Auteur Theory in detail

Very simply the basis of auteur theory is that instead being a co-operative, industrial product, a film becomes identified with its director, who is seen as the ultimate creative impetus or force behind the film. It is actually more complex than this in theory but it does attempt to insert an author into the film. Of course not all directors are ‘auteurs’ and we will go into this a bit more lately and what actually constitutes an auteur. Auteur theory is also very pervasive and has entered the popular discourse on films with critical opinion and reviews often articulated from this point of view eg the latest Tarantino release etc. My local DVD store even has a section dedicated to ‘great directors.’ In terms of film scholarship debates about authorship occupied a privileged position in film studies from the 1950’s until the early 1980’s when audience studies became a more central focus – although I would argue that it is still quite persistent and often hovers in the background in a lot of critical writing. It must be emphasised that auteur theory is less a coherent theory than a variable set of critical practices and over time it has been appropriated, attacked and reformulated in many different ways.

Prior to auteur theory ‘serious’ European film criticism had been established in the 1940s with the work of its principal figures such Andre Bazin in France and Siegfred Kracauer in Germany mainly driven by the relationship between film aesthetics and reality to which the concerns of the director were secondary.

First articulation of a politique des auteurs (auteur theory) came from the critics (and later filmmakers) who wrote for the French film magazine, Cahiers du Cinéma, in the 1950s:

François Truffaut

Jacques Rivette

Claude Chabrol

Eric Rohmer

André Bazin (not a filmmaker)

For examples of French auteurist criticism see Cahiers du Cinéma: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, new wave, ed. Jim Hillier and Theories of Authorship: A Reader, ed. John Caughie

The Cahier critics primarily developed their understanding of what makes a director an auteur in relation to the American cinema. In fact as Graham Turner writes “a polemical article by French film-maker Francois Truffaut, published in Cahiers du Cinema in 1954 signals the beginning of ‘auteur theory’. Although its specific points were almost entirely enclosed within industrial and political conflicts in the French film industry at the time it essentially argued for the necessity of a personal vision or style in a director’s film and cited some films that were reflective of this in even the most industrialised conditions of Hollywood. As such the theory evoked the more romantic concept of the artist and what constitutes artistic standards, while paradoxically rescuing a large body of popular films (Jerry Lewis comedies for example) from the cultural junk heap where they had been assigned by critics and theorists alike. Genre films – in particular –westerns, musicals, thrillers, gangster films – were now deemed interesting. Film theory therefore became a critical practice which paralleled dominant modes of literary criticism complete with a ‘canon’ of great films which very simply were the particular directors’ best and most representative works.

• Some American auteurs: John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Fuller, Alfred Hitchcock (films made in America considered to be American films).

• Evidence of the primary, creative authority of the auteur director to be found in the articulation of a consistent, personal vision found throughout a body of work.

Personal vision articulated through:

– Distinctive visual style – which included an emphasis on mis-en-scene.

– Repetition of narrative themes and motifs (including personal obsessions)

– self-consciousness (of convention) – idea that once the auteur realises his particular ‘signature’ conventions that these are then deployed in over a number of films in a self-aware manner – will discuss this later in regard to Tim Burton eg I am Tim Burton the auteur therefore I must include those elements in my films which are said to be a part of a Tim Burton film.

– Originality (of generic interpretation)

André Bazin, “On the politique des auteurs” (1957):

• A critique of auteur theory but not a rejection of it.

• Emphasizes role of tradition and convention.

“The cinema is an art which is both popular and industrial… What makes Hollywood so much better than anything else in the world is not only the quality of certain directors, but also the vitality and, in a certain sense, the excellence of a tradition.”

“The American cinema is a classical art, but why not then admire in it what is most admirable, i.e. not only the talent of this or that film-maker, but the genius of the system…”Andrew Sarris: American critic who popularised auteur theory for American critics and audiences (writing in the Village Voice and Film Culture). Created a pantheon or canon of what he considered to be ‘best directors’ which is still effective in much film criticism today – the notion of ‘the great director’ is still important in much film criticism today and in film courses it can become an important aspect of the way cinema is learnt and understood. In fact I often find myself discussing film in this way, although I am aware of the theoretical complexities of auteur theory. Organising a significant component of my viewing practices in this way eg catching the latest release by Jim Jarmusch (Broken Flowers) maybe – somewhat sadly – makes me excited. When I am watching it making sense of the film by my prior knowledge of his other films and evaluating this one alongside that also makes me feel excited. So there is a very practical and pleasurable aspect to the adoption of auteur theory for the cinephile like myself or even the more casual film-goer – and for arguments sake I don’t think this should be overlooked.

“Notes on the Theory of Auteur Theory in 1962”:

“After years of tortured revaluation, I am now prepared to stake my critical reputation, such as it is, on the proposition that Alfred Hitchcock is artistically superior to Robert Bresson by every criterion of excellence and, further that, film for film director for director, the American cinema has been consistently superior to that of the rest of the world from 1915 to 1962.”

Re: Sarris: an auteur’s body of work is characterised by:

• Technical flair

• Recurring characteristics of style, which serve as the filmmaker’s signature.

• conveys the filmmaker’s personal vision of the world (what Sarris calls ‘interior meaning’).

Also see “Toward a Theory of Film History” (in Theories of Authorship, ed. Caughie)

“To look at a film as the expression of a director’s vision is not to credit the director with total creativity.”

As time went on auteur theory began to appropriate concepts form structural linguistics, semiology, and psychoanalysis and began to question the underlying assumptions of auteur theory such as ‘coherence’, ‘self-expression’, ‘creativity’ – did not destroy the theory but rather transformed it.

Eg Peter Wollen and British auteur structuralism, Robin Wood.

Beginnings of a shift away from the notion of the auteur as originating source of the work towards the idea of the work as a set of contradictory relationships between structural elements which interact to produce the author’s world view rather than express it. Accepts that films are produced by film-makers, but also reminds us that film-makers themselves are produced by culture, therefore reconnecting the film with the culture it represents and also presents less of a totality or coherent world-view. Interested in ways of looking at film as a set of languages, as system for making meaning.

Source: https://brianair.wordpress.com/film-theory/auteur-theory/