Andrew Sarris

Andrew Sarris was an American film critic and theorist who helped popularize auteur theory in the United States through his writing for The Village Voice.

François Truffaut: François Truffaut was a French film director and critic associated with the French New Wave. His 1954 essay on French cinema supplied a major model for Sarris’s auteurist argument.
Auteur theory: Auteur theory treats a film director as a primary creative author whose personal style or vision recurs across films. Sarris gave the theory a systematic and influential formulation for American film criticism.
Cahiers du Cinéma: Cahiers du Cinéma is a French film journal founded in 1951 that shaped postwar film criticism and filmmaking. Its critics developed the director-centered ideas Sarris adapted for American audiences.
Film canon: A film canon is a body of films regarded as especially significant, influential, or worthy of study. Sarris’s rankings helped elevate directors and films previously treated as commercial entertainment.
Collaborative authorship: Collaborative authorship describes creative work produced through substantial contributions from multiple people. Screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, and performers complicate Sarris’s emphasis on directors.
Pauline Kael: Pauline Kael was an American film critic known for expressive, often combative reviews and essays. Her influential attacks on auteur theory made her Sarris’s most prominent critical opponent.
Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962: Andrew Sarris’s 1962 essay set out a three-part framework for judging directorial authorship. This essay states the principles that made Sarris’s version of auteur theory distinctive.
Politique des auteurs: Politique des auteurs was a French critical approach that emphasized a director’s personal authorship in cinema. Sarris translated and revised this approach rather than simply repeating its French formulation.
Film studies: Film studies is the academic field devoted to cinema’s history, form, industries, and cultural meanings. Auteurism helped make directors and stylistic analysis central topics in the emerging discipline.
Structuralism: Structuralism analyzes cultural works through underlying systems and relations rather than individual intention alone. Structuralist approaches challenged auteurism’s focus on a director’s personal vision.

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Bosley CrowtherCompared with: Sarris’s director-centered criticism offered a distinct framework from Crowther’s review practice.