Jump Cuts, Tracking Shots, and Scherzos is a thrilling immersion in five decades of sharp, witty, and deeply informed writing by one of America’s most adventurous film critics, David Sterritt. With bracing insight and unflagging curiosity, Sterritt moves effortlessly from Kurosawa to Malick, from Kiarostami to Coppola, from Norman Mailer to Philip Glass, from John Cage to Brian Eno, drawing connections between cinema, music, and modern culture with dazzling precision. Collected here are trenchant essays, provocative reviews, and unforgettable interviews with icons from Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen to Mira Nair and the Rolling Stones. Whether he’s exploring the moral ambiguities of The Tree of Life, the metaphysical enigmas of Stalker, or the restless energy of the Beat Generation, Sterritt writes with intellectual rigor and a palpable love of the arts. A passionate, essential volume for anyone who believes that the arts remain one of the great adventures of the human imagination.
David Sterritt is an American film critic, scholar, and educator known for his insightful writing on modern and avant-garde cinema. A longtime critic for The Christian Science Monitor (1968–2005), he has also chaired the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics Circle. Sterritt has taught at institutions including the Maryland Institute College of Art and is the author of numerous books on filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, as well as studies on the Beat Generation and postwar culture.
