Abstract

Film Critics

The article presents information on two books. "The Movies As Medium," by Lewis Jacobs, and "Confessions of a Cultist: On the Cinema," by Andrew Sarris. Lewis Jacobs compiles a small anthology of other men's essays, all bearing in some way on the one superannuated idea. And, in the hope of bringing it up to date, he chooses writers of the last three decades, or those who are warranted for all time, rather than the ones who originated the idea in, the twenties and thirties. Though some of the writers in this collection are great spirits, their contributions are mostly restricted to simple technical advice. films he has ever seen. Andrew Sarris's book, too, is a collection, an assortment of his own reviews mostly dating from the sixties and informed by a later notion--the well-known auteur theory.