traces the history of movies by examining the careers of more than 200 film directors. Covering everyone from D.W. Griffith to Francis Coppola, Orson Welles to Roman Polanski, Sarris argues that directorial greatness is marked by a personal style and consistency of excellence that can be traced throughout a career. Sarris's commentary is sometimes worshipful, sometimes acrid, but almost always quotable. Alfred Hitchcock is "the supreme technician of the American cinema." John Huston coasted "on his reputation as a wronged individualist with an alibi for every bad movie." Stanley Kubrick holds "a naive faith in the power of images to transcend fuzzy feelings and vague ideas." Michelangelo Antonioni makes films so pessimistic and alienating that Sarris dubs him "Antoniennui."

You may not agree with all of Sarris's assessments, but this book provides the best possible opportunity to consider auteurism, an approach to cinema that, in an age that reveres Scorsese, Spielberg, and Tarantino, seems more relevant than ever. The book closes with an essay called "The Auteur Theory Revised," Sarris's attempt at a definitive theoretical statement. --Raphael Shargel

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Criticism, Art, History, Pop Culture

383 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Most famous for his 1962 essay "Notes on the Auteur theory" which popularized this film criticism technique in America. He wrote for the Village Voice criticing films and literature before bringing the Auteur theory from France to America and employing it in analysis of Hitchcock's film Psycho.
He wrote for The New York Observer until 2009 and was a professor at his alma mater, Columbia University where he taught courses on Internationl Film, Hitchcock, and American Cinema.

Trivia: The evil overlord from Galaxy Quest was named after him!

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

In my adolescence, in the school library of all places, my love of film was born. Compendiums of movie stars, guides to cult films and genre films and foreign films, and above all the film criticism of two diametrically opposed critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael and the Village Voice's Andrew Sarris... these books enchanted me and helped me to look at movies in completely different and deeper ways. Kael was warm-blooded passion, her writing style both witty and lusty; she scorned anything that felt too predetermined, too clinical. Sarris was cool intellect, an often dryly sardonic writer whose passions were more measured, an organized thinker who carefully divided up films in a way that I really connected to. Kael excited me, but her nemesis Sarris helped me to organize my own way of thinking about film. He is most remembered today for bringing the Auteur Theory of Cahiers du Cinéma to American shores. It was a completely eye-opening perspective that has stuck with me ever since. Although the Auteur Theory-despising Kael remains the more well-known figure, it is actually Sarris' ideas and passions that have ended up being the more influential in how film is written about today in various publications. And since his ideas were an extension of the concepts generated by Truffaut, Rohmer, Goddard, etc. in the pages of Cahiers, I suppose it can be said that, via Sarris, the French colonized the American way of writing about Le Cinéma.

The Auteur Theory maintains that it is the director's vision which is most responsible for a film's ultimate worth (or lack of worth); an "auteurist" who admires a director should therefore be able to appreciate all of that director's works, even their lesser ones. The auteurist rejects as soulless products those studio productions with anonymous directors lacking any appreciable personality: these are apparently the work of hacks, rather than works of genuine creativity. The auteurist considers the style and form of the film to be as or even more important than the plotting; they find joy in excavating an admired director's minor works because those films provide more examples of the consistency of that director's vision. The auteurist is a completist.

This book is an excellent intro to the Auteur Theory, and to the author's usually well-argued but not-exactly-definitive opinions. It comprehensively lists and divides up a large number of directors into various categories and reviews the quality of their key films. "Quality" is based on technical ability and how well their films showcase those abilities, and above all how much their perspective actually informs their films. Sarris evaluates a director through their style, themes, use of actors, and whether or not there is a constancy of ideas that becomes clear when studying their overall output. This is the umpteenth time I've read this book, although probably a couple of decades (at least) have passed since I've read it cover to cover. It remains a fascinating and illuminating read for me. His enthusiasm was contagious: Sarris' obsessions became my obsessions.

