Film Fund-amentals: The Passing of Andrew Sarris

 First published June 22, 2012.

I never wanted to be an obit writer. Certainly not after I saw that old flick with Richard Boone (I Bury the Living). But events this year seem determined to send me into this dour trade.

The news of Andrew Sarris’ death will not mean much to anyone who wasn’t around in the 1960s and 1970s. At best, his name had become an historical reference to an old set of battles concerning the Director Auteur Theory. Since I started work as a film programmer in the mid-1970s, I remember this well. Especially since I was a self-admitted Auteurist often surrounded by the enemy’s camp.

Not that I am looking to stir up old fights. Until today, I hadn’t even looked at my copy of The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 in many years (though I used to thumb through it with the regularity of a Baptist with a Bible). In the old days, the Auteur Theory had the effect of a revelation from on high. But that was a long time ago, and much of the concept has so settled into the seabed of the culture that it is now hard to tell the pearls from the muck.

One of the key points of the Auteur Theory that detractors had trouble understanding was the theory’s emphasis on film as a visual art form. Prior to Sarris (and his importing of the concept from Truffaut and Cahiers du Cinema), most American film critics treated movies as if they were a mere extension of literature. The “smart” critics placed their emphasis on the plot and themes. The “lesser” folks mostly looked at the actors. But the Auteur Theory was aimed at the visual construction of a film.

That is why such figures as John Ford and Vincente Minnelli were so lionized. They each had a consistent and distinctive visual sensibility that was as much a part of the movie’s text as any script. You could walk into the middle of a movie, watch thirty seconds of footage and immediately know that it was a film by Minnelli strictly based on the visuals. You didn’t have to know anything about the performers or the storyline. It was the visual signature that determined an auteur.

This was a critical approach that worked really well within the confines of classical Hollywood cinema. Starting in the late 1920s, the studios produced a tightly controlled approach to filmmaking that technically allowed almost anyone to direct a movie. All they had to do was follow the cookie-cutter pattern of long-shot, medium shot, close-up and a few other rules. This produced all the material needed for the editor. It also meant that the director wasn’t exactly that necessary, and it gave a covert but important degree of production control to the producers and studio executives. It was an ingeniously simple plan that guaranteed a watchable film regardless of who directed it.

This also meant that any director who could work beyond this basic approach – and develop a more personal sense of stylization – would quickly stand out against the flat cinematic plain offered by the studio system. One of the major indicators of an auteur would be the filmmaker’s willingness to break any of the major rules of Hollywood filmmaking (for example, the 180 degree rule) and do so in a manner so sly that many viewers – and producers – wouldn’t even notice. Both Ford and Hitchcock were masters at pulling off such stunts.

So it was the perfect methodology for critiquing the classical model. But these days, it just doesn’t seem to go very far. If I were a cranky old man, I would simply say that there are no more auteurs. Everything is different now. The classical model of filmmaking is over. The current model isn’t so much a model as it is a vast collection of suggestions and vague ideas. Mainstream movies are largely the construct of media corporations trying to second guess the latent wants and desires of adolescent viewers. Indie filmmaking is mostly about the desperate quest for funding. Any notion of art primarily takes a back seat to the money, and these days, the money is often not there.

Which may also explain why there are very few contemporary directors with any type of visual distinctiveness. Sure, there are certain directors who are obviously preferable to others. But very few of them are particularly interesting in any noticeable visual sense. No one is expecting a Hollywood director to make movies that resemble Andrei Tarkovsky (besides, Steven Soderbergh has already demonstrated the folly of doing that). But a lot of contemporary directors can’t even climb up to the zany level of Roger Corman (who at times had a visual sensibility that almost matched Minnelli’s).

Arguably, the general flatness of the contemporary cinema has been caused by a variety of technological and corporate factors. The digital revolution holds great promise for a new artistic age. But so far, it seems mostly to offer a never-ending range of banality, faked realism and momentary flashes of global embarrassment. The corporate factor is much like the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the room and appears to only be removable by either revolution or alien invasion. Personally, I’m leaning toward alien invasion. Either way, the result is a curious mix of dull repetition and increasingly detached responses.

As for Sarris, I can only say that he was the right man for the right job at exactly the right moment. I regret that I never got to meet him. It once almost happened, but he took ill and couldn’t make it, which is OK. Almost got to meet Fassbinder and he dropped dead (some people will do anything to break an appointment). But Sarris remains a great teacher and guide to a lost age.

A time when filmmaking simply seemed to have been a lot more fun.