You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet

Andrew Sarris, long one of the leading movie reviewers in the United States, has sought to write the capstone of his forty-year career. As stated in his nineteen-page introduction, in the 1960s Sarris imported the auteur theory from France to argue for serious critical analyses of Hollywood films. Before the auteur theory, critics dismissed Hollywood films as simpleminded, mass-culture industrial products; after Sarris, critics have sought to analyze rich complex texts, authored by director-creators (and in rarer [End Page 819] cases by their stars). In 1969 Sarris laid out his version of the auteur theory in American Cinema, Directors and Directions, 1929-1968. Three decades later, You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet updates this influential book, following its core structure, and even at times quoting it at length. Despite the appearance of competing film theories, Sarris clings to the auteur theory as his thesis, theme, and argument. Indeed, he pointedly ignores all writing about the cinema since the early 1970s

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