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Everybody needs a personal pantheon -- a selection of filmmakers whose work means the most to them -- and Sarris (who, along with Pauline Kael, is the most influential of American film critics) turned his into a seminal work of criticism.  Sarris introduced America to the French auteur theory of the director as "author" of a film, and is a more scholarly and disciplined writer and film theoretician than Kael. Which is not to say that he's dry or dull -- he's just more interested in history. His essays on key filmmakers are a joy to read.  This is a landmark book you'll revisit and re-read continually.

She's sloppy, she's arrogant, she's stubborn, she's wrongheaded, and at least half the time her critical judgements aren't supported by the observations she herself has made!  And yet, she's the most exciting and influential film critic in America.  You don't read Kael for her opinions (they're frequently wacky and seem to have more to do with some personal grudge or favoritism -- or maybe what she had for dinner -- than what's actually on the screen) but nobody conveys a passion for the movies like she does. Most of her books are out of print (I Lost It at the Movies, Deeper into Movies, and Reeling are among my favorites), but this volume collects her masterworks, including her famous reviews of Nashville, Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather Part II, Last Tango in Paris, and other masterpieces of the '70s, when she (and American movies) were at their peak.   

If I had to do the old "desert island" trick with film books, this is the one I would take along -- an extremely personal and idiosyncratic encyclopedia that inevitably becomes as much an autobiography as a history of film. Like Kael (or any good film critic, for that matter) Thomson may seem wildly off-base to you at times, but like any good film critic he also makes you argue with him in your head and thereby clarify and refine your own critical judgements and standards.  His loving pieces on Howard Hawks and Cary Grant alone are worth the price of the book (actually, they're priceless), and his brilliant imagination will astound, stimulate, and sometimes irritate the hell out of you.

This isn't really a case of the instructor requiring you to buy one of his textbooks; I don't get any royalties from the sale of Cinemania.  But I can say, in all modesty, that it's the single most valuable encyclopedic film resource that you can buy -- anywhere, in any form (and it costs less than most of these books individually), because it combines many works into a whole that's even greater than the sum of its considerable parts. I wish I could have the thing implanted in my head (I have, to some extent) to check details -- names, dates, credits, etc.  Included: thousands of reviews from Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide (including many that are no longer in the print version); Roger Ebert's Movie Companion (including hundreds of pre-1986 reviews that aren't available anyplace else); Pauline Kael's 5001 Nights at the Movies; thousands of biographies and filmographies from Baseline and Ephraim Katz's Film Encyclopedia; in-depth reviews of classic films from CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide encyclopedia; a glossary of film terms; articles about different aspects of film and filmmaking -- all hyperlinked and cross-referenced. Plus it's a multimedia product, so there are extensive film clips, movie dialog clips, thousands of stills and portraits, personal "tours" conducted by major critics and filmmakers (Haskell Wexler, John Waters, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg...), online updates, and a "Suggestion Feature" to help you find movies by mood or subject.  Microsoft has discontinued it (and will shortly deactivate the website, too) but you can still find it in many major computer stores, so get it while you can!  I wouldn't write about movies without it in my CD-ROM drive. (This title may be purchased online from Sprynet.com for the close-out price of $18.95, while supplies last.)

Where was this book (subtitled: "From Tolstoy to Tarantino, the finest writing from a century of film") when I was first taking the plunge into movies?  There's a lot more to Roger Ebert than the "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" you see in movie ads; his writing is witty, insightful, intelligent, personal (remember, he's the only film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize).   In this anthology, Ebert collects essays and excerpts from writers, critics, filmmakers, and fans of all stripes.  There are sections on The Business, Genres, Critics, Sex and Scandal, Going to the Movies, Technique, Hollywood, Writers, and more. 

I can't think of another book about movies that I love quite the way I do this one -- mainly because Kerr is the most eloquent and illuminating writer I've ever read on my all-time favorite filmmaker, Buster Keaton.  This book is gorgeous -- with hundreds of stills and frame blow-ups to illustrate the key principles in the films of Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon, among other (lesser) lights.  

This is the only full-scale directorial study that I've included in this section, for a couple reasons: 1) it's one of the first (and best); 2) Hitchcock is the ideal filmmaker to use for studying how films are put together and how they work (most often almost subliminally) on the audience.  This is actually two books -- Wood's original 1965 study (which, given the state of American film criticism at the time, had to begin with the rhetorical question: "Why should we take Hitchcock seriously?" and proceeded to study "an unbroken string of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie"), and his 1989 revisionist criticism of his own book!   

Bazin is the co-founder of the French film magazine Cahier du Cinéma, out of which grew the politique des auteurs and the French New Wave of critics-turned-filmmakers: Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer.  To quote Pauline Kael: "Bazin must be read for the beauty of his argument.... [These essays] raise enough critical issues about how shots should be composed and edited and the relationship of movies to theater, to the novel, to painting, to documentary footage, to keep young filmmakers exhilarated and arguing into perpetuity.... What is Cinema? joins that small company of books on movies that do not exploit and interest in movies but intensify it."  (Volume II is also worthwhile.)

I am continually astounded by how many people think that "the critics" are of one mind.  Nothing could be further from the truth (and as a former Los Angeles Film Critics Association member, I speak from experience). And that's one reason why I love this book, in which opposing critical opinions (by some of my favorite critics: Richard T. Jameson, Roger Ebert, David Denby, Sheila Benson, Henry Sheehan...) are juxtaposed.  The movies include Blue Velvet, Thelma & Louise, Do the Right Thing, Pretty Woman, and so on.   The National Society has put out several excellent collections and they're all worthwhile -- including:  Foreign Affairs (foreign films), They Went Thataway: Redefining Film Genres, Produced and Abandoned (overlooked and cult films), and Flesh and Blood (on sex, violence, and censorship).