In film criticism, the 1950s-era Auteur theory holds that a director's films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he or she were the primary "Auteur" (the French word for "author"). Film review redirects here for the similar sounding Film revue please visit Revue#Film revues. A film director, or filmmaker, is a person who directs the making of a Film. French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people In some cases, film producers are considered to have a similar "Auteur" role for films that they have produced. A film producer is a person who creates the conditions for making movies.

In law the Auteur is the creator of a film as a work of art, and is the original copyright holder. Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for Under European Union law the film director shall always be considered the author or one of the authors of a film. The European Union ( EU) is a political and economic union of twenty-seven member states, located primarily in

Auteur theory has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated by film director and film critic François Truffaut in 1954. François Roland Truffaut ( February 6 1932 – October 21 1984) was one of the founders of the French New Wave in filmmaking "Auteurism" is the method of analyzing films based on this theory or, alternately, the characteristics of a director's work that makes her or him an Auteur. Both the Auteur theory and the Auteurism method of film analysis are frequently associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical Cahiers du cinéma. "Nouvelle Vague" redirects here For the music group of the same name see Nouvelle Vague (band. Cahiers du cinéma ( Notebooks on Cinema;) is an influential French Film Magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin,

History

Origin

Auteur theory draws on the work of André Bazin, co-founder of the Cahiers du cinéma, who argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision. André Bazin ( April 18, 1918 &ndash November 11, 1958) was a renowned and influential French film critic and film Bazin championed filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir. Howard Winchester Hawks ( May 30, 1896 &ndash December 26, 1977) was an American Film director, producer and Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 Jean Renoir (French ʁəˈnwaʁ ( September 15, 1894 – February 12, 1979) born in the Montmartre district of Paris Although Bazin provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he himself remained wary of its excesses. Another key element of Auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc's notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen" and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writers use their pens and that they need not be hindered by traditional storytelling. Alexandre Astruc is a French Film critic and Film director born July 13 1923, in Paris ( France)

Truffaut and the members of the Cahiers 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). Mise-en-scène (mizɑ̃sɛn is an expression used in the theatre and film worlds to describe the design aspects of a production Screenwriters or scenarists are Scriptwriters who write the Screenplays from which Films and Television programs are made While recognizing that not all directors reached this ideal, they valued the work of those who neared it.

Truffaut's development

In his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" ("a certain trend 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. François Roland Truffaut ( February 6 1932 – October 21 1984) was one of the founders of the French New Wave in filmmaking Jean Delannoy ( January 12, 1908 &ndash June 18, 2008) was a French Actor, Film editor, Screenwriter "Politique" might very well be translated as "policy" or "program"; it involves a conscious decision 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. "

Truffaut's article dealt primarily by his own admission with scenarists or screenwriters. Precisely the screenwriting duo, Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost who Truffaut believed simplified and compromised many of the great works of French literature in order to support the political topic of its day. In his article, he quotes the director Claude Autant-Lara describing his adaptaion of Raymond Radiguet's Devil in the Flesh as an "anti-war" book when the book pre-dated the Second World War. Claude Autant-Lara ( 5 August 1901 in Luzarches, Val-d’Oise &ndash 5 February 2000 in Antibes, Alpes-Maritimes The term auteur described by Truffaut is applied to directors like Jean Renoir, Max Ophuls, Jacques Becker, Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson who aside from having a distinct style also wrote the screenplays or worked on the screenplays of the film as well. Jean Renoir (French ʁəˈnwaʁ ( September 15, 1894 – February 12, 1979) born in the Montmartre district of Paris Max Ophüls (born Maximillian Oppenheimer, 6 May 1902, Saarbrücken, Germany - 25 March 1957, Hamburg Jacques Becker ( September 15, 1906 - February 21, 1960) was a French Screenwriter and Film director. Jacques Tati (October 9 &ndashNovember 5) was a noted French comedic Filmmaker. Robert Bresson (ʁɔbɛʁ bʁɛˈsɔ̃ in French ( September 25, 1901 &ndash December 18, 1999) was a French Film director The auteur theory in its embryonic form dealt with the nature of literary adaptations and Truffaut's discomfort with the screenwriters Aurenche's and Bost's maxim that any film adaptation of a novel should capture it's spirit and deal only with the "filmable" aspects of the books. Truffaut believed that film directors like Robert Bresson using the film narrative at it's disposal could approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes, which he used the film version of Georges Bernanos's Diary of a Country Priest as an example. Georges Bernanos ( February 20 1888, Paris – July 5 1948, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French author and a soldier Diary of a Country Priest (original French title Journal d'un curé de campagne) is a novel by Georges Bernanos.

