Ohana Language Conventions

Francois Truffaut voiced his discontents with filmmaking and stated that the French film industry had become too concerned with producing commercial films instead of focusing on their artistic qualities (Truffaut). Eastