David Sterritt, film critic for the Christian Science Monitor and
professor of film at Long Island University, is one of the most astute,
acclaimed, and thought-provoking critics in America. Sterritt's sharp
eye for telling detail and deep understanding of cinema and its history
make his work appealing to scholars and lay audiences. Guiltless
Pleasures: A David Sterritt Film Reader collects his most incisive
essays from 1970 to the present. The collection emphasizes films and
filmmakers that are often overlooked or undervalued because they stray
from ordinary norms of commercial cinema. While focusing on such
rewarding challenges as the avant-garde masterpieces of Stan Brakhage,
the unsettling videos of Robert Wilson, and the violent, disturbing
films of Gaspar Noé, Sterritt writes equally well and insightfully on
mainstream Hollywood films. At a time when admitting to "guilty
pleasures" has become a common pastime among serious moviegoers,
Sterritt argues that there's no reason to feel guilty about the alchemy
of cinema. After all, he maintains, the inner journeys we take by means
of movies and other cultural works are a large part of what makes life
worth living. David Sterritt is chairman of the National Society of Film
Critics. He is the author of Screening the Beats: Media Culture and the
Beat Sensibility, The Films of Jean-Luc Godard, and Mad to Be Saved: The
Beats, the '50s, and Film, and his work has appeared in the New York
Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Film Comment, and Cineaste. He
lives in New York City.
