First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($35.00 price intact).

First Edition, First Printing. Not price-clipped ($35.00 price intact). Published by Oxford University Press, 1998. Octavo. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions or if you would like a photo. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. May be an ex-library book.

Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. x, 573, [7] p. Appendices. Index of Films.

Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. x, 573, [7] p. Appendices. Index of Films. Index of Names. Ink mark over price on DJ with associated stain on fep. Andrew Sarris has long been one of America's most celebrated writers on film, author of the seminal work The American Cinema, and for decades a highly regarded critic, first for The Village Voice and more recently for The New York Observer. Now comes Sarris's definitive statement on film, in a masterwork that has taken 25 years to complete. Here is a sweeping--and highly personal--history of American film, from the birth of the talkies to the decline of the studio system. By far the largest section of the book celebrates the work of the great American film directors, with giants such as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Howard Hawks examined film by film. Sarris also offers portraits of major stars, from Garbo and Bogart to Ingrid Bergman, Margaret Sullavan, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, and Carole Lombard. There is a tour of the studios--Metro, Paramount, RKO, Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Universal. And we are treated to an informative look at film genres--the musical, the screwball comedy, the horror picture, the gangster film, and the western. It is the history that film buffs have been waiting for. Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 June 20, 2012) was an American film critic, a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism. Criticism of the auteur theory often stems from a misunderstanding of its "dogmatic" nature. Famously a revisionist, Sarris defends his original article "Notes on Auteur Theory" in The American Cinema stating: the article was written in what I thought was a modest, tentative, experimental manner, it was certainly not intended as the last word on the subject. He further has stated that the auteur theory should not be considered a theory at all but rather "a collection of facts", a reminder of movies to be resurrected, of genres to be redeemed, of directors to be rediscovered. In his 1998 book You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet: The American Talking Film, History and Memory 1927 1949, Sarris upgraded the status of Billy Wilder to pantheon level and apologized for his earlier harsh assessment in The American Cinema.