Auteur theory
Infilm criticism,auteur theoryholds that adirector'sfilmreflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (theFrenchword for "author").
In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process.
Auteur theory has influenced film criticism since 1954, when it was advocated by film director and criticFrançois Truffaut. This method of film analysis was originally associated with theFrench New Waveand the film critics who wrote for the French film review periodicalCahiers du Cinéma. Auteur theory was developed a few years later in America through the writings ofThe Village VoicecriticAndrew Sarris. Sarris used auteur theory as a way to further the analysis of what defines serious work through the study of respected directors and their films.
AUTUER THEORY
The auteur theory has formed our comprehension of the cinematic industry of the present day. The word ‘auteur’ comes from the French term for ‘author’. Simply, an auteur is someone who writes and directs a film but incorporates their personal styles and distinctive techniques into their works. Auteurship in film began to develop in the 1950’s and was promoted by Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard.
Andrew Sarris was an American film critic who suggested that ‘an auteur is born from a layered system of abilities’. These abilities can be recognised in the form of three concentric circles. The outer layer is corresponded as a role of the direction as a ‘technician’ – applying his distinctive techniques, which would be recognized as being iconic to the director. The middle layer then is adopted by the ‘stylist’ – in which the auteur then adapts his own styles into his works. The inner layer is then the ‘inner meaning’ of the film, labelled ‘auteur’.
The auteur is more considered to be the ‘author’ of the text rather than the writer of the screenplay, developing a role that is more iconic towards the individual, and that the style within it is evident in all aspects of the final cut.
Francois Truffaut quoted “a true film auteur is someone who brings something genuinely personal to his subject instead of producing a tasteful, accurate but lifeless rendering of the original material”.
An Auteur is a film director who establishes a particular style and uses it in most or all of his or her films; the director’s creative voice is particularly distinctive.
Auteur theory draws on the work of a group of cinema enthusiasts who wrote forCahiers du Cinémaand argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision. They championed filmmakers such asSatyajit Ray,Alfred Hitchcock,Howard Hawks, andJean Renoirare known as absolute 'auteurs' of their films. AlthoughAndré Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers, provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he explained his concern about its excesses in his article "On the Auteur Theory" (Cahier # 70, 1957). Another element of Auteur theory comes fromAlexandre Astruc's notion of thecaméra-styloor "camera-pen," which encourages directors to wield cameras as writers use pens and to guard against the hindrances of traditional storytelling.
RESEARCH TASK – research either Alfred Hitchcock, how are they absolute autuers?
Hitchcock is the one of the most well-known auteurs in theatre. His styles and techniques are iconic to his works and can be recognised instantly with many audiences. Hitchcock’s films are often implied as having connections to psychological elements with his audience, allowing his abilities to capture mood and emotion and project them onto his audiences. Hitchcock pioneered many styles and techniques in his specified genres in order to expose his audiences to films that they weren’t used to.
Hitchcock’s themes were very often recurring as his career developed. For example, one of his most iconic themes was protagonists that are nearly always blonde and beautiful women who played the victim.
Hitchcock framed shots that were to manipulate audience feelings and maximise the emotions such as: anxiety, fear or empathy. He used distinctive film editing to portray the points of views of characters and his films often featured depictions of violence and thriller: genres that audience weren’t fully exposed to in previous generations.
Hitchcock would attempt to ensure that the camera had ‘human-like’ qualities by using certain camera angles and shots in a POV style so the audience were engaged more, as if they were seeing through the character’s eyes. An important part of Alfred Hitchcock’s filmmaking was the final twist that was created to shock the audience and provide their expectations of the ending.
Additionally, many contemporary directors such as M. Night Shylamalan state that Hitchcock is one of their directing inspirations and have followed in his footsteps in the film industry. This conforms to how Alfred Hitchcock is an absolute auteur because he has encouraged the progression of the film industry of today.
Truffaut and the members of theCahiersrecognized that movie-making was an industrial process. However, they proposed an ideal to strive for, encouraging the director to use the commercial apparatus as a writer uses a pen, and, through themise en scène, imprint his or her vision on the work (minimizing the role of thescreenwriter). Recognizing the difficulty of reaching this ideal, they valued the work of directors who came close.
The definition of an Auteur was debated upon since the 1940s. Andre Bazin and Roger Leenhardt presented the theory that it is the director that brings the film to life and uses the film to express their thoughts and feelings of the subject matter as well as a world view as an auteur. An auteur can use lighting, camerawork, staging and editing to add to their vision.[2]Michel Foucault wrote a literary piece called 'What is an author?" which contributes to the Auteur Theory. The text refers to the "author function," an idea connected to the legal system concerning who owns the text. This theory has become more complex than just attribution. According to Foucault, "author" does not refer to just a real individual but rather as an alter ego of an actual person. "author" is too narrow of a definition for some who Foucault calls "founders of discursivity".
In his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" ("A certain tendency in French cinema"),François Truffautcoined the phrase "la politique des Auteurs", asserting that the worst of Jean Renoir's movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies ofJean Delannoy. "Politique" might very well be translated as "policy" or "program"; it involves a conscious decision to value and look at films in a certain way. One might see it as the policy of treating any director that uses a personal style or a unique world view as an Auteur. Truffaut criticized the Cinema of Quality as "Scenarists' films", which are works that lack originality and rely on literary classics. According to Truffaut, this means that the director is only ametteur en scene, a "stager". This tradition suggests that the screenwriter hands the script to the director and the director simply adds the performers and pictures.[3]Truffaut provocatively said: "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors".
