Offscreen Notes
Andrew Sarris: 31 October 1928 – 20 June 2012
One of America’s most important and influential film critics/teachers Andrew Sarris passed away on June 20, 2012 at the age of 83. Sarris is survived by her film critic wife since 1969, Molly Haskell. Sarris’ defining achievement was his groundbreaking book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, which helped re-define a generation of cinephiles around the notion that film was an art born out of the same artistic juices of painting or literature: the singular vision of the artist. Throughout the 1970s Sarris engaged in famous critical battles with notorious anti-auteurist Pauline Kael. Sarris wrote for nearly thirty years for the Village Voice (where his student Jim Hoberman also toiled for many years until his recent dismissal), taught film studies at several universities and continued to write in his usually witty and urbane style right up until his death.
