CONFESSIONS OF A CULTIST On the Cinema 1955-1969

by Andrew Sarris ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1970

Andrew Sarris, who most certainly has as all-encompassing a knowledge and as wide-ranging a dedication to films as Mlles. Adler, Kael and Crist, deserves the wider exposure here of the reviews he has written over the years, a few from Film Culture and primarily for the Village Voice. Two of his earlier books on direction (The American Cinema; Interviews with Film Directors) will have prepared other cultists for the view that ""in all great films, the plot is less important than the theme, and the theme is less important than the director's personal vision"" which will extend the great film as an aesthetic statement. Thus Jules and Jim or Blow-Up. But the general reader need not be intimidated: Sarris is enormously entertaining particularly when comminatory: ""The great merit of Dr. Strangelove is its bad taste""; The Leopard is a ""striped tabby cat""; or on Irving Shulman's Harlow (there is an occasional affiliated book review) ""the sort of book you can't put down even when common decency demands you throw up."" And for those others who are also intimidated by the obscurantism of so much that they view without understanding, there are reassurances: ""consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"" and ""we do not have to know what we are not meant to know."" Mr. Sarris is a conspicuously attractive writer and his critical eye is as hard to fool as the camera's.

Pub Date: July 1, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION