Lubitsch is one of the ten greatest filmmakers. Ernst Lubitsch's American Comedy is the best analysis yet written about his films. It's a shame that it's out of print, but anybody interested in Lubitsch should try to hunt it down.

This volume parses the good guys from the bad guys, tells you whom you should love and why, and summarily dismisses the ones not worth taking seriously. In other words, for good or bad, it arms you, as will no other film book ever written, with a set of eloquently-stated prejudices that may seal off certain directors from your serious consideration for all time. (It would be too glib to say that this is the books best and worst point.) Suffice to say, it has taken years for me to tear down the wall Sarris built between me, as a budding cinephile, and William Wyler, Billy Wilder, John Huston and even John Frankenheimer, for that matter. (These are just a few of the ones I think he was, or may have been, wrong about.)

But I love this book and always find it worth picking up to reread a few entries, for two or three reasons that never grow old:

1) Sarris IS an absolutely remarkable writer. His prose bristles with alternately apt and acid phrases and insights. The parallel between Ambrose Bierce and Sarris has grown on me through the years. (I think it was Sarris who brought currency to the word "pretentious"-- possibly THE serious put-down word from the 70s to the 90s, possibly to the present-- by the way. He used it with unerring surgical delicacy, as a bludgeon.)

2) He is hard to argue with in his negative evaluation of certain other respected directors. Thirty-five years ago, Sarris renounced Kubrick, noting, in typical form, that the very fact that he made one film every 5 years seemed to be all the proof his advocates needed of his integrity. Ouch! And he said that Kubrick is the director of the best coming attractions in the business.

This last is highly prophetic of the present general situation, when Hollywood has made a sort of science of over-selling weak films with absurdly hyperbolic trailers that often have little to do with the tone or experience of the films they advertise. This comment indicates also how much of Sarris is audaciously arguable, and out of synch with conservative academia re Kubrick and just about everything else. --Not a bad thing, as far as I am concerned.) And I think he was also decades ahead of the curve in recognizing Keaton as Chaplin's better.

3) He has been, for decades, an antidote to Pauline Kael. Period.

If you know the directors covered well enough to take it all with a grain of salt where needed, this book is probably the best read on movies and their directors from the second and third quarters of the 20th Century that will ever be written. THE great mapping out of this seminal period by the auteur theorys chief surveyor-- and a fun and drolly amusing place to pick up your snazzy-looking anti-philistine, anti-pretentious attitude off-the-rack.

There are few books on cinema that are more important than this title. To any serious student of film this book is perhaps the only book that you will refer to as long as you watch films.

Extolling the virtues of The American Cinema would be too hard. Beside being an invaluable reference for cinema between 1929-1968, it also contains wonderful peices of film theory. Because of this The American Cinema can be read a few pages at a time or you can completely dwelve into the material. No matter the method, Sarris will engage you in a meaningful dialogue of film. Film literature is rarely able to be this give and take. Those with an above average inclination toward cinema should purchase.

I'll never quite understand why Sarris is held in such regard as a critic. I know he "introduced" auteur theory to the states and he certainly seems intelligent enough. His writing, though, is frequently almost incomprehensible. I don't mind a meandering style, but these essays seem barely planned. The utterly pointless academespeak (Buster Keaton saving his father in "Steamboat Bill Jr." is termed "reverse Oedipal" for no clear reason) would lead one to expect a little more structure. I'm still giving this 3 stars though, because there do appear to be some interesting ideas here; they're just hopelessly buried. Case in point is his article about Harold Lloyd. I do understand BASICALLY what Sarris is trying to get at, but it could have been said in a paragraph or so. Towards the beginning of that essay, the reader runs across this unadorned doozy of a line - "It is hard to believe but Getting the Girl [his caps] was once interpreted as a convention that implied acceptance of the capitalist system". Oh really? And we're trying to CONTRAST Lloyd with Keaton and Chaplin? Sarris does manage to make the point that Lloyd was a more conventional figure than the other great silent comedians throughout the essay, but only just barely and only if you keep a close eye on exactly how many times he contradicts himself. I much prefer his "The American Cinema, Directors and Directions 1929-1968". The much shorter essays in that previous book are models of clarity in comparison.

This is indeed a book for film buffs. It is chock full of opinions, many of which you may disagree with. So what? Sarris examines a wide range of subjects (covering the 1927-1949 timeframe) which are organized within five chapters:

The Hollywood Studios ["The Golden Age" at MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th-Century-Fox, RKO, Universal, and Columbia]

Genres [e.g. the musical, gangster film, the horror film, the screwball comedy, the western, the film noir, the war film]

Directors [e.g. Chaplin, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Welles, Sturges, Wilder, Capra, and Stevens]

Actors and Actresses [e.g. Garbo, Cagney, Bogart, Davis, Grant, Bergman, Harlow, Fields, the Marx Brothers, Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Lombard]

Guilty Pleasures [e.g. the "B" picture]

Sarris then provides four appendices: Academy Award nominations and winners (1927-1949), New York Critics Circle Awards (1935-1949), Best Directors (1927-1949), and Best Performances (1929-1949). The various lists are interesting but the book's greatest appeal derives from the comprehensive coverage of 22 years of the American talking film's history in combination with Sarris' own opinions about most of those who created that history.

I highly recommend this book to film buffs, not as a definitive history of the period (there is none) nor as the single best source of film criticism (there is none); rather, as a collection of thoughtful, generally well-written essays which inform as well as entertain.

If you are a film buff and if, after reading this book you are motivated to see films you have not as yet seen or to see once again films you last saw years ago, Sarris will have achieved what seems to be his primary objective.

This is a comprehensive survey of the early years of the American sound film. You may not always agree with the author (I don't always) but he is always worth reading and is never dull. Sarris is excellent on all manner of film genres, stars, directors, etc. He is a key writer on John Ford and on Alfred Hitchcock, for example. You cannot often predict which way he will go and he does seem to have slightly modified his previous auteur (director is the author of the film) theories, derived from French critics- he acknowledges the influence of actors in some instances more than before. I love this book!

This book is a delight for anyone who loves the films of Hollywood's studio-driven "golden age" of the 1930s and 40s. Reading Sarris's (mostly) short essays is like being walked through a film storage vault by a knowledgeable, opinionated old tour guide who's seen every picture and seemingly met everyone who helped to make them. You may not always agree with his take on the pictures you know well, but he's always worth listening to. And you finish the tour ready to spend the next several weekends watching all the great movies that he's pointed out to you.

Sarris's treatments of individual directors are, by a long shot, the best part of the book. His essays on actors, mostly shorter and less comprehensive, are also well worth the reading. The observations on genres and studios seem sketchy by comparison, especially by comparison with books like Ethan Mordden's _Hollywood Studios_. The essays stand well on their own, which makes the book ideal for reading in essay-at-a-time chunks, but keeps it from being a comprehensive introduction to the period.

If you want to read one and only one book on classic Hollywood movies, this isn't it. If you want to read, several, this should certainly be one of them.

This is a book for film buffs. It is chock full of opinions, many of which you may disagree with. So what? Sarris examines a wide range of subjects (covering the 1927-1949 timeframe) which are organized within five chapters:

The Hollywood Studios ["The Golden Age" at MGM, Paramount, Warner Brothers, 20th-Century-Fox, RKO, Universal, and Columbia]

Genres [eg the musical, gangster film, the horror film, the screwball comedy, the western, the film noir, the war film]

Directors [eg Chaplin, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Welles, Sturges, Wilder, Capra, and Stevens]

Actors and Actresses [eg Garbo, Cagney, Bogart, Davis, Grant, Bergman, Harlow, Fields, the Marx Brothers, Tracy and Hepburn, and Gable and Lombard]

Guilty Pleasures [eg the "B" picture]

Sarris then provides four appendices: Academy Award nominations and winners (1927-1949), New York Critics Circle Awards (1935-1949), Best Directors (1927-1949), and Best Performances (1929-1949). The various lists are interesting but the book's greatest appeal derives from the comprehensive coverage of 22 years of the American talking film's history in combination with Sarris' own opinions about most of those who created that history.

I highly recommend this book to film buffs, not as a definitive history of the period (there is none) nor as the single best source of film criticism (there is none); rather, as a collection of thoughtful, generally well-written essays which inform as well as entertain.

If you are a film buff and if, after reading this book you are motivated to see films you have not as yet seen or to see once again films you last saw years ago, Sarris will have achieved what seems to be his primary objective.

If you own only a handful of film books, this should be one of them. It has the authority of brilliance, as well as a personal touch that is completely winning. With movies, it all starts with falling in love. The critical response kicks in later, but love is at the beginning. Sarris, over the course of a long and distinguished career, has never forgotten his first love of film, and that comes across in his writing. The chapters on individual actors and directors will keep this book on your night table for months. There are passages that absolutely illuminate films and careers. I don't agree with everything in the book, but that's part of the pleasure of this book's company. I read it once, and now I'm re-reading it.

200 is far too few directors, and the selection is weighed towards current film-festival favorites.

The write-ups on each director are by a grab bag of critics and scholars. The occasional gem (i.e. Robin Wood on Anthony Mann) is found among gushing fan notes and dull career overviews. There is little critical perspective such as in the editor's 1968 THE AMERICAN CINEMA.

For the same money one could purchase David Thomson's A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM. In that great work are perceptive critical appraisals of several hundred directors with complete filmographies, with the added bonus of stars, writers, cameramen, etc.

..., this 692 page hardcover book is an outstanding value. Edited by one of America's foremost critics, Andrew Sarris, with contributions by renowned scholars such as Dudley Andrew, David Bordwell, and Douglas Gomery, the content is excellent. Less opinionated and more informative than similar works, it's the best reference work on directors I've seen. With over 200 entries, all major directors are included. I highly recommend it.