Much of Truffaut's writing of this period, and of his colleagues at the film criticism magazine Cahiers du cinéma, was designed to lambaste post-war French cinema, and especially the big production films of the cinéma de qualité ("quality films"). The cinema of France comprises the art of Film making within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad Truffaut's circle referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashioned cinéma de papa (or "Dad's cinema"). During the Nazi occupation, the Vichy government did not allow the exhibition of U. Vichy France, or the Vichy regime are the common terms used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944 Vichy ( Occitan: Vichèi) is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. S. films such as The Maltese Falcon and Citizen Kane. The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 Detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine " Black Mask " Citizen Kane ( 1941) is an American Dramatic film, and the first Feature film directed by Orson Welles, who also co-authored When French film critics were finally able to see these 1940s U. S. movies in 1946, they were enamoured with these films.

Truffaut's theory maintains that all good directors (and many bad ones) have such a distinctive style or consistent theme that their influence is unmistakable in the body of their work. Truffaut himself was appreciative of both directors with a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock), and those whose visual style was less pronounced but who had nevertheless a consistent theme throughout their movies (such as Jean Renoir's humanism).

Impact

The Auteur theory was used by the directors of the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement of French cinema in the 1960s (many of whom were also critics at the Cahiers du cinéma) as justification for their intensely personal and idiosyncratic films. "Nouvelle Vague" redirects here For the music group of the same name see Nouvelle Vague (band. One of the ironies of the Auteur theory is that, at the very moment Truffaut was writing, the break-up of the Hollywood studio system during the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made. United States cinema has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1950s

The "Auteur" approach was adopted in English-language film criticism in the 1960s. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States In the UK, Movie adopted Auteurism, while in the U. S. , Andrew Sarris introduced it in the essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962". Andrew Sarris, born on October 31, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, is a U This essay is where the half-French, half-English term, "Auteur theory", originated. To be classified as an "Auteur", according to Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning (although many of Sarris's auterist criteria were left vague). Later in the decade, Sarris published The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, which quickly became the unofficial bible of Auteurism.

The Auteurist critics—Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, Éric Rohmer—wrote mostly about directors (as they were directors themselves), although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. Jean-Luc Godard (French ʒɑ̃lyk gɔˈdaʀ (born on December 3 1930 is a French and Swiss Filmmaker and one of the founding members of the Nouvelle Vague Claude Chabrol (klod ʃaˈbʁɔl in French (born 24 June 1930 Paris) is a French film director and has become well-known since his first film Éric Rohmer (born Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer, 4 April 1920 Tulle, France) is a French Film director and Screenwriter. Later writers of the same general school have emphasised the contributions of star personalities like Mae West. Mae West (August 17 1893 &ndash November 22 1980 was an American actress, Playwright, Screenwriter, and Sex symbol. However, the stress was on directors; and screenwriters, producers and others have reacted with a good deal of hostility. Writer William Goldman has said that, on first hearing the Auteur theory, his reaction was, "What's the punchline?"

Criticism

Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising Auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director. This article is about the screenwriter/novelist For the mathematician see William Goldman (professor. Pauline Kael and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines. Pauline Kael (June 19 1919 &ndash September 3 2001 was an American Film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991 The New Yorker is an American Magazine that publishes reportage commentary criticism essays fiction satire cartoons and poetry One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film (one person cannot do everything) and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane, a classic film for the Auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland. Citizen Kane ( 1941) is an American Dramatic film, and the first Feature film directed by Orson Welles, who also co-authored Herman Jacob Mankiewicz ( November 7, 1897 - March 5, 1953) was a Hollywood screenwriter noted for writing along with Orson Gregg Toland, ASC ( May 29, 1904 - September 26, 1948) was a highly influential American Cinematographer noted for his innovative (Later research has disputed some of her claims. )

The Auteur theory was also challenged by the influence of New Criticism, a school of literary criticism. New Criticism was a dominant trend in English and American Literary criticism of the mid twentieth century from the 1920s to the early 1960s Literary criticism is the study discussion evaluation and interpretation of Literature. The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. Intentional fallacy, in Literary criticism, addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the Author of a literary work is of primary importance New Critics argued that that information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature.

External links

• 16+ source guides: Auteur Theory/Auteurs at the British Film Institute
• Authorship and The Films of David Lynch - a critical essay from The British Film Resource