The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968

"The American Cinema is the Citizen Kane of film criticism, a brilliant book that elevated American directors from craftsmen to artists, launched the careers of numerous film critics, and shaped the aesthetics of a whole generation of viewers by providing new ways of looking at movies."—Emanuel Levy, author of George Cukor, Master of Elegance



The auteur theory, of which film critic Andrew Sarris was the leading American proponent, holds that artistry in cinema can be largely attributed to fi...