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Auteur Theory

Page history last edited by Nykki Montano 14 years, 3 months ago

Born out of an influential group of 1950's French film critics and filmmakers, the Auteur Theory explores the notions of individual creative vision and control in cinema.  In short, the critical perspective dictates that  the director is in a unique and irreplaceable position of personal artistic perspective, and that the film is, most importantly, a product of that perspective.  The employment of the French word for "author" (auteur) associates the director with the individual output of other mediums (painting, literature, etc.), and rebels against the seeming "collectiveness" of the film studio.  Francois Truffaut's sensational assertion that "there are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors" importantly situates film as the characterized output of a creative individual, and responds to the economic and productive tensions in filmmaking.

 

History

 

The origins of the Auteur Theory lie in the critical output of the Cahiers du Cinema, an influential French film magazine co-founded by Andre Bazin. In particular, Francois Truffaut's seminal article "A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema" established a wary and denunciatory distance from the French film establishment (the "Tradition of Quality", as he addresses it).  He states: "I do not believe in the peaceful co-existence of the "Tradition of Quality" and an "auteur's cinema" (231).  The sentiment of Truffaut is often considered in the context of the rise of the New Wave of French Filmmakers, many of whom were associated with the critical circle around the Cahiers du Cinema.  The proponents of auteurism held up "directors like Jean Renoir...and Alfred Hitchcock" as examples of filmmakers who produced cinema marked with a unique directorial and artistic vision (Wikipedia). Perhaps most seemingly tenuous, many of the seminal Cahiers critics considered directors, both those who created intensely personal films (much like the French New Wave directors themselves) and the masters born out of the Hollywood studio system, to be auteurs of their films.  Andrew Sarris, noted critic and proponent of this theory, observes that the "panthenon of gods" for the Cahiers du Cinema critics includes both "Howard Hawks and Max Opuls" and "Charlie Chaplin and Jean Cocteau" (27).  This reinforces the notion that good directing and individual style would inevitably "author" a film, regardless of the director being the sole creator of all of the film's creative elements, and place the director as "the creator in the personal sense [that] we accept for the other arts" (Sarris 26).  

 

Implications

 

One intended effect of the Auteur Theory is, especially in the context of the French New Wave, to "safeguard the creative freedom of the auteur director" (Marie 70). However, the larger implications of the theory is to shift the perception of how films are made, and how they function as art.  Viewing films from the auteur perspective also creates a new paradigm to evaluate cinema, and ultimately creates a new means by which to place films in a historical and creative context.  

 

Another very conscious function of the theory is the emphasis on a  director's body of work as a whole, rather than individual films.  This is a product of the notion that the "imprint" of the director will be apparent, regardless of a particular film's consistency or relation to other films in the individual's collected body of work.  In short, placing a film within a chronological context becomes important in the auteurist sense.

 

 

 

The above stills are taken from two films directed by Jean Cocteau: 1946's Beauty and the Beast and 1949's Orpheus.  Cocteau, who was in turn a champion of the personal and championed as an auteur of his films, exemplifies the idea of a director's "creative signature" on his cinematic productions.  Although it is an exceptional push to derive an entire stylistic persona from two still images, it is not so sensational to note the sense of wonder in both images.  These films both employ elements of the visually fantastic, whether it is the evocative use of light and dark areas or in their compositional meticulousness.  This demonstrates that, while the subject matter of the two works is vastly different, they can be traced through a single creative persona.

  

 

Works Consulted

 

"Auteur Theory."Wikipedia. 14 Oct. 2009

Marie, Michel. The French New Wave An Artistic School. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2002.

Sarris, Andrew. "The Auteur Theory and the Perils of Pauline." Film Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4. 26-33.

Truffaut, Francois. “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema.” Movies and Methods: An Anthology. Ed. Bill Nichols.       Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. 224-237.

Comments (1)

Sean Desilets said

at 4:45 pm on Oct 16, 2009

* Nice Godard picture.
* A clearer sense of the theory's tenets seem important. It might be worth writing a bit about what it means to contrast your own work with something you call a "tradition of quality."
* Pauline Kael wrote a withering attack on (one version of) the auteur theory that's lots of fun to read
* One feature of the auteur theory is the sense that one studies not individual films but the work of a director across several films, so as to her a sense of her style

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