The book's flaws still annoy me: his snobby dismissiveness towards directors lacking a consistent vision and, less importantly, a small-minded rejection of anything Sarris deems to be decadent. The latter attitude unfortunately comes across as homophobic (e.g. he despises "camp" and regularly extolls the depiction of "healthy heterosexual romance"; he brands Mae West a "fag-imitator"). I actually don't consider Sarris to be homophobic, as he also wrote something of an apologia where he recounts how he has happily worked alongside gays and lesbians throughout his life, and how he would never want to be seen as being anti-homosexual because this is a community that has supported him and where he feels very much at home. I believe him - but that doesn't make reading his snide asides any less irritating and eye-rolling. One new and petty complaint: he really overuses the adjective "Pirandellian."

This book introduced me to the brilliance of Alfred Hitchcock, my favorite director. Through Sarris, I also came to appreciate the woman-centering narratives of George Cukor, the brutality of Robert Aldrich, the objectivity of Otto Preminger, the idiosyncrasies of Joseph Losey, the wildness of Samuel Fuller, the humanity of Howard Hawks, the conservatism of John Ford and the liberalism of Douglas Sirk, the "subterranean career" of Edgar G. Ulmer, the operatic Vincente Minnelli, Josef von Sternberg's intense stylization, and Frank Capra's populist celebration of "the conformism of the common man." I'm particularly thankful for meeting the amazing Johnny Guitar through this book.

Much like Kael, Sarris' put-downs are pungent and sometimes off-putting. It remains frustrating to read his dismissals of two of my favorite films, Beat the Devil and Manchurian Candidate (and his derisiveness towards the careers of their directors, John Huston and John Frankenheimer); same goes for his shallow, frequently bitchy rejections of numerous talented directors, in particular Robert Mulligan, Elia Kazan, David Lean, Ida Lupino, and especially Stanley Kubrick (who Kael also disliked, in a rare instance of commonality between the two). His critique of Roman Polanski is memorable - "Polanski's talent is as undeniable as his intentions are dubious" - and was made well before the appalling scandal that had the director fleeing to Europe. His lengthy anti-Jerry Lewis diatribe is amusingly weird; the surprising critical acclaim the comedian received really got under Sarris' skin!

Disagreements and complaints aside, this is an invaluable resource for lovers of classic films.

🎞️

My Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films

1. The Birds
2. Rear Window
3. The Trouble with Harry
4. Foreign Correspondent
5. Rebecca
6. Vertigo
7. Strangers on a Train
8. Notorious
9. Marnie
10. Psycho

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose this was earth-shaking stuff back in 1968, or so I’m told. Sarris was credited with bringing over from France the auteur theory—a high-flown way of describing the director as a film’s primary creative force, organizing and shaping the disparate elements around his or her personal vision. This greatly simplified the task of writing about film history, as it funneled the act of evaluation toward a single figure. Now the issue of credit could be set aside in favor of a more personal accounting: why this artistic choice was made, how it was achieved, and to what end, rather than worrying over who was responsible for which effect. Sarris’s motive was to make film as legitimate an art form as literature, painting, sculpture, et al., and just like those art forms, a vehicle for personal expression. Plenty of American critics granted the director privilege of place, of course (prestigiously, James Agee, prolifically, Manny Farber, not to mention the lively writings of Pauline Kael, who, though she considered Sarris a misfit, was basically doing what he described herein). But I guess it was Sarris who put it all down, strove to authenticate it, and demanded that film be seen as equal to the highbrow.

Little of the above is questioned today, although the age of the franchise film and decentralized production demands more exacting standards and judicious selectivity on the part of viewers. Through the processes of historical attrition, the quality of what we have available from Hollywood’s Golden Age so dwarfs recent output as to make comparison laughable (I’m speaking of mainstream studio product). The films that stand out today are as personal as before—no period that allows for an Inside Llewyn Davis can be that bad—but the cosmos feels more constricted, the pool of great directors shallower. And the vast middle of releases (the bread-and-butter rom-coms, action films, and dramedies that constitute the greater part of a studio’s release year) feel comparatively inflexible, the characters replicated across films, the choices in cutting and staging unimaginative. You can feel the anxiety in every frame—except it’s too often the accountant’s and not the filmmaker’s. This is obviously too large a discussion for this small space, so back to the book…

Having established that I accept Sarris’s general premises, I will now examine the specific strengths and weaknesses of his arguments. He is strong in defending what he loves. The section on Ophuls is brilliantly written. I especially appreciated the mini-motif of sincerity/idealism vs. cynicism that runs throughout the book, most accomplished in a discussion of how Ophuls’s characters are forever going after their idea of virtue. After the Pantheon, the going gets harder. Some eyebrows will and have been raised at De Mille’s spot in the second guard; for me, the weakest moments are whenever he uses director x to bludgeon Billy Wilder, on whom he has been proven hopelessly wrong.

