Film D'auteur
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Film d'auteur (also called ''cinéma d'auteur)'' is an expression used to describe the films of a
film director A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...
or a
screenwriter A screenwriter (also called scriptwriter, scribe, or scenarist) is a person who practices the craft of writing for visual mass media, known as screenwriting. These can include short films, feature-length films, television programs, television ...
which reflect their artistic personality. This term seeks before all to link the work of a filmmaker to preferred themes and the coherence of an innovative and singular style. It is, however, a subjective notion of which there is no rigorous definition. Film d'auteur is frequently grouped with "''Cinéma d'art et d'essai''" or research cinema.


Origin

The notion of ''film d'auteur'' was born in France in the 1950s when critics influenced by the theories of Louis Delluc,
Alexandre Astruc Alexandre Astruc (; 13July 192319May 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 of th ...
and
André Bazin André Bazin (; 18 April 1918 – 11 November 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist. He started to write about movies in 1943 and was a co-founder of the renowned film magazine '' Cahiers du cinéma'' in 1951 ...
, who constituted the following ''
Nouvelle Vague The New Wave (, ), also called the French New Wave, is a French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s. The movement was characterized by its rejection of traditional filmmaking conventions in favor of experimentation and a spirit of i ...
'' – notably
François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
– called their wish a cinema breaking the academicism of their elders (for example
Jean Delannoy Jean Delannoy (; 12 January 1908 – 18 June 2008) was a French actor, film editor, screenwriter and film director. Biography Although Delannoy was born in a Paris suburb, his family was from Haute-Normandie in the north of France. He was a Pro ...
and
Claude Autant-Lara Claude Autant-Lara (; 5 August 1901 – 5 February 2000) was a French film director, screenwriter, set designer and costume designer who worked in films for over 50 years. He made films characterised by bourgeois Realism (arts), realism, anti- ...
) and inspired by American filmmakers such as
Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. 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 featu ...
,
Howard Hawks Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, Film producer, producer, and screenwriter of the Classical Hollywood cinema, classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American ...
and
John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), better known as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and w ...
. In an article of the '' Cahiers du cinéma'' of 1955 in which he evokes
Ali Baba "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" () is a folk tale in Arabic added to the ''One Thousand and One Nights'' in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard it from Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab. As one of the most popu ...
by
Jacques Becker Jacques Becker (; 15 September 1906 – 21 February 1960) was a French film director and screenwriter. His films, made during the 1940s and 1950s, encompassed a wide variety of genres, and they were admired by some of the filmmakers who led th ...
, Truffaut defines the theoretical concept of " politique des auteurs" which consists in studying a film as the continuation of the aesthetic choices of a filmmaker and not as a work entirely apart, attributable to a precise genre or story. Consequently, being an ''auteur'' means that the director has full authority over his films. He surpasses technical constraints in order to define his own style. The ''auteur'' is therefore, according to Truffaut, the one who brands into his works original motifs which belong only to himself and no other. This concept, dominant in French critical discourse since the 1960s, makes the director the sole creator to the detriment of the screenwriter or co-screenwriter, producer, and technical team. This vision is contested and seen as rejected since the 1990s, notably by the French-American critic
Noël Burch Noël Burch (born 1932) is an American film theorist and movie maker who moved to France at a young age. Burch is known for his contribution to terms commonly used by film scholars (such as institutional mode of representation (IMR)) and for hi ...
who judges it to be too limited and uniquely focused on form. In
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, ''film d'auteur'' is represented especially by the
New German Cinema New German Cinema () is a period in Cinema of Germany, West German cinema which lasted from 1962 to 1982, in which a new generation of directors emerged who, working with low budgets, and influenced by the French New Wave and Italian Neorealism, ...