Truffaut's article, by his own admission, dealt primarily with scenarists or screenwriters, precisely the screenwriting duoJean AurencheandPierre Bost,who, Truffaut believed, simplified and compromised many of the great works of French literature in order to support the political agenda of their day. In Truffaut's article, he references the directorClaude Autant-Lara's characterization of his adaptation ofRaymond Radiguet'sDevil in the Fleshas an "anti-war" book, citing the problem that the book pre-dated the Second World War. Truffaut applied the term "auteur" to directors likeJean Renoir,Max Ophuls,Jacques Becker,Jacques Tati, andRobert Bresson, who, aside from exerting their distinct style, wrote the screenplays or worked on the writing of screenplays of their films.
In its embryonic form, the auteur theory dealt with the nature of literary adaptations and Truffaut's discomfort with the screenwriters Aurenche's and Bost's maxim that any film adaptation of a novel should capture the spirit of the novel and deal only with its "filmable" aspects. Truffaut believed that film directors like Robert Bresson were able to use the film narrative to approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes. To support this assertion, he used the film version ofGeorges Bernanos'sDiary of a Country Priest.
Much of the writing of Truffaut and his colleagues at the film criticism magazineCahiers du cinémawas designed to lambaste not only the post-warFrench cinemabut especially the big production films of thecinéma de qualité("quality films"). Truffaut's circle referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashionedcinéma de papa(or "Dad's cinema"). During theNazi occupation, theVichygovernment did not allow the exhibition of U.S. films such asThe Maltese FalconandCitizen Kane. In 1946, when French film critics were finally able to see the 1940s U.S. movies, they were enamoured with these films.
Truffaut's theory maintains that a good director (and many bad ones) exerts such a distinctive style or promotes such a consistent theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work. Truffaut himself was appreciative of directors whose work showed a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock) as well as those whose visual style was less pronounced but whose movies reflected a consistent theme (such as Jean Renoir's humanism). Truffautet al.made the distinction between auteurs and 'metteurs en scene', the latter not being described as inferior directors making inherently poor films, just lacking the authorial signature.
Theauteur theorywas used by the directors of thenouvelle vague(New Wave) movement of French cinema in the 1960s (many of whom were also critics at theCahiers du Cinéma) as justification for their intensely personal and idiosyncratic films. One of the ironies of the Auteur theory is that, at the very moment Truffaut was writing, the break-up of theHollywoodstudio systemduring the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made.
The "auteur" approach was adopted inEnglish-languagefilm criticism in the 1960s. In the UK,Movieadopted Auteurism, while in the U.S.,Andrew Sarrisintroduced it in the essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962". This essay is where the term, "Auteur theory", originated. To be classified as an "auteur", according to Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning (although many of Sarris's auterist criteria were left vague[citation needed]). Later in the decade, Sarris publishedThe American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, which quickly became the unofficial bible of auteurism.
The auteurist critics—Truffaut,Jean-Luc Godard,Claude Chabrol,Éric Rohmer—wrote mostly about directors, although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. However later Truffaut wrote: the auteur theory "was started by Cahiers du Cinema and is forgotten in France, but still discussed in American periodicals."
Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director.Pauline Kaeland Sarris feuded in the pages ofThe New Yorkerand various film magazines.[4][5]One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review ofCitizen Kane, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writerHerman J. Mankiewiczand cinematographerGregg Toland.[6]But Kael's objections to the "auteur theory" were many and are best learned by reading her essay "Circles and Squares".
Notable screenwriters such asErnest Lehman,[7]Nicholas Kazan,[8]Robert Riskin[9]andWilliam Goldman[10]have publicly balked at the idea that directors are more authorial than screenwriters, while film historianAljean Harmetz, referring to the creative input of producers and studio executives in classical Hollywood, argues that the auteur theory "collapses against the reality of the studio system".[11]
The auteur theory was also challenged by the influence ofNew Criticism, a school ofliterary criticism. The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. New Critics argued that that information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature.[citation needed]
In 2006, David Kipen coined the termSchreiber theoryto refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal author of a film.[12]
Can you think of any examples of your own?
Clint Eastwood
Steven Spielberg
James Cameron
How are these directors Auteur’s?
Clint Eastwood – common thread of tragic lives and tragic endings are a typical theme in his films. Lots of control over his films – allowed the story to develop as he made the story. Acting in his own films – he has absolute control over his character.
Steven Spielberg – Childhood is a theme that is often typically recurring in his films – his low angle camera-work mimics a child’s POV. Another theme that often comes up in Spielberg’s films is the role of the distant father. Other themes include: representations of alien life forms and the frequent use of bright light.
James Cameron – Love is a theme that often reoccurs in Cameron’s films. Cameron always has large budgets when it comes to his productions – Titanic was budgeted at $200,000,000, Aliens at $18,500,000 and Avatar at $237,000,000. Cameron frequently shoots scenes in a blue hue, and often uses close-up camera angles.
What films have they made that express their view point?
Clint Eastwood – Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven
Steven Spielberg – ET, Close Encounter of The Third Kind, The Color Purple, The Goonies
James Cameron – Titanic, Avatar, Aliens, The Terminator