That brings me to a larger point, viz. Harold Bloom, which is that critics don’t decide canons—history does, through a process of natural selection. Any number of ex cathedra pronouncements of taste (his preference for warm engagement over cool judgment blinds him at times) are powerless before that merciless culling. So when he castigates Kubrick, specifically 2001, for loving systems over human beings, it is an unfortunate misjudgment that history has decided otherwise. Of course, he’s free to any opinion well explained, but I find him relatively weak on both of these directors. He also, breathtakingly, sweeps aside in a few phrases Bridge on the River Kwai (masterpiece), and more generally is loath to admit great films from directors he consigns to the categories of Strained Seriousness and Less Than Meets the Eye. This is a major flaw of the book and his thinking in general. It’s a case of putting the theory before the movie, a charge he freely lobs at film theorists elsewhere.

On the other hand, those one-sentence broadsides hit the mark a fair amount of the time. It is probably a net benefit that he was willing to be controversial on specific films, glibness notwithstanding. His writerly talent makes the opinions never less than immensely readable, even through gritted teeth.

A little more about Sarris:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/201...

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my bible when I was young and beginning to realize what films were about and what they could be. Andrew Sarris is my favorite film critic. 'Nuff said.

[Amin · Rating 4 out of 5]

سوای ترجمه‌ی کتاب که کار فرد کاربلد و پیشکسوتي‌ست و آزمون خود را سالهاست در این زمینه پس داده، بیش از دویست صفحه‌ی نسخه‌ی حاضر «اضافی‌»ست. که شامل نمایه‌ی فیلم‌ها و نام‌ها و سال‌شمار کارگردانان می‌شود. حتی اگر قصد بر تعهد به نسخه‌ی اصلی کتاب ساریس بوده در دوره و زمانه‌ی حالا این صرفا اطلاعاتی ویکپدیایی تلقی می‌شود. اما دویست صفحه‌ی کمتر، می تواند قیمت مناسب‌تری داشته باشد.

[Jarvo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book based around two straightforward but powerful ideas. Firstly the 'auteur' theory itself, the notion that the director is the most important figure in the creation of a film and that it should therefore be treated as his/her work. Secondly that this is as true of the output of the Hollywood studio system is it is of European arthouse or world cinema. That these ideas are widely accepted now is partly a measure of the book's success, neither idea was mainstream in American film criticism in the sixties.
The book is topped and tailed by two essays on the underlying theory, but its guts is an analysis of the work of hundreds of directors. Somewhat controversially these are divided hierarchically beginning with a pantheon containing the best of the best, and various categories of near misses, over and under rated, also ran etc. You can doubt the utility of such a canonical approach, but I'd argue that those in the pantheon are rightly considered elite and that Sarris' description of their work is wonderfully insightful. Some of the other categories are enjoyably provocative - for example I'd agree that Stanley Kubrick is overrated, but would big to differ regarding Billy Wilder or Carol Reed. Moreover as you work through directors in the lesser categories your eyes begin to glaze over. One or two paragraphs on directors you have never heard of, lists of films you will never see. This is clearly a Herculean effort by a professional reviewer who has seen many thousands of films. So it remains an indispensable reference.
A few unrelated observations. The book re-enforces that it is difficult to say where 'American' cinema ends or begins. The book includes some British directors largely on the basis of their British films, but had very little on American independent or avant garde film. More interesting is the treatment of the many directors whose careers began outside of America but was continued within, which has been a staple of Hollywood since almost the beginning. This makes it clear that nationality in film is a very fluid concept. (Would Jean Renoir or Max Ophuls earn a place in the pantheon on the basis of their American films alone?).
In a couple of places the book, tantalizingly, raises the issue of the limitations of auteur theory. It would be interesting to see this pursued further. Put broadly we might be happy to accept that some combination of Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford et al represent the pinnacle of American cinema not all of the most important American films were directed by the great (or even the very good). The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, and Casablanca are just three examples. This raises interesting questions about film as a collaborative medium and the role of the producer in Hollywood.
The book stops at 1968 and there are some significant ways in which it has dated. Firstly about 40% of its extent is taken up with various lists, all of which are incomplete and all of which have been superseded by IMDB et al. Finally there is a rather dismissive section on women directors, which, thankfully, hopelessly inadequate.

