Film Critic Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012

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NYT Obit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/movie ... wanted=all

Tribute from Roger Ebert:
http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries ... at-83.html

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Tribute from Joseph mcBride, at Dave Kehr's website:

Joseph McBride
June 20, 2012 at 9:01 pm

I think we can all agree that we all owe Andrew Sarris everything.

THE AMERICAN CINEMA was/is the bible I have carried around for decades, underlining titles
of films I have seen and searching out the ones I haven’t seen in all his categories, pro or con (a common
experience for film scholars of my generation and later ones as well). One of the great
virtues of this polemical work is that inspired debate and invited reasoned disagreement. Sarris
is large; he contains multitudes. I agree with Brian Dauth that one of Sarris’s finest attributes was his willingness to evolve
and reexamine his views on directors he once dismissed. That is a rare trait in anyone, especially in a critic. Billy Wilder backhandedly
admitted to me his pleasure that Sarris and others who used to knock him but later came to appreciate him “just don’t feel like kicking an elderly man in the ass anymore.”

Sarris wrote many beautiful sentences (they were not only true
because they were beautiful but also beautiful because they were true,
to paraphrase Godard on Rossellini), but the line of Sarris’s that has always meant the most to me
is from THE AMERICAN CINEMA:

“The last champions of John Ford have now gathered around
7 WOMEN as a beacon of personal cinema.”

I have always found that thrilling and inspirational not only as a guide
to my Ford research but as a general statement of cinephilia and why it matters. When I heard
the sad news of Andrew Sarris’s death, I still had THE AMERICAN CINEMA right
next to my desk. The cover has fallen off because I’ve been using it so long. It still has
the original underlinings.