movement (
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker, dramatist and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema moveme ...
,
Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; né Stipetić; born 5 September 1942) is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusu ...
,
Wim Wenders Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker and photographer, who is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, Venice International Film ...
, etc.). According to them, the director must brand his vision and his style in his work, in the same manner as a writer in the field of literature: it is the metaphor of the "camera-pen". The film must therefore be considered as the work of an author rather than a simple entertainment product manufactured by the Hollywood "dream factory". The term "''auteur''" is used today in English to designate directors who have a style of their own or a distinctive vision. In the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, the idea of ''film d'auteur'' was also born in the 1950s with the critic-filmmakers of the review ''Sequence'', admirative of the work of
Jean Vigo Jean Vigo (; 26 April 1905 – 5 October 1934) was a French film director who helped establish poetic realism in film in the 1930s. His work influenced French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Biography Vigo was born to Emi ...
and
Jacques Prévert Jacques Prévert (; 4 February 1900 – 11 April 1977) was a French poet and screenwriter. His poems became and remain popular in the French-speaking world, particularly in schools. His best-regarded films formed part of the Poetic realism, poetic ...
and close to the Jeunes gens en colère.
Karel Reisz Karel Reisz (21 July 1926 – 25 November 2002) was a Czech-born British filmmaker and film critic, one of the pioneers of the new realist strain in British cinema during the 1950s and 1960s. Two of the best-known films he directed are '' Satur ...
,
Lindsay Anderson Lindsay Gordon Anderson (17 April 1923 – 30 August 1994) was a British feature-film, theatre and documentary director, film critic, and leading light of the Free Cinema movement and of the British New Wave. He is most widely remembered fo ...
and
Tony Richardson Cecil Antonio Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director, producer and screenwriter, whose career spanned five decades. He was identified with the "angry young men" group of British directors and play ...
, founders of Free cinema, call for the re-founding of a cinema that breaks with the conventional workmanship of the majority of British productions. The productions derived from it want to be more authentic, singular and anchored in a certain social reality.Article dedicated to Karel Reisz in ''Le Dictionnaire du cinéma : les réalisateurs (1895-1995)'' under the direction of
Jean Tulard Jean Tulard (; born 22 December 1933, Paris) is a French academic and historian. Considered one of the best specialists of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Napoleonic era ( Directory, Consulate and First French Empire), he is nicknamed by his peers ...
, Robert Laffont edition, Paris, 1995, page 723.
When Free Cinema was launched in 1956, Reisz declared: "We work outside the habitual framework of the industry and we have in common social concerns which we try to express in our films." The ''auteur'' is therefore an independent creator marked for his commitment and the acuteness of his outlook on society. In
Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...
, some young ''auteurs'', recognized in the international sphere for their innovative style or the accuracy of their social observation, began to emerge in the 1960s with the temporary appeasement of governance in some Communist states and the relative loosening of censorship committees (New Czechoslovak Wave, New Polish Cinema, etc.). In the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
at the end of the 1960s, the filmmakers of the new generation recognized themselves in the concept of ''auteur'' as defined by Truffaut and profited off the financial crisis within large studios to take power there and put themselves at the center of the conception and production of films, a position of which they had previously been deprived. The directors of the
New Hollywood The New Hollywood, Hollywood Renaissance, American New Wave, or New American Cinema (not to be confused with the New American Cinema of the 1960s that was part of Experimental film, avant-garde underground film, underground cinema), was a movemen ...
then claim total authority over the cinematographic works of which they shaped the artistic point of view. They tried in this way to affirm the coherence of their style. In Denmark in the 1990s, a radical process of re-founding ''film d'auteur'' was undertaken by the creators of Dogme95.