[Mahdym · Rating 2 out of 5]

در نظریه مولف در یک کلام به دنبال "خالق" میگردیم. یعنی فیلمساز نه فقط فیلمنامه را به تصویر می‌کشد که آن را به سبک خودش و با مولفه هایی که خودش تعیین کرده می‌سازد. اندرو ساریس در این کتاب مبتنی بر نظریه اش حجم انبوهی از فیلمسازان را با فیلم هایشان نام می‌برد و در یک دسته بندی آن ها را از هم تفکیک می‌کند. به لیست کارگردان ها که نگاه کنی جای امثال گدار، تارکوفسکی، پازولینی و... خالی است لابد چون در آمریکا فیلم نساخته اند ولی باقی با اسم فیلم هایشان آمده اند. این بین توضیح مختصری از کارگردان ها می‌دهد و آن ها را بر اساس نظریه مولف بررسی مختصری می‌کند. ارزش کتاب بیشتر از اینکه نظری باشد وجه ویکی‌پدیا طورش است. نصف کتاب واژه نامه و سال شمار است و نصف دیگر اسم فیلم و کارگردان این وسط یک مقاله و پیشگفتار هم درباره نظریه مولف آورده. ارزش کتاب بیشتر برای جایگاهش است، اینکه اسم کارگردان های اولیه را می‌بینی و بعد از آن ها آن فیلم هایی که مهم هستند را بولد کرده همین. اگر به جای تمرکز روی سینمای آمریکا کمی دایره را باز تر می‌کرد و چهار نفر مثل برگمان و کیشلوفسکی و... را می‌آورد میشد بهترین راه نما برای سینه‌فیل شدن ولی خب نشد!

[Jim Reddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book includes over 200 entries on film directors by film critic Andrew Sarris. He ranks directors and the ones that don’t make his “Pantheon” category are regulated to lesser categories. It’s all rather subjective but his reviews are interesting reading. I didn’t read every single entry but I did finish the essays on auteur theory that are included. I learned that his essays helped raise the awareness of the role of the film director in America in a time when the producer was given more credit.

[Alex Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

So awesome reading this and seeing how many annoying online cinephiles are playing a game of telephone on opinions that Sarris wrote back all the way back in 1968ish. Regardless, probably one of the most essential and foundational pieces of film crit ever.

[Spykje · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A serious approach to old movies is particularly indispensable at a time when the very existence of old movies is jeopardized by the shocking negligence of the so-called film industry, and at a time also when the appreciation of old movies is hindered by the pernicious frivolities of pop, camp, and trivia. The enemies of cinema have found their battle cry in the condescending cackle one hears in so-called art houses. This book is intended for those perennial cinephiles, the solitary movie-goers.” - It would seem cinephilia is always under threat, so maybe it’s never truly under threat?

“An anti-auteur critic can score points simply by citing the titles of alleged auteur masterpieces. Without having seen the films, is anyone likely to believe that Kiss Me Deadly is more profound than Marty, that Seven Men from Now is more artistically expressive than Moby Dick, that Baby Face Nelson is more emotionally effective than The Bridge on the River Kwai, that Bitter Victory is more psychologically incisive than The Defiant Ones, that Rio Bravo is more morally committed than The Nun’s Story, that Gun Crazy will outlive The Heiress or that Psycho will be admired long after A Man for All Seasons has been forgotten?” - Honestly, a 50% hit rate is pretty impressive, but it really is poetic how the very last example is the most damning of all.

