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Auteur Theory

Doughty & Etherington-Wright

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Auteur: “A film director whose personal influence and artistic control over his or her films are so great that he or she may be regarded as the author, and whose films may be regarded collectively as a body of work sharing common themes or techniques and expressing an individual style or vision” (1).

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(some) Examples

Quentin Tarantino
Wes Anderson
Christopher Nolan
David Fincher
Alfred Hitchcock
Stanley Kubrick
Howard Hawks
Charlie Chaplin
Steven Spielberg
David Lynch
Tim Burton
Terry Gilliam
Douglas Sirk
Todd Haynes

Orson Welles
Spike Lee
Danny Boyle
Tyler Perry
The Coen Brothers
Paul Thomas Anderson
Edgar Wright
Michael Bay
Billy Wilder
Fritz Lang
Kathryn Bigelow
Sofia Coppola
Agnes Varda
Ava Duvernay
Celine Sciamma

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Intro

Typically we imagine a singular artist passionately working to create their art!
The term is French for Author

Derives from the prefix “auto” meaning “one”

Structuralist approach…
Despite common film studies teaching, this idea dates back to the 1910s…
“Authorship” continues to be an issue today…

Film is a collaborative process!
Actors, writers, set designers, camera operators, musicians, financial backers, technical advisors, costume and make-up artists, editors, marketing and distribution staff, and so on…

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Auteur Theory Beginnings - Alexandre Astruc

Astruc: coined the term “camera-stylo”, which translates to “camera pen”
Wanted to raise cinema from a working-class form to that of opera, ballet, poetry, literature, and other fine arts
“Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo” (1948) article called for new language in filmmaking
Camera should be used in the same way that a writer uses a pen
Called for more “personal” ways of storytelling

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The Cahiers Group (Cinémathèque Française)

Led to the film journal Cahiers du Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave)
These cinephiles (filmoholics) were obsessed with filmmaking
Andre Bazin, Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Henri Langlois, Alain Resnais, Jacques Rivette, François Truffaut, Roger Vadim, etc.

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Truffaut - “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema”

Found traditional French filmmaking conservative, unexciting, stuffy, and outdated

“Cinema du Papa” (“Dad’s Cinema”)
This form privileged the role of the writer opposed to the director

He wanted to “attack the ideology of the bourgeois culture”
Limited imports during WWII Nazi occupation, but then an onslaught Post-WWII

They noticed certain directors exhibited certain stylistic traits, which led to “auteur policy” (an attitude and a critical approach to reading film)

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Two Overriding Principles of Truffaut’s “Auteur Policy”

Mise-en-scene is crucial to the reading of cinema and is essential in film analysis and criticism
The director’s personal expression is key in distinguishing whether they should be afforded the title of auteur

*Truffaut was concerned with the focus on film style (mise-en-scene and thematics) rather than film plot (content)

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(some) David Lynch Stylistic Traits

Darkness and Americana
Industry and Modernity
Dream/Surreal Imagery
Non-linear narratives
Curtains & jagged floors
Quirky, unrealistic characters
Owes a great deal to Avant-Garde cinema…
Uses the same actors and crew over and over again

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Blue Velvet (1986) & Twin Peaks (1989-1991)

(Darkness and Americana)

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Eraserhead (1977), Dune (1984) & Twin Peaks (1989-1991)

(Industry and Modernity)

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The Elephant Man (1980) & Inland Empire (2006)

(Dreamlike Imagery)

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Mulholland Drive (2001), Twin Peaks (1989-1991) & Eraserhead (1977)

(Curtains and jagged floors)

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Eraserhead (1977), Lost Highway (1997), & Mulholland Drive (2001)

(Quirky, unrealistic characters)

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Andrew Sarris - “Notes on the Auteur Theory”

Mistranslated Truffaut’s work as “theory”
Points out flaws in “A Certain Tendency…”

Questions whether a director can be the author of a film and solely responsible for its distinctive quality

“...makes it difficult to think of a bad director making a good film and almost impossible to think of a good director making a bad one”
Used concentric circles to explain Auteur Theory

Technique, personal style, interior meaning
Interior is most important and elusive

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Metteur-en-scene (translated to “scene setter”) (first coined by Andre Bazin) opposed to an Auteur, is a competent, and often very good, technician, but that’s about where it ends. An Auteur goes further…

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Production

A large budget does not necessarily equal auteur status

The reverse is often true actually…

Director could be successful in a particular genre
Many work outside the mainstream studio system

Struggle to attract financial support

Auteurs must have a large body of work to pick apart and compare…

How many…? Quantity or quality?

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Pauline Kael

One of the most outspoken critics to debunk the ideas of Auteur Theory
She published a vitriolic attack entitled “Circles and Squares” (1963)
She states: “It is an insult to an artist to praise his bad work along with his good; it indicates that you are incapable of judging either. [...] It’s like buying clothes by the label: This is Dior, so it’s good. (This is not so far from the way the Auteur critics work, either)”

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Other Candidates for the Role of Auteur

Actor

Onscreen and marketing (star power)
Some transition from actor to director

Cinematographer (DP)

Often responsible for “visual style” using angles, depth of field, lighting, camera, lenses, etc.

Writer

Screenwriters (original or adaptations) have the initial “vision”
Should be part of the filmmaking process?

Composer

Directors often work with the same composer
Very distinct sonic signature

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Roland Barthes - “Death of the Author” (1968)

“Western culture places too much emphasis on the creative force; assigning meaning of the text to the author” (9)
He gives preference to the reader. The reader gives meaning to a text.

Never one definitive reading

Author-centered approach closes down the full range of possible meanings
Passive readers allow info to be absorbed without conscious effort whereas the active reader will question and challenge the text
Cultural and “normative” ways of reading and interpreting texts

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Michel Foucault - “What is an Author?” (1977)

Questions the need to trace works back to a specific author
Should be a voluntary disappearance into the created work, avoiding author as “sole creator of meaning”
Birth of the reader/audience
Understand a work through analyzing its form and content
What constitutes a “work”?

Context of the author, their other writings, scenes that didn’t make final cut, etc.

“Author” as a historical creation that has gained mythological and heroic status

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Michel Foucault - “What is an Author?” (1977) Cont…

No need to “kill” the author since eventually the notion of “author” will cease
Historical ideas of ownership and how they’ve changed - “Author-function”

Ancient texts didn’t need an author to be considered worthy
At the beginning of the 18th century, written works became property, leading to copyright laws requiring assigned authors

Possibly more than a name is required to establish a series of works are created by a singular author:

A standard level of quality
Conceptual or theoretical coherence
Stylistic uniformity
Referring to things after one’s death…

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Timothy Corrigan - “The Commerce of Auteurism” (1990)

Auteurism as “commercial strategy” instead of formal traits, thematic consistency, and “interior meaning”
“Auteur as star”

“A kind of brand-name vision whose contextual meanings are already determined”

Preconceived notions of what a certain director’s films look like

Informs how these directors outputs are consumed
“Commercial strategy for organizing audience reception” and “distribution and marketing aims”
Can be “forgiven” based on star status

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Making a case for an auteur—-->

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Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)

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