Anauteur (/oʊˈtɜːr/;French:[otœʁ],lit. 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually afilm director whose filmmaking control is so unbounded and personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film,[1] thus manifesting the director's unique style or thematic focus.[2] As an unnamed value, auteurism originated in Frenchfilm criticism of the late 1940s,[3] and derives from the critical approach ofAndré Bazin andAlexandre Astruc, whereas American criticAndrew Sarris in 1962 called itauteur theory.[4][5]
American actorJerry Lewis directed his own 1960 filmThe Bellboy via sweeping control, and was praised for "personal genius". By 1970, theNew Hollywood era had emerged with studios granting directors broad leeway.Pauline Kael argued, however, that "auteurs" rely on creativity of others, like cinematographers.[6][7]Georges Sadoul deemed a film's putative "author" could potentially even be an actor, but a film is indeed collaborative.[8]Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives.[9]David Kipen's view of the screenwriter as indeed the main author is termedSchreiber theory. In the 1980s, large failures prompted studios to reassert control. The auteur concept has also been applied to non-film directors, such asrecord producers andvideo game designers, such asHideo Kojima.[10]
Notable examples of filmmakers throughout history frequently cited as auteurs includeWes Anderson,Christopher Nolan,Lars Von Trier,Baz Luhrmann,Hayao Miyazaki,Guillermo Del Toro,Francis Ford Coppola,Robert Eggers,Tim Burton,Ari Aster,Martin Scorsese,Paul Thomas Anderson,Bong Joon Ho,the Coen brothers,Quentin Tarantino,Jacques Tati,Ingmar Bergman,Stanley Kubrick,David Lynch,Akira Kurosawa andEdgar Wright .
Even before auteur theory, the director was considered the most important influence on a film. In Germany, an early film theorist,Walter Julius Bloem, explained that since filmmaking is an art geared toward popular culture, a film's immediate influence, the director, is viewed as the artist, whereas an earlier contributor, like the screenwriter, is viewed as an apprentice.[11][12][better source needed]James Agee, a leading film critic of the 1940s, said that "the best films are personal ones, made by forceful directors".[12] Meanwhile, the French film criticsAndré Bazin andRoger Leenhardt described that directors, vitalizing films, depict the directors' own worldviews and impressions of the subject matter, as by varying lighting, camerawork, staging, editing, and so on.[13]
As theFrench New Wave in cinema began, French magazineCahiers du cinéma, founded in 1951, became a hub of discourse about directors' roles in cinema. In a 1954 essay,[14]François Truffaut criticized the prevailing "Cinema of Quality" whereby directors, faithful to the script, merely adapt a literary novel. Truffaut described such a director as ametteur en scene, a mere "stager" who adds the performers and pictures.[15] To represent the view that directors who express their personality in their work make better films, Truffaut coined the phrase "la politique des auteurs", or "the policy of the authors".[16] He named eight writer-directors,Jean Renoir,Robert Bresson,Jean Cocteau,Jacques Becker,Abel Gance,Max Ophüls,Jacques Tati, andRoger Leenhardt, as examples of these "authors".[14]
Jerry Lewis, an actor from the Hollywood studio system, directed his own 1960 filmThe Bellboy. Lewis's influence on it spanned business and creative roles, including writing, directing, lighting, editing, and art direction. French film critics, publishing inCahiers du Cinéma and inPositif, praised Lewis's results. For hismise-en-scene and camerawork, Lewis was likened toHoward Hawks,Alfred Hitchcock, andSatyajit Ray. In particular,Jean-Luc Godard credited Lewis's "personal genius" for making him "the only one in Hollywood doing something different, the only one who isn't falling in with the established categories, the norms, the principles", "the only one today who's making courageous films".[17]
As early as his 1962 essay "Notes on the auteur theory", published in the journalFilm Culture,[18] American film criticAndrew Sarris translated the French termla politique des auteurs, byFrançois Truffaut in 1955, into Sarris's termauteur theory. Sarris applied it to Hollywood films, and elaborated in his 1968 book,The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968, which helped popularize the English term.
Via auteur theory, critical and public scrutiny of films shifted from their stars to the overall creation.[12] In the 1960s and the 1970s, a new generation of directors, revitalizing filmmaking by wielding greater control, manifested theNew Hollywood era,[19][20] when studios granted directors more leeway to take risks.[21] Yet in the 1980s, upon high-profile failures likeHeaven's Gate, studios reasserted control, muting the auteur theory.[22]
Pauline Kael, an early critic of auteur theory,[23][24][25] debated Andrew Sarris in magazines.[26][7] Defending a film as a collaboration, her 1971 essay "Raising Kane", examinedOrson Welles's 1941 filmCitizen Kane, asserting extensive reliance on co-writerHerman J. Mankiewicz and on cinematographerGregg Toland.[27]
Richard Corliss andDavid Kipen argued that a film's success relies more on screenwriting.[28][29][30] In 2006, to depict the screenwriter as the film's principal author, Kipen coined the termSchreiber theory.
To film historianGeorges Sadoul, a film's main "author" can also be an actor, screenwriter, producer, or novel's author, although afilm is a collective's work.[8] Film historianAljean Harmetz, citing classical Hollywood's input by producers and executives, held that auteur theory "collapses against the reality of thestudio system".[9]
In some law references, a film is treated as artwork while the auteur, as its creator, is the original copyright holder. UnderEuropean Union law, largely by influence of auteur theory, a film director is considered the film's author or one of its authors.[31]
The references of auteur theory are occasionally applied to musicians, musical performers, and music producers. From the 1960s, record producerPhil Spector is considered the first auteur among producers of popular music.[32][33] Author Matthew Bannister named him the first "star" producer.[33] JournalistRichard Williams wrote:
Spector created a new concept: the producer as overall director of the creative process, from beginning to end. He took control of everything, he picked the artists, wrote or chose the material, supervised the arrangements, told the singers how to phrase, masterminded all phases of the recording process with the most painful attention to detail, and released the result on his own label.[34]
Another earlypop music auteur wasBrian Wilson,[35] influenced by Spector.[36] In 1962, Wilson's band,the Beach Boys, signed toCapitol Records and swiftly became a commercial success, whereby Wilson became the first pop musician credited for writing, arranging, producing, and performing his own material.[37] Before the "progressive pop" of the late 1960s, performers typically had little input on their own records.[38] Wilson, however, employed the studio like an instrument,[36] as well as a high level of studio control[39] that other artists soon sought.[35]
According toThe Atlantic's Jason Guriel, the Beach Boys' 1966 albumPet Sounds, produced by Wilson, anticipated later auteurs, as well as "the rise of the producer" and "the modern pop-centric era, which privileges producer over artist and blurs the line between entertainment and art. [...] Anytime a band or musician disappears into a studio to contrive an album-length mystery, the ghost of Wilson is hovering near."[40]
heaven's gate april 16 1979.
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