Definition

The genre to which ''film d'auteur'' belongs implies a certain control of the filmmaker over his film from an artistic and dramatic point of view, considering in particular that a film can only be a ''film d'auteur'' if the director has control of the final edit (the famous final cut). For many critics, an auteur recognizes himself before all in his personal universe. The ''auteur's'' signature is immediate and is detected, for example, in the type of story or characters favored, the choice of recurring actors, or the aesthetic options repeated from one film to another (light, frame, sound design, transitions, movements of camera, etc.). An ''auteur'' thus stays faithful to himself but can take his work in new directions. A simplified vision of auteur cinema tends to consider that the director must also be the screenwriter, without which he could not claim the complete paternity of his work. According to another restrictive representation, a ''film d'auteur'' should imperatively be an independent film, experimental or difficult to access, and produced outside the system of studios and commissioned works. He would set himself in opposition to the "''Cinéma de Genre''" films that use a coded structure and conform to the norms of commercial exploitation. This conception of auteur cinema can however seem paradoxical since certain filmmakers qualified as ''auteurs'' have filmed some genre films, for example
science-fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, sp ...
films ('' Alphaville'' by
Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French and 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 ...
, ''
Fahrenheit 451 ''Fahrenheit 451'' is a 1953 Dystopian fiction, dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" Book burning, burn any that are found. The novel follows in the ...
'' by
François Truffaut François Roland Truffaut ( , ; ; 6 February 1932 – 21 October 1984) was a French filmmaker, actor, and critic. He is widely regarded as one of the founders of the French New Wave. He came under the tutelage of film critic Andre Bazin as a ...
) or detective films (''
Police The police are Law enforcement organization, a constituted body of Law enforcement officer, people empowered by a State (polity), state with the aim of Law enforcement, enforcing the law and protecting the Public order policing, public order ...
by''
Maurice Pialat Maurice Pialat (; 31 August 1925 – 11 January 2003) was a French film director, screenwriter and actor known for the rigorous and unsentimental style of his films. His work is often described as " realist",
). Note that these ''auteurs'' have often met with success and were financed or distributed by majors like Gaumont for Truffaut, Godard, Pialat, and
André Téchiné André Téchiné (; born 13 March 1943) is a French screenwriter and film director. He has a long and distinguished career that places him among the most accomplished post-French New Wave, New Wave French film directors. Téchiné belongs to a s ...
.


Current usage

In the media for the general public, the ''film d'auteur'' is frequently opposed to "''cinéma commercial"'', the first being considered demanding, intellectual, elitist and with a reduced budget while the second is destined for the greatest number or claims to be familial, entertaining, and is produced with significant means. For certain critics, the concept of ''film d'auteur'' takes on a qualitative value and becomes a label. Conversely, for some viewers, ''film d'auteur'' evokes an austere and boring type of
art film An art film, arthouse film, or specialty film is an independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made prima ...
.


Criticism

The term "''auteurisme''" is sometimes used, notably by Noël Burch, to qualify the ensemble of what he judges to be the downward slide of ''auteur'' films (especially French): falsely demanding attitudes, clichés and visual tics linked to a
modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...
, a hermeticism and a lazy formalism, openly disdaining the script. In its December 2012 issue, '' Les Cahiers du cinéma'' propose a certain number of measures to counter the "ten flaws" of contemporary auteur cinema that it lists and defines (cult of the master, seriousness of a priest, interchangeable actors, non-scenes of montage, etc.).


Related festivals

Certain festivals specialize in ''films d'auteur''. The Festival international du film francophone de Namur (the FIFF) gives its selection to ''films d'auteur'' from the French-speaking world. The international festival of ''film d'auteur'' of Rabat seeks meanwhile to highlight independent ''auteurs''. In addition, the biggest international film festivals like Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, and San Sebastian do not hide their intention to enhance the value, through their selections, of ''cinéma d'auteur'', ''cinéma d'art et d'essai'', and research film.


Notes and references


See also

*
Independent film An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is film production, produced outside the Major film studios, major film studio system in addition to being produced and distributed by independ ...
*
Experimental film Experimental film or avant-garde cinema is a mode of filmmaking that does not apply standard cinematic conventions, instead adopting Non-narrative film, non-narrative forms or alternatives to traditional narratives or methods of working. Many e ...
* Politique des auteurs * Vulgar auteurism *
Cinema of France The cinema of France comprises the film industry and its film productions, whether made within the nation of France or by French film production companies abroad. It is the oldest and largest precursor of national cinemas in Europe, with prima ...


External links


Cinéphiles en France


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