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Title: The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 by Andrew Sarris ISBN: 0-306-80728-9 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: September, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Infuriating and Indispensable.
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: The American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929-1968
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Indispensable
Comment: 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.
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Title: I Lost It at the Movies: Film Writings 1954-1965 by Pauline Kael ISBN: 0714529753 Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd. Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Films in My Life by Francois Truffaut, Leonard Mayhew ISBN: 0306805995 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: September, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.50 |
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Title:The Rules of the Game - Criterion Collection ASIN: B00005JLV6 Publisher: Criterion Collection Pub. Date: 20 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $39.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $29.96 |
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Title: 5001 Nights at the Movies : Expanded For The '90s With 800 New Reviews by Pauline Kael ISBN: 0805013679 Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Inc. Pub. Date: 15 May, 1991 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: What Is Cinema by Andre Bazin ISBN: 0520000927 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: February, 1968 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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