A fascinating dive into the Golden Age of Hollywood, my current obsession. Sarris proves an engaging enough writer, so that even his disdain for such favourites as Wyler and Wilder can be enjoyed, disapproving nods notwithstanding. A wonderful resource for learning more about the era, and manages to put more concretely into words the things I was beginning to observe in the early stages of my own cinephilia. I appreciate the relativity of Sarris’ critiques as a means of illustrating his point--a helpful tactic for uneducated folk like me to more concretely understand his ideas. Above all else, this makes me want to watch more movies; I want to watch more stuff from directors I already consider favourites, seeing how they all come together in an auteurist framework, and to delve into names I was unfamiliar with prior.
- As mentioned earlier, I am a fan of Wyler and Wilder so their placements disappointed me, though they’re not entirely unexpected.
- I appreciate the Samuel Fuller praise.
- The section of Preminger was probably the one I felt I got the most out of at current.

[Cinemike · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can one say about a book that inspired a generation of cinephiles? The American Cinema is one of those reading experiences that illuminate its subject so clearly that the subject has a 'before' and 'after' in the consciousness.
From a scholarly perspective, Sarris' method is outrageous - the dividing of film directors into wacky categories like 'Less than meets the eye' and 'Strained seriousness' - but in spite of just a few judgments that, in the course of time have been shown to be dubious, it works!
But Sarris, who was film critic in chief of Village Voice at the time it was written, was at an intellectual level far beyond that of most film academics and he used his chatty, hip style to make his undiluted and penetrating analysis accessible to all.
The book commences with "The woods and the trees", one of the most brilliant analyses of the nature of film art in the era of the Hollywood Studio system. It asks all of the most difficult questions relating to the nature of creativity in that environment, and answers most of them with aplomb.
The bulk of the book, however, is dedicated to mini-analyses of virtually every major director who ever made a film in Hollywood. Each director is given a one- to two-page pen picture with a filmography that indicates the most important works. It sounds more like an encyclopaedia than a book to read, but Sarris' style is so beautiful and his insights so breath-taking that few people I know treated it as anything but a virtually un-put-downable companion, which is returned to again and again. It is not just that one likes to be reminded of Sarris' views on this or that director or film, but it is wonderful to share the clarity of his vision in trying to put these great and not so great works into perspective.
Finally, there is a chronology in which the major works of each year in (American) film history are listed in quasi-ascending order of importance. It is not necessary to agree with all of his judgments, but if your assessment of any of the films he really rates is greatly at odds with his, you would do well to go back and re-view the work a few times, because, like as not it will be you that has missed something important, not Sarris who has over-estimated...
In summary, this is the greatest work of the greatest English-speaking film critic who ever lived. For anyone seriously interested in the art of the cinema it is indispensable.

[Hugo · Rating 4 out of 5]

If part of Bazin's "What is Cinema?", among other things, is probably the best introduction to the aesthetics of Italian Neorrealism, Sarris' "The American Cinema" (and particularly the preface, the introduction and the "Pantheon" category) is the one of the most fundamental texts about Classic Hollywood Film.
It has also one the most convincing arguments for the analysis of Hollywood without falling into its homogenization (critique of ideology, statistics, tropes and even genre analysis; what Sarris calls "criticism of the forest"). To prove the point of the auteurist approach, Sarris organizes his comments on slightly less than 200 filmmakers in different categories, in an astonishing effort, helping thus to establish a cannon that hasn`t been completely undisputed, but it's still pretty solid.
It is his own concept of the film director, whom he says that could go completely unnoticed in most cases, but could define the art of the film in some miraculous exceptions, that makes most of his comments on the lesser names rather dull...
But the two first categories (Pantheon Directors and The Far Side of Paradise), that's something completely different. The beauty of those brief essays is that, without engaging in detailed analysis, Sarris manages to describe the essence of each author by uniting a frequent technique or style with a worldview or philosophy. Every essay on those two categories is a wonderful work of film criticism.

