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/
