POLITICS AND CINEMA

by Andrew Sarris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 1, 1978

I have achieved a certain notoriety over the years for deflating the apocalyptic fantasies of the left,"" writes egocentric Village Voice film critic Sarris, and indeed the chief, though intermittent, attraction in this collection of essays and reviews is watching Sarris' restless quest for odd-man-out-ness: he often seems to have waited to read what the fashionable critics have said just so he can then say the opposite. Are Hearts and Minds (anti-Vietnam) and 'State of Siege (anti-CIA) the darlings of the radical chic? Sarris is here to find the former ""simplistic, tendentious, disorganized, and repetitious,"" while the latter--in the book's best piece and the only one to deal in detailed depth with the politics/cinema tension--is condemned for ""juggling its categories between fact and fiction"" and for cynically exploiting libertarian ideas. Similarly Sarris lashes out at the rhetoric against violence in movies (""itself violently repressive""), skewering hypocritical distinctions between ""bad"" establishment violence and ""good"" revolutionary violence. Best at such ideological sniping and super-skepticism, Sarris is less provocative--and his unevocative, however boisterous, style is more abrasive--when his targets are too easy (the Supreme Court's pornography ruling) or too contrived (The Godfather attacked for not being sufficiently sociological) or too tricky (Susan Sontag on Leni Riefenstahl). And, not so strangely, he's weakest when praising (The Sorrow and the Pity, My Uncle Antoine), though only truly irritating when taking gratuitous pot-shots at old enemies like Pauline Kael and Lillian Hellman. While the title is misleading--much here is not about politics and some of it is thoroughly ephemeral--Sarris has, if little in the way of fresh or deep insight, a combative peskiness and a free-form credo (""centrist, liberal, more Christian than Marxist"") that help him to draw some sparks from a few time-worn Big Issues.

Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1978

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Columbia Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1978

Categories: NONFICTION