[Keith Brinkmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dated.
It's a good book for info on the "Pantheon" directors
and for info on lesser known films,
but his criticisms are usually based on "decency"
and the necessity for films to directly address issues
and ideas...
This is evidenced in his criticism of David Lean.
In fact, I enjoy a lot of his reasoning for praising directors, but when it comes to critiques, I feel like I am turned off by his tone.
I love the films he loves, but I also love the films he hates--
Lawrence of Arabia is one of my favorites, for example.
Also, his critique of Billy Wilder is weak, as well.
Finally, Stanley Kubrick won in the end, in that
the generation after the writing of this book
was influenced greatly by his work.
On one hand, he criticizes "Literary" critics for missing the mastery of the image displayed by his pantheon directors, and then is angry at Lean and Kubrick for their privileging of the image over the narrative meaning. I'm not sure they do what he accuses them of anyway. Wilder is also Canonical at this point, and his films have aged far better than most of the films from his era.

The Preface to the book is killer...

[Drahcir10001 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. A snapshot in time yet still relevant. The most readable overview of directors - didactic but full of humour. When you read other 1960s film criticism this stands as a beacon. Remarkable how relevant it still is - and so much more illuminating and entertaining as a canon to be aware of than the slipshod likes of "1001 films to see before you die".

[Tom Stamper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The foremost American proponent of the auteur theory, Sarris has a lot to say about which directors are over-rated and under-rated. His overall view, shared by Manny Farber, that genre films are ignored in favor of forgettable prestige movies resonated with me. I can appreciate any critic that sees Howard Hawks in the upper echelon of film makers.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever written! No other piece of writing has had such a profound impact on my life.

[Jacob Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading. Mr Sarris, forever admired and attacked because he brought Auteur theory to the US, begins by giving a full break down of his thoughts, the French's thoughts and the haters thoughts (Pauline Kael, the wicked witch of the west). He then goes right through all the big American directors from cinemas birth to '68. Who's an artist. Who's a technician. Who's a fucking fraud. I think everyone needs this as a guide cause the studio system produced so many mad names. I try and watch just about everything but my knowledge of studio comedies and musicals is horrendous. So I'll be digging this out again if I eventually get round to those guys.

The sections are pretty much near perfect.
Especially "less than meets the eye", where he isn't afraid to name those over hyped like Kazan and Lean. Ones saved by his leading man and the other is lauded for his gorgeous wide shots that add nothing narratively. I'd agree with most of these apart from Billy Wilder. Wilder has a real psychosexual side to that continues to entice me with time. Sarris even has an eye for those would dominate post 68 like Coppola and Peckinpah. Makes you almost want a sequel for Scorsese and the other New Hollywood guys. Only a few had come through by this point. Even with only a film or two under their belts, Sarris could see potential there. But those are different artists loving and rebelling against the studio and taking on a European arthouse sensibility. Different breed. Maybe it be too difficult to do a sequel to this because of the independents. It's a whole different model now. No wait, it probably could be done, it just couldn't be Sarris and not cause he's dead. It would require a completely new thought process of how auteur theory applies now since the distribution methods changed.

I think we can all agree the strained seriousness section (meant to highlight whom he considered pretentious) is a bit of a howler and the only embarrassing segment. Kubrick, Frankenheimer, Luhmet and Schlessinger appearing here is absolutely disgraceful. I know Kubrick hadn't gone on his pure winning streak yet but he'd still given the world 2001, Dr Strangelove, The Killing and Lolita. Find it odd when you back to these that are now considered classics weren't so loved back in them days. Lolita was viewed as a disappointment and yeah I always thought it toned down the heavier aspects of the book for comedy so the darker implications of enjoying it didn't come through and the remake does the inverse being a whole lot darker and losing some of the comedy. Still though, even at the bare minimum Lolita has to be categorised as "interesting failure" and as they say a so called good directors had movie is better than a bad directors good movie! Sarris, you may have written one of the best film books going here brother but if you come for the kube again, it's fists!

[Christopher Mantafounis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A foundational text of modern film criticism, in which Sarris expounds Truffaut's Politique des auteurs, as well as his own journalistic writing, into a formal Statement on Auteur Theory. Much has been made of this theory in the intervening four or five decades, so much so that I (quite rarely) don't feel inclined to offer my two cents—especially against contemporaneous challenges, from when professionals were generally smarter, and especially given that Sarris preemptively qualifies his own opinion. He recognises and parodies to some extent the criticisms of Auteur Theory, albeit eventually defending himself by claiming no better unifying framework can be offered. (If it was good enough for Churchill's belief in democracy…)

The Auteurs at last remain on top, as much as I love Pauline Kael's perspective. What has been interesting to observe is the effect of Sarris's ideas in other modes of art. It seems music, for instance, has borrowed only the most troublesome consequences of this picture of the Complete Artist. I suspect The American Cinema has part-coincided, part-contributed, to the decline of the songwriter as an artiste separate from the singer; the only remaining cases of this—a popular composer!—are seen as the lowest of pop factory-farming, and largely nameless to the public. (Perhaps the Producer as separate to the Singer has risen in turn, but this prospect is already less compelling than it would have been some 15 years ago. Let's not get sidetracked.) Yet popular music still does not go to bat for its elder artists, even those singer-songwriters, which is one of the great triumphs of the auteur theory in cinema. People will watch the latest Ridley Scott yet they won't listen to the latest Paul McCartney.

Anyways. Sarris is evidently still optimistic, here in 1968, about the integrity and future of Journalism and Criticism as principles (how sweet!), so there are lots of references to the likes of Warshow, Andre Bazin and a host of writers across the pond. Via Walter Kerr he characterises reviewing as assuming the reader has not seen the movie in question, and criticism as assuming they have; Sarris was very much a critic rather than a reviewer, but nonetheless his high-level, career approach makes this engaging regardless (to an extent) of one's familiarity with the material. His opening essay is essential reading for any serious student of the cinema. A watershed.

[EC Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

A game changer that still matters. This is not gospel, and even Sarris himself would revise much of his opinions through the last five decades of his life snd career. Still, this is as close to pocket sized definitive crash course in the American cinema (up to right before the 70's "Movie Brats" changed everything) as you will find. The amount of information this disseminates is incredible, and his 'rankings', while not everyone's, are still damn respectable considering they were written at a time when the idea of directorial authorship was still derided and mocked.
Directors like Ford, Hawks, Chaplin, Keaton, Hitchcock and Lang get properly lionized (von Sternberg questionably so, oh well). As much or more important are the less familiar heroes like Samuel Fuller, Budd Boetticher, Robert Aldrich and yes, Edgar G. Ulmer too getting singled out for their still phenomenal work. His writing is not as personal (and modern) as Kael's, for example, but his opinions hold up far more consistently, even if his take on Kubrick is not fashionable now (though even as a Kubrick fan, I found it wonderfully refreshing. He eventually came around, especially on the first half of "Full Metal Jacket").
I have yet to find a critic with a more satisfyingly arranged circle of pantheons, disagree though I may on certain names in particular. I love the organization of everything by director; there really is no better way to cover as much ground so efficiently. A model of truly progressive criticism.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although obviously incomplete, even when accounting for everything available up to 1968, this is a bracingly thorough attempt to reckon with the entirety of American cinema up to that point, and - in an age when there was no such thing as home video - it's a genuinely staggering achievement to consider.

Sarris is often delightfully salty when he speaks of any given filmmaker's subpar work (in his opinion). As just one example, he bemoans that David Lean's "Doctor Zhivago" suffered from "too little literary fat and too much visual Lean." Anyone who's enjoyed the thread recapping Orson Welles's withering etherings of other filmmakers will enjoy this particular aspect of this book.

This is also compulsively readable, and - somewhat impressively given the cultural sensibilities of the age in which Sarris was raised - only *mildly* homophobic.

An essential part of any film library. Can't believe it took me so long to finally get around to reading it.

