Andrew Sarris and Film Critics' Legacies

The insightful film critic Andrew Sarris recently passed away in New York City. His death was duly noted in a New York Times obituary credited to Michael Powell. He seemed an odd choice for the assignment, given that Times obit editor Margalit Fox is married to a working New York film critic. While Powell touched the bases that defined Sarris' career, he did not display any insight into the critic's contribution about the movies and the moviegoing experience.

Admittedly, space constraints may have impacted Powell's approach to the story. What the article brought home, however, was how contemporary critics largely aren't in Sarris' league. (I happen to appreciate feisty Armond White's opinions.) The level and impact of insight Sarris and his critic peers produced is notably absent today. Why that has happened is a fascinating question.

Around the time Sarris found his journalistic home at The Village Voice, he couldn't help but try to live up to the critical standards set by French New Wave critics such as Francois Truffaut writing in Cahiers du Cinema. Ironically, the nouvelle vague crowd also worked as hands-on directors, something that went against the grain of Gallic intellectual traditions. In contrast to Paris' cinematic community, Sarris and his New York critical peers did not get behind a camera. Peter Bogdanovich, who did splendid film history studies for MOMA, was a notable exception. It's understandable in retrospect why Pauline Kael tried her hand in Hollywood. Alas, the only result was very visible egg on The New Yorker critic's face and precious little production experience. As for the The New York Times -- the most influential publication of them all -- it seemed Hollywood and Cannes humor their film journalists rather than respect them. For better or worse, the Times' critics are read by the majority of its readers principally due to the writers' association with the brand rather than through their audience's appreciation of a developed point of view. (Hopefully, Manohla Dargis can change that distasteful trend.)

The American (mostly New York-centric) critics came of professional age when the director became a key player in movie making. We take that situation for granted today, but that was not always the case. Sarris and his fellow auteurists made their mark by providing a middlebrow moviegoing audience deepened understandings of what they were seeing. The critics also wanted and really pleaded for questions, debate, argument. Whatever their flaws -- and there were plenty of them -- the Sarristes and the Paulettes cared about the movies. (For more about the Sarris-Kael feud, read Brian Kellow's recent biography on the late New Yorker staffer.) They would have regarded with disdain the mindless Monday morning news program recitation of weekend box office receipts. Red carpet reporting would have appalled them, although Kael might have gotten a good laugh out of it. Sarris, John Simon, Kael, and other critical lions would have spared no quarter toward intellectually famished "two thumbs up" lines of reasoning. Sarris and his peers unreservedly disliked one another, yet they would have unanimously believed that films were meant to be seen uninterrupted on a big screen with an audience.

Unfortunately, movie theatres are now an endangered species. If you're lucky and live in New York or LA and have access to insider screenings or film temples, you can see a movie in its most complete and satisfying form. Otherwise, the experience of movie going, for which Andrew Sarris advocated throughout his professional career, has become as recondite as watching a silent film at home.