Sarris is the person who took the French term auteur and applied it to American moviemaking. Sarris’s book introduced auteur theory to film enthusiasts in 1968, making way for the idea that a film had an author—the director—who could and should be venerated. The thing was, I couldn’t find a truly operational theory in the book’s pages. Theory and her earnest, helpful twin sister praxis, that was what I was after. Something to let me know how to proceed, critically.