[Sketchbook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Sarris was a clunky writer (unlike Kael, w silken sentences), he was generally humane, despite his rigid academic posture. He knew nothing abt the actual workings of the studio system, so made his directorial choices blindly. He praises the mediocre Otto Preminger and slights the brilliant Billy Wilder. All, based on nothing ... this is crazy. His auteur book is of modest historical interest, though it had influence in the 1970s - as a topical "idea" - but it's now both obvious and dated. Sarris loved movies, as did Kael, and I wish they were around (2023) to trash the junk. This book is good for reference...but strong on personal choices. And all criticism is personal.

[Brian Cham · Rating 4 out of 5]

The American Cinema is a midly insightful, if highly outdated, dictionary of influential film directors. It is superior to Thompson's A Biographical Dictionary of Film because it is more concise and somehow less smug, affording American and European directors the same level of prestige. Its preface covers the much-maligned "Hollywood" label that critics liked to deride, among other biases. However, his labels and categories fall into some of the same traps that he accuses others of, like declaring directors to be wildly overrated or underrated. Despite being the main proponent of auteur theory, his book is sometimes ambivalent on how much it can be applied to a single person's ouevre, noting how many outside influences are in play.

[Jeroen Kraan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truly a mixed blessing. While Sarris' contribution to the auteur theory is valuable, and his writing on specific directors often insightful, he also created the model for the worst aspects of Film Discourse. His incessant ranking of artists, pretending to have some objective measure of who is good and who is not, often rankles. Current-day readers will be particularly surprised to see Billy Wilder and Stanley Kubrick written off as overrated, for example, with Sarris entirely disregarding the idea that those directors' films may be perfectly good, but just not to his personal tastes.

[Bob Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book for an undergraduate Film Studies course; it has stayed with me over many years as one of the formative works in my developing film appreciation. I don't agree with everything he says--I could never accept Hitchcock as a pantheon director, for example--but I love the way he lays out his ideas. He says more in 300 words than most other critics could say in 5000. The article on Raoul Walsh, the way he compares Walsh to Ford and Hawks, is wonderful.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find the overly-rigid academic framing of filmmakers into distinct levels of auteur to be kind of…. annoying? But regardless Sarris does a great job of explaining his American theory if auteurism and applying it to the American filmmakers he considers to be great examples of that, and at the end of the day how can you not love a guy who elevates Budd Boetticher and Joseph von Sternberg above Stanley Kubrick?

Minus one star for the Billy Wilder slander which will not be tolerated in my house.

[Ryan Fischer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarris can be very annoying (for instance, when he goes full misogynist in the Ida Lupino entry, or in his constant petty shots at the rival auteurists over at Cahiers), but I used this as a sort of film guide over the past several years - watching at least one film per director discussed - and I had a lot of fun with the book in that way. It definitely got me to watch some films that have slipped out of the cannon since the late '60s.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

For what this book sets out to do, it is at it's best. For pure enjoyment reading it through, I wouldn't say it was my favorite. I'm not so good at reading reference books, because I'm not a dabbler. I just plough on through.

[GwenViolet · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's like talking to a close friend about movies.

He's sometimes wrong, always interesting.

Personal to a fault perhaps but nonetheless a good overview of the history of the golden age American cinema

[Blake Griggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of a reference book for Sarris’ auteurist engagement with individual directors’ output, but quite cogent and pithily succinct on that front. I did not read any of his comments on directors whom I have seen nothing of. The opening essay is a 5 though.

[Richard O. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depending on your view, Sarris is celebrated or derided for leading the charge for the auteur theory. I used to subscribe to that religion, but lately I've had my doubts. Playwrighting and filmmaking seem of necessity to be the most collaborative of arts, so who is to say whose signature most inscribes itself on a picture? It might be the cinematographer, interior decorator, the composer, even Edith Head or the deal itself. But I was interested in the European and Japanese films Sarris reviewed for the Village Voice so I read him. I don't think he was wtong to call Fellini's "Satyricon" a "bloated fish." I happen not to disagree with that assessment, but the metaphor brings up a problem--and, that is, put simply, Sarris is a leaden, dreadful writer. Didn't anyone on the Voice ever notice that?

[Alex Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting and infuriating read - valuable as a snapshot of the history of english language movies circa 1968, but keep in mind as you read it that Andrew Sarris would go on to declare Kevin Smith "the next Martin Scorsese".