An auteur (; , '
author
An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states:
"''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...
') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a
film director
A film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfilment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, ...
whose filmmaking control is so unbounded but personal that the director is likened to the "author" of the film, which thus manifests the director's unique style or thematic focus. As an unnamed value, auteurism originated in French
film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films and the film medium. In general, film criticism can be divided into two categories: journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, magazines and other popular mass-media out ...
of the late 1940s, and derives from the critical approach of
André Bazin and
Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director.
Biography
Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...
, whereas American critic
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Kat ...
in 1962 called it auteur theory.
Yet the concept first appeared in French in 1955 when director
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
termed it ''policy of the authors'', and interpreted the films of some directors, like
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
, as a body revealing recurring themes and preoccupations.
American actor
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian. As his contributions to comedy and charity made him a global figure in pop culture, Lewis was nickn ...
directed his own 1960 film ''
The Bellboy'' via sweeping control, and was praised for "personal genius." By 1970, the
New Hollywood
The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence.
They influenced the types o ...
era emerged with studios granting directors broad leeway.
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions of ...
argued, however, that "auteurs" rely on creativity of others, like cinematographers.
[The Beginning of the Auteur Theory * Filmmaker IQ](_blank)
Archived 2020-07-26 at the Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and s ...
Georges Sadoul
Georges Sadoul (4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English.
Biography
Sadoul was ...
deemed a film's putative "author" potentially even an actor, but a film indeed collaborative.
Aljean Harmetz cited major control even by film executives.
David Kipen's view of screenwriter as indeed main author is termed ''
Schreiber theory''. In the 1980s, large failures prompted studios to reassert most control. The auteur concept has also been applied to non-film directors, such as
record producer
A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...
s and
video game designer
Video game design is the process of designing the content and rules of video games in the pre-production stage and designing the gameplay, environment, storyline and characters in the production stage. Some common video game design subdiscipline ...
s.
Film
Origin
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.
James Agee
James Rufus Agee ( ; November 27, 1909 – May 16, 1955) was an American novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and film critic. In the 1940s, writing for ''Time Magazine'', he was one of the most influential film critics in the United States. ...
, a leading film critic of the 1940s, said that "the best films are personal ones, made by forceful directors".
Meanwhile, the French film critics
André Bazin and
Roger Leenhardt
Roger Leenhardt (23 July 1903 – 4 December 1985) was a French writer and filmmaker.
Early life
Born in a bourgeois Protestant family, this brilliant student of philosophy was very soon fascinated by cinema. Through a cousin, he started working ...
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.
Development of theory
As the
French New Wave in cinema began, French magazine ''
Cahiers du cinéma
''Cahiers du Cinéma'' (, ) is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.Itzkoff, Dave (9 February 2009''Cahiers Du Cinéma Will Continue to Publish''The New York TimesMacnab, ...
'', founded in 1951, became a hub of discourse about directors' roles in cinema. In a 1954 essay,
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
criticized the prevailing "Cinema of Quality" whereby directors, faithful to the script, merely adapt a literary novel. Truffaut described such a director as a ''metteur en scene'', a mere "stager" who adds the performers and pictures. 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'', in a 1955 review of
Jacques Becker's ''
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'' titled, "Ali Baba et la 'Politique des auteurs'" (February 1955).
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian. As his contributions to comedy and charity made him a global figure in pop culture, Lewis was nickn ...
, an actor from the Hollywood studio system, directed his own 1960 film ''
The Bellboy''. Lewis's influence on it spanned business and creative roles, including writing, directing, lighting, editing, and art direction. French film critics, publishing in ''
Cahiers du Cinéma
''Cahiers du Cinéma'' (, ) is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.Itzkoff, Dave (9 February 2009''Cahiers Du Cinéma Will Continue to Publish''The New York TimesMacnab, ...
'' and in ''
Positif'', praised Lewis's results. For his ''
mise-en-scene'' and camerawork, Lewis was likened to
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is ...
,
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...
, and
Satyajit Ray
Satyajit Ray (; 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992) was an Indian director, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, essayist, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. One of the greatest auteurs o ...
. In particular,
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as Fran ...
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."
Popularization and influence
As early as his 1962 essay "Notes of the auteur theory", published in the journal ''
Film Culture'', American film critic
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Kat ...
translated the French term ''la politique des auteurs'', by
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. After a career of more tha ...
in 1955, into Sarris's term ''auteur theory''. Sarris applied it to Hollywood films, and elaborated in his 1968 book, ''
The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968'', which helped popularized the English term.
Via auteur theory, critical and public scrutiny of films shifted from their stars to the overall creation.
In the 1960s and the 1970s, a new generation of directors, revitalizing filmmaking by wielding greater control, manifested the
New Hollywood
The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence.
They influenced the types o ...
era,
[Stefan Kanfer]
"The Shock of Freedom in Films"
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...
'', December 8, 1967, Accessed 25 April 2009. when studios granted directors more leeway to take risks. Yet in the 1980s, upon high-profile failures like ''
Heaven's Gate'', studios reasserted control, muting the auteur theory.
Criticism
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael (; June 19, 1919 – September 3, 2001) was an American film critic who wrote for ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions of ...
, an early critic of auteur theory, debated Andrew Sarris in magazines.
Defending a film as a collaboration, her 1971 essay "
Raising Kane
"Raising Kane" is a 1971 book-length essay by American film critic Pauline Kael, in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for the 1941 film '' Citizen Kane''. Kael celebrated screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, firs ...
," examining
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter, known for his innovative work in film, radio and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential f ...
's 1941 film ''
Citizen Kane
''Citizen Kane'' is a 1941 American drama film produced by, directed by, and starring Orson Welles. He also co-wrote the screenplay with Herman J. Mankiewicz. The picture was Welles' first feature film. ''Citizen Kane'' is frequently cited ...
'', finds extensive reliance on co-writer
Herman J. Mankiewicz and on cinematographer
Gregg Toland.
Richard Corliss and
David Kipen argued that a film's success relies more on screenwriting.
In 2006, to depict the screenwriter as the film's principal author, Kipen coined the term ''
Schreiber theory''.
To film historian
Georges Sadoul
Georges Sadoul (4 February 1904 – 13 October 1967) was a French film critic, journalist and cinema writer. He is known for writing encyclopedias of film and filmmakers, many of which have been translated into English.
Biography
Sadoul was ...
, a film's main "author" can also be an actor, screenwriter, producer, or novel's author, although a ''film'' is a collective's work. Film historian
Aljean Harmetz, citing classical Hollywood's input by producers and executives, held that auteur theory "collapses against the reality of the
studio system
A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...
".
[Aljean Harmetz, ''Round up the Usual Suspects'', p. 29.]
In a feminist criticism, Maria Giese in 2013 alleged that the auteur theory is biased to males, as the pantheons of auteurs barely include a woman. This may reflect
the sheer scarcity of women as directors, with about 7% of directors being women among the 250 highest-grossing films in 2016.
Law
In some law references, a film is treated as artwork while the auteur, as its creator, is the original copyright holder. Under
European Union law
European Union law is a system of rules operating within the member states of the European Union (EU). Since the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community following World War II, the EU has developed the aim to "promote peace, its valu ...
, largely by influence of auteur theory, a film director is considered the film's author or one of its authors.
Popular music
The references of auteur theory are occasionally applied to musicians, musical performers and music producers. From the 1960s, record producer
Phil Spector
Harvey Phillip Spector (born Harvey Philip Spector; December 26, 1939January 16, 2021) was an American record producer and songwriter, best known for his innovative recording practices and entrepreneurship in the 1960s, followed decades later by ...
is considered the first auteur among producers of popular music. Author Matthew Bannister named him the first "star" producer. Journalist
Richard Williams wrote:
Another early
pop music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former describ ...
auteur was
Brian Wilson
Brian Douglas Wilson (born June 20, 1942) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer who co-founded the Beach Boys. Often called a genius for his novel approaches to pop composition, extraordinary musical aptitude, and m ...
, mentored by Spector. In 1962, Wilson's band,
the Beach Boys
The Beach Boys are an American Rock music, rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian Wilson, Brian, Dennis Wilson, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and frie ...
, signed to
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
, and swiftly became a commercial success, whereby Wilson was an early recording artist who was also an entrepreneurial producer. Before the "
progressive pop
Progressive pop is pop music that attempts to break with the genre's standard formula, or an offshoot of the progressive rock genre that was commonly heard on AM radio in the 1970s and 1980s. It was originally termed for the Proto-prog, early ...
" of the late 1960s, performers typically had little input on their own records. Wilson, however, employed the studio like an instrument, as well as a high level of studio control that other artists soon sought.
According to ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''s Jason Guriel, the Beach Boys' 1966 album ''
Pet Sounds'', produced by Wilson, anticipated later auteurs such as
Kanye West
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...
, 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."
See also
*
Authenticity in art
Authenticity in art is manifest in the different ways that a work of art, or an artistic performance, can be considered authentic. The initial distinction is between ''nominal authenticity'' and ''expressive authenticity''. In the first sense, n ...
*
Film d'auteur
* ''
La mort de l'auteur
"The Death of the Author" (French language, French: ''La mort de l'auteur'') is a 1967 essay by the French people, French literary critic and Literary theory, theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes's essay argues against traditional litera ...
''
*
List of film auteurs
This is a list of filmmakers who have been described as an auteur.
{{columns-list, colwidth=20em,
* Lenny Abrahamson
* Moussa Sene Absa
* Tengiz Abuladze
* Kunle Afolayan{{Cite book, url=https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA474655150&sid=g ...
*
Philosophy of film
*
Vulgar auteurism
Citations
General and cited references
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Further reading
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External links
16+ source guides: Auteur Theory/Auteursat
the British Film Institute
Auteurism Is Alive and Well by Andrew Sarris on Internet ArchiveThe American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929–1968
{{Filmstudies
1940s neologisms
Artists
Concepts in aesthetics
Concepts in film theory
Film theory