ANDREW SARRIS. NO MORE.

(Written on June 22, 2012)
The cinema is a deep, dark mystery that we auteurists are attempting to solve, and, what is infinitely more difficult, to report our findings in readable prose – Sarris

(AP Photo/New York Times, Fred R. Conrad)

I have been aware of Andrew Sarris though never dug his works. He has been celebrated as the pioneer of film criticism and his demise has led to some good pieces on him that reflect on his invaluable contribution.

Below are insightful excerpts from Jim Emerson’s blogon Sarris and here’s Ebert on him. Early this week I read an old blog of David Bordwell and he acknowledges that his movie-manic life changed, got direction, when he started reading Sarris.

Sarris was the person who propagated the auteur theory in America – director is the chief architect in film-making – and brought attention to the American directors, which changed the way how movies were looked at. However, interestingly it’s not as if he ignores the other crew and their valuable inputs.

My own interpretation of the auteur theory was based originally on the weird notion that good movies did not just happen by accident; nor were they the products of some mindless beehive of activity. I proposed instead a pattern theory in constant flux to explain certain stylistic signs of personal creativity in what had otherwise been dismissed as an industrial assembly line. My business was history, not prophecy. After looking at a score of films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a score of films directed by John Ford, and a score of films directed by Howard Hawks, no one could tell me that Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks were not authentic auteurs. This was not to denigrate the role of the actor, the writer, the cinematographer, the editor, the composer of the music, the sound technician, the set designer, and the myriad artistic and technical contributors to the finished motion picture. There were instances, in fact, in which the true auteur of the film was not the director at all, but a producer like Selznick, a cinematographer like Lee Garmes or Gregg Toland, a set designer like William Cameron Menzies, a special effects wizard like Frank Bashevi, a composer like Miklos Rozsa or Max Steiner, a writer like Ben Hecht, or actors like Garbo and Cagney, Sullavan and Stewart, Leigh and Olivier, Hepburn and Tracy, Dunne and Grant, Arthur and Boyer. My “theory” was intended as the first step rather than the last stop of film scholarship. […]

His comments on the theory highlights what films ought to be and emphasizes on ‘interior meaning’.

… [The] ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material. This conception of interior meaning comes close to what Astruc defines as mise en scène, but not quite. It is not quite the vision of the world a director projects nor quite his attitude toward life. It is ambiguous, in any literary sense, because part of it is imbedded in the stuff of the cinema and cannot be rendered in noncinematic terms. Truffaut has called it the temperature of the director on the set, and that is a close approximation of its professional aspect. Dare I come out and say what I think it to be is an élan of the soul?

Lest I seem unduly mystical, let me hasten to add that all I mean by “soul” is that intangible difference between one personality and another, all other things being equal. Sometimes, this difference is expressed by no more than a beat’s hesitation in the rhythm of a film. In one sequence of “La Règle du Jeu,” Renoir gallops up the stairs, turns to his right with a lurching movement, stops in hipline uncertainty when his name is called by a coquettish maid, and, then, with marvelous postreflex continuity, resumes his bearishly shambling journey to the heroine’s boudoir. If I could describe the musical grace note of that momentary suspension, and I can’t, I might be able to provide a more precise definition of the auteur theory. As it is, all I can do is point at the specific beauties of interior meaning on the screen and, later, catalogue the moments of recognition.

The three premises of the auteur theory may be visualized as three concentric circles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning. The corresponding roles of the director may be designated as those of a technician, a stylist, and an auteur…. Technique is simply the ability to put a film together with some clarity and coherence.

He talks about direction in contemporary times (which was 1960s) but it’s as relevant today.

Nowadays, it is possible to become a director without knowing too much about the technical side, even the crucial functions of photography and editing. An expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the director’s chair. How do you tell the genuine director from the quasichampanzee? After a given number of films, a pattern is established.

Indian CinemaThis has a huge relevance for Indian cinema. Two points. One – You don’t need to be aware of the skills. Just direct, deal with actors, who shall do their bit and in a similar vein interact with the crew, who shall do their role. The director is happy to have his designation. It’s a badge of honor. And as long as you execute something that is good enough. Two – Patterns are formed as you work, of how you work – the evidence is on the screens and one can see where the affinity lies.

Film-making is hard. Every one slogs. Yet the results of story-telling are the evidence that the skill-sets of our crew, especially the auteur – director and his main partner, writer are lacking too much. Else, even if not box office successes we would have stories that would impact the audience.

What’s needed is emphasis on the learning. What’s required is to someone show the light. In an era, where noise is what sets the standard – greater, the better, we are extremely satisfied, maybe also indifferent, with what we get to digest. When we are conditioned for nonsense, we seek more of it. The few people who take different paths unfortunately either haven’t mastered the skills or / and themselves succumb to the 4-seconds of fame they achieve.

What’s missing and importantly, what’s negatively impacting our society: strong story-telling. This is a medium of magic, of internal meaning, of a medium that can create moments, capture life in tidbits that has the capacity to see us our soul, to be truly entertained and have some personal meaning.

Hope we get folks, who can be Sarris for our nation, can do the needful. Perhaps the need of the hour is even more than ever. With an audience that’s dispassionate and disinterested we need critics who can throw the spotlight on what’s black and what’s white. Even more significantly, inspire the makers to do justice to themselves.

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