I consider myself fortunate to have discovered Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema, Directors and Directions 1929-1968 when I did: just as I was beginning to sense that there might be more to the classical Hollywood cinema than meets the eye. Like many an old movie lover of my generation, I began with those supremely entertaining works of classical Hollywood which found their way onto lists like the AFI's top 100, unconcerned as I was by their deeper meanings. When it occurred to me finally that I should seek pleasures deeper than those provided by many of these films, I turned to the European cinema where I found meaning, more often than not, readily visible on the surface. Next, I began to suspect that I was giving Hollywood the short shrift, and sure enough, I found Sarris's text, enabling me to navigate the many glories (and pitfalls) of the classical American cinema. My new heroes where Lubitsch and Keaton, I now preferred Vertigo to North by Northwest and Wilder had become overrated. Lest it might sound like I was merely aping the opinions of Sarris, the reality was that he had forged a very precise method of judging artistic relevance upon which I enthusiastically latched: he was looking at the relation of form (and especially its space/mise-en-scene) to content. This seemed to me -- and still does for that matter -- a fine foundation for building a set of artistic values, a canon if you will. (That his method does depend so much upon form naturally lends itself to the auteur theory that he would come to champion: after all mise-en-scene is the very substance of the director's contribution.)
Of course, being an avid list-maker and canon-builder myself, I found great pleasure in Sarris's categorizations of various directors, which even now I find to be exceedingly perceptive. His highest distinction, the "Pantheon Directors," was reserved for a small but illustrious group: Chaplin, Flaherty, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Ophuls, Renoir, von Sternberg, and Welles. If I were to construct a similarly exclusive group myself, I'm not sure I could have done any better. Okay, von Stroheim definitely deserves to be there -- above Flaherty, certainly -- and probably Leo McCarey too, but all-in-all this is a great group. Conversely, I have always thought that his dismissals of figures like Kazan, Lean, Wyler, and Zinnemann were dead on. However, Sarris has since come to champion the later works of Huston (rightly) and even named Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard one of the ten greatest films of all-time, after condemning the director to his "Less Than Meets the Eye" Hades, showing his own best instincts for self-revision.
The American Cinema's only deficiency, if you can call it one, is that it ends in 1968. Where would he place Scorsese, Eastwood, Spielberg, and Tarantino? Well, in his weekly Observer column, Sarris, having recently decided that he is going to "live forever," professes a will to revise his 1960s classic -- we can only hope that this isn't just a rhetorical tool for the sake of a single column, but that it will in fact reach book shelves someday soon.
Regardless, Sarris begins his so-called revision with the placement of Richard Linklater in the "Far Side of Paradise" category, populated by "directors who fall short of the Pantheon either because of a fragmentation of their personal vision or because of disruptive career problems." Not surprisingly, this got me thinking where I would myself rank Linklater... as well as the other twenty or so modern auteurs he lists. When all was said and done, I had only one sure addition to the "Pantheon Directors": Clint Eastwood. (Stanley Kubrick, would be a second, though Sarris doesn't mention him by name and actually originally placed him in the "Strained Seriousness" camp at the cusp of the director's greatness.) Would I include David Lynch? While Blue Velvet (1986) may be the best American film of its decade, and Mulholland Drive (2001) might just land the same distinction for the present one, there still seems to exist too much variability in the quality of his work. How about Terence Malick? He has made only three films -- Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998) -- but each is a master work.
Ultimately, I am ashamed to report that this minor task bested me, at least when compared to the original American Cinema's... Herculean effort. Naturally, then, I should be all-the-more excited for Sarris's update. This certainly would be true were it not for the criteria he gives for his assessment of Linklater. A funny thing has happened to Sarris in the past thirty-seven years -- he is no longer the same dogmatic defender of aesthetic criteria he once was. As disappointing as this may be, it is certainly understandable. In the end, very few directors can claim the same mastery of the art form that the members of his initial pantheon can. That he has become ever-more concerned with narrative construction divorced from issues of form and style -- which is evident in his effusive praise for such works as Spielberg's Empire of the Sun (1987) and Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me (2000) -- can be regarded as nothing more than a critic's defense mechanism against an exclusivity that would deny he or she far too much pleasure. Unfortunately, this understandable drift towards a greater critical catholicism has left much of his writing wanting for the insight that pops off nearly every page of The American Cinema....
Then again, he still manages at least one great observation that reminds me of one of his best insights -- a moment of profound chivalry in The Searchers, when the sheriff discretely turns his back as Ethan Edwards' sister-in-law caresses his uniform. In discussing Before Sunset (2004), Linklater mentions a moment when Julie Delpy is about to touch Ethan Hawke's shoulder as he turns around, leading her to relent from the gesture. Such a sensitivity towards so small a gesture shows that Sarris still has it, even if observations like this are as rare for Sarris these days as are the movies in which they appear. Yet, not wanting to end this post on so sour a note, especially when talking about one of my all-time favorite critics, I still hope to see that second edition, and if you haven't yet picked up the first, do so immediately. (You can pick up a used copy for $4.50 here.) It will change the way you look at movies, for the better.
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