Noted film critic Andrew Harris dead at age 83

Noted film critic and founding member of the National Society of Film Critics Andrew Sarris died Wednesday in Manhattan following complications from a fall at the age of 83.

Brooklyn-born Sarris was best known for championing foreign films and auteur directors as a film critic at The Village Voice, which he joined in 1960 after working as a movie story consultant. He married the feminist film critic Molly Haskell, who survives him, in 1969, and was known to have had a peppery life time rivalry (some might say feud) with New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael, who predeceased him in 2001.

Sarris, who taught film at Columbia University, New York University and Yale University, went to work for The New York Observer in 1989, where he remained for 20 years until he was laid off.