Andrew Sarris

Robert Regan

21Jun12

As a film historian and working film critic, I find most contemporary articles on film to be reactionary and philistinish not so much because of ideological influences, but rather because of the lack of sympathetic insight and dedicated scholarship. When I read a piece on any subject, and especially on film, I do not ask myself if the writer is swinging to the right or the left, but rather if he is writing out of a genuine commitment to his subject...For myself, I remain wedded to the notion of narrative cinema, and that is a view that is regarded as very conservative in some quarters and quarterlies. I do not argue this view on the basis of a unified field theory for all the arts, but merely on the single level of cinematic expression, a unique amalgam of the objective (the camera) and the subjective (the mind behind the camera). And in no other art is the lure of pastness so vivid and compelling. No matter. Only the most naive radicalism insists that we forsake the past in order to claim the future. And only the most strident journalism demands immortal masterpieces every season. Andrew Sarris in The Partisan Review, 1972, quoted by the Self-Styled Siren.