Pantheon Level Author: In Memory of Andrew Sarris

UNL Film Studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon describes the auteur theory of filmmaking, 
including the contribution to this theory by Andrew Sarris.You can read Professor Dixon's obituary of Sarris here.

The art of cinema is the art of an attitude, the style of a gesture. It is not so much what as how. The what is some aspect of reality rendered mechanically by the camera. The how is what the French critics designate somewhat mystically as mise-en-scene. Auteur criticism is a reaction against sociological criticism that enthroned the what against the how. However, it would be equally fallacious to enthrone the how against the what. The whole point of meaningful style is that it unifies the what and the how into a personal statement. [Andrew Sarris]

Film Studies For Free was really saddened to hear of the death of Andrew Sarris, one of the most influential of all film critics on the academic study of the cinema.

In memory of his huge contribution to film studies, FSFF has begun to gather links to online works by Sarris as well as to studies of his writings and related items. The collection process will continue in the next days.

Meanwhile, David Hudson is very valuably collecting links to online tributes to Sarris at Fandor's Keyframe Daily site. And see the great PressPlay at Indiewire tributes, including a great video essay featuring probably the last recording of Sarris's voice, here.

Keep coming back for updates.

• Andrew Sarris, 'Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962' PDF
• Andrew Sarris's Confessions of a Cultist on the Cinema (1955, 1969) Internet Archive Free Download
• Andrew Sarris, 'Variety Lights', The Criterion Collection: Notes, August 28, 2000 
• Andrew Sarris, 'Sarris on Sirk', Bright Lights 6, (1977)

 

• Richard Armstrong, 'They Lost It at the Movies: Film Culture in the Age of Positif and Cineaste', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 40, May 2003
• Catherine Grant, 'On Auteurism and Film Authorship Theories', Film Studies For Free, June 2, 2009
  
• Barry Keith Grant, 'Theories of Authorship: Rethinking authorship', from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 14-16 
• Christian Hamaker, 'Sarris 101: A Film Critic’s Politics', Christian Hamaker's Blog, August 13, 2009
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part one) World view as aesthetics', from Jump Cut, no. 1, 1974, pp. 19-22
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part two) Truffaut's manifesto', from Jump Cut, no. 2 (1974), pp. 20-22
• Barrett Hodsdon, 'The mystique of mise en scene revisited', Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, vol. 5 no 2 (1990)
• Kent Jones, 'Hail the Conquering Hero: Andrew Sarris profiled', Film Comment, date unknown
• Christian Keathley, 'Otto Preminger and the Surface of Cinema', World Picture, 2, Autumn 2008
• Kartik Nair, 'Aura, Auteurism and the Key to Reserva', Wide Screen Journal, 2, 2010
• Jeffrey Overstreet, 'In memory of Andrew Sarris’s New York Observer reviews', Filmwell, August 11, 2009 
• Dana Polan, 'Auteur Desire', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Michael Powell, 'A Survivor of Film Criticism’s Heroic Age' [on Andrew Sarris] The New York Times, July 9, 2009
• Holger Römers, '“The Moral of the Auteur Theory”: Frank Borzage’s Moonrise (and Theodore Strauss’ Source Novel)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-March 2007
• William D Routt, 'L'Evidence', Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, vol. 5 no 2 (1990) 
• David Schwartz, 'Bringing Up Hawks: Andrew Sarris and Molly Haskell on the discovery of an auteur', Moving Image Source, September 25, 2008
• Girish Shambu, 'On Auteurism', girish, March 30, 2008