Transcript Auteur theoryx

Auteur theory
Auteur analysis
• Auteur analysis seeks to identify the unique
artistic contribution of a particular individual
(usually the director) to a televisual text
– Comes from film studies but has been applied to
television, music creators
• In his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du
cinéma français" ("a certain tendency in French
cinema"), François Truffaut coined the phrase "la
politique des Auteurs", and asserted that the
worst of Jean Renoir's movies would always be
more interesting than the best of Jean
Delannoy's.
– His essay encouraged critics to look at films and to
value them in a certain way. Truffaut provocatively
said that "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only
good and bad directors".
• “A true film auteur is someone who brings
something genuinely personal to his subject
instead of just producing a tasteful, accurate
but lifeless rendering of the original material.”
– (emphasis added)
– Francois Truffaut
• The critic who champions the auteur prefers
the ‘magnificent failure’ of an artist to the
brilliant success of a technician.
• A number of other film critics in the Cahiers
took up Truffaut’s cause and a number of
auteur analyses of directors (especially French
new-wave directors) were produced
• Over time, the approach was applied to
analysis of Hollywood directors (Hitchcock)
– Opposition argued that directors from studiodriven Hollywood did not qualify as ‘authors’ of
the movies
• Truffaut and the critics writing in the Cahiers
(notably Andre Bazin, the editor) recognized
that moviemaking was an industrial process.
However, they proposed an ideal to strive for:
the director should use the commercial
apparatus the way a writer uses a pen and,
through the mise en scène, imprint their
vision on the work (conversely, the role of the
screenwriter was minimized in their eyes).
• Auteur theory was imported to the United
States in the 1960s, with Andrew Sarris its
strongest proponent
– "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962", "Towards a
Theory of Film History", from Film Culture
Anthology (Secker and Warburg 1971) by P. Adams
Sitney (ed.)
Who is the author?
• The first requirement of auteur analysis is that
the critic provide adequate justification for
the identification of an ‘auteur.’ No auteur, no
auteur analysis.
– What are the standards?
Personality and personal style
• Must identify the personality, approach to
filmmaking, special talents, etc. of the auteur
Influences
• Analyses often review the life of the auteur,
focusing on any personality-building
experiences, influential teachers and creative
influences such as novels or films that were
especially powerful.
– Attempts to find the influences and experiences
that shaped the auteur’s approach to filmmaking
Indicators of independence
• The auteur cannot simply be a functionary of
the industrial system
– Constraints from the studio, networks, etc.
– Fights with executives, other creatives
– Contracts providing creative control
Indicators of artistry
[Nick Burnett]
• “A close visual and textual examination of two
aspects of the work
• 1) the mis en scene (all the means available to a
director to express her attitude toward the
character—pacing, camera movement, cuts,
angle and distance of the camera, content of the
shot, etc.) and
– [Note: this combines mis-en-scene with editing as we
have used the terms]
• 2) the pattern of thematic motifs across the
author’s entire work”
Style
• If a director’s visual approach (‘style’) is consistently
applied to a range of material that you would expect
to vary had they been directed by a number of
different individuals, then that consistent visual
approach can be seen as a signature of the auteur.
Examples of ‘auteurs’
• Howard Hawkes in Hollywood studio film
• Steven Bochco in network TV
• Bruce Springsteen in contemporary
commercial music
– Lady Gaga?
• Michel Condry in music videos
Auteur analysis
• Subjective in nature.
– The questions addressed and the types of
evidence invoked are often ‘beneath the surface’
of the texts and therefore require training and
expertise to identify and evaluate.
– Allows the critic to be inventive, to evaluate a
wide variety of evidence and to combine that
evidence in ways that are difficult in more
‘scientific’ approaches to criticism.
• An auteur analysis is judged by how
convincing and compelling the scholarly
community finds it.
– There are no objective measures of the quality of
such an analysis
– Open to criticism because there are no clear
objective standards
• Scholars have questioned whether a film (or,
in the case of Butler, a TV show) has any single
auteur that can be identified. They say
collaborative nature of TV or film production
and the many influences over the final
product mean that no individual can be said to
provide the predominant creative influence.
Sources of critique
• Screenwriters, especially, have argued that
their contribution is equal to or greater than
that of the director
• Butler argues that these conditions hold true
especially for television, where the time
demands of production require multiple
directors, screenwriters, cinematographers,
etc. for a given series. Despite the different
personnel series do provide very similar
content from episode to episode.
– Some argue for the producer or the ‘showrunner’
as the appropriate focus of auteur analysis in
television (Bruckheimer TV)
• Additionally, auteur analysis can be open to
the ‘So what?’ critique.
– What is the social impact of the auteur?
– Can understanding the role of the auteur help us
to better understand the role of art in culture?
– Can it provide a means to advance the artistry of
film/TV/video games?
• The ‘auteur’ designation can be too easily
conferred
– “Commercialization of authorship”
• Use of the famous name for marketing of properties
• Assign authorship to those who are most marketable
– Note: your reading on Bruckheimer TV addresses
this issue
• Overly lenient view of necessary artistic input
by fans of particular personalities?
New directions
• Move to include a wider range of personnel—
actors, producers, screenwriters
• More attention to editing (with newer
technologies directors have greater control)
• Interest in sound as part of creative production
rather than focusing entirely on visual
• Analyses of more types of televisual media—
television series, music, video games
– Cross-media auteurs