Sarris, Andrew.

Film critic; interviewee b. 1928.

From the description of Reminiscences of Andrew Sarris : oral history, 1981. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 309726719

A prominent American film critic perhaps best known for his "Films in Focus" column, which ran in New York City's alternative weekly newspaper, The Village Voice, for much of its history, Andrew Sarris upheld the Voice's reputation as a piquant publication with his lively and frequently contentious writings on cinema.

Born in Brooklyn on October 31, 1928, Sarris was the child of immigrant parents who fell on hard times with the onset of the Great Depression. In 1946, he enrolled at Columbia for his undergraduate studies, but around this time, he developed a love of cinema that interfered with his schoolwork, and consequently his grades were poor. From 1952 to 1954 he served in the United States Army; subsequently, he enrolled at Columbia for his long-interrupted postgraduate studies, which he finally completed in 1998.

Sarris's career as a film critic began in 1955 when he met Jonas Mekas, co-editor of the fledgling cinema journal Film Culture, in a film appreciation class the two young men were taking at the Center of Mass Communications. Mekas invited Sarris to contribute to the publication, and Sarris, then an unenthusiastic graduate student, joined Jonas and his brother Adolfas to help produce the journals second issue. The Mekas brothers had already published a premier edition in January 1955; now, they enlisted the twenty-six-year-old Sarris as an occasional reviewer and editor. He retained this position for several years while working at what he has characterized as "a half-assed job at Fox as a reader."

In 1960, Jonas Mekas, who was at this point working as a film reviewer at The Village Voice, asked Sarris to substitute for him temporarily as he shot Guns of the Trees, an avant-garde film he had been working on. Sarris's first piece for the Voice, a review of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, appeared on August 11, 1960. This controversial review caused an uproar sufficient for the editor and publisher of the Voice- itself still a young and boisterous publication at this point-to take notice, and to keep Sarris around as a reviewer. Early in his career at the Voice, Sarris was charged with covering the Cannes Film Festival, but upon his arrival in France, Sarris, saddled with writer's block, was unable to fulfill the brief. Instead, he has said, he "spent six or seven months in Paris, you know, went to the Cinémathéque." On returning back in New York, he resumed his old life, continuing to write for the Voice regularly, but Sarris's French film-going experiences would have an indelible impact on him.

Around this time, Sarris's ongoing position at Film Culture proved itself a launching pad to greater renown-and notoriety-for the fledgling film critic. Sarris was deeply interested in the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement in French cinema, and the critical approaches to film that were concomitant with its emergence, particularly the writings of François Truffaut and other contributors to the influential journal Cahiérs du cinema. He brought this cultural development to English-speaking audiences when he published "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962" in Film Culture. At the crux of this piece, and at the crux of Sarris's critical approach more generally, is the concept of auteurism: the belief that a film is the product of the personal creative vision of its director. (Auteur, the French word for author, typically denotes the director in discussions of cinema.) The French/English phrase that Sarris coined in his article, "auteur theory," is now a critical commonplace. Sarris's essay, much to his surprise, aroused considerable attention and controversy: suddenly, he and his critical approach were the target of sharp disparagement from other critics who did not share his perspective. Most notable among these was Pauline Kael, whose article, "Circles and Squares," published in the journal Film Quarterly in 1963, took aim at the concept of auteurism in general, and at Sarris's deployment of this critical lens in particular. A public and protracted feud followed, and consequently, Sarris attained a level of celebrity with minimal effort on his part. To this day, he remains somewhat bemused about the controversy: as he says, "When Pauline Kael attacked me I was amazed that I was considered so important ... I didn't realize what had happened. I had just been plodding along." But Sarris's popularity was not simply the result of his ability to stir up controversy. Undoubtedly, readers were attracted to Sarris's unique perspective on film as well as his vibrant, colloquial writing style. "Films in Focus" became a popular fixture in The Village Voice, and he was later named a Senior Editor at the paper. Throughout his time at the Voice, Sarris had a loyal readership, and as much of his correspondence illustrates, his readers felt comfortable interacting with him, whether to praise his insights or to quibble with them.

Sarris has been married to the feminist film critic Molly Haskell since 1969. The two met in the 1960s, when Haskell worked at the French Film Office in New York. Haskell has written several books, the best-known being her 1974 text, From Reverence to Rape: the Treatment of Women in the Movies, and today, she writes on film, gender and popular culture for publications that include the The New York Times and The Guardian.

In 1984, Sarris was afflicted with a very serious but initially unidentifiable illness, and was forced to put his writing on hold. Eventually, after several agonizing months, his ailment was identified as a cytomegalovirus infection; with treatment, he regained his health and resumed work at the Voice. Haskell recounts the impact this illness had on Sarris, and on their marriage, in her 1990 memoir, Love and Other Infectious Diseases. Many of the pieces of correspondence available in this collection illustrate The Village Voice readers' disappointment at his column's absence, and their relief and enthusiasm upon its return. It would seem that by the mid-1980s, Sarris had himself achieved something of a cult following, and the absence of his column from the pages of The Village Voice was a conspicuous one. He continued to write for the Voice until 1989, when he accepted a position as film critic at the The New York Observer.

Over the years, Sarris has complemented his articles with several book-length studies. These include The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968), in which he expanded upon his auteurist approach and classified some prominent American auteurs, Confessions of a Cultist (1970), The Primal Screen (1972), Politics And Cinema (1978), The John Ford Movie Mystery (1976) and You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film-History and Memory, 1927-1949 (1998).

Along with teaching at Columbia, Sarris has held academic positions at Yale, New York University, The School of Visual Arts, and Juilliard. He has received awards and accolades that include the Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio (1991); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969); Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1982); Special Award from the L.A. Critics Circle (1985); Maurice Bessy Award, Montreal (1995); City of Sydney Salutes, Sydney, Australia (1995). He was also a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2000). Today, Sarris continues to write for The New York Observer and teach undergraduate and graduate-level courses in the film division of Columbia's School of the Arts.

From the description of Andrew Sarris papers, 1955-1988. (Columbia University In the City of New York). WorldCat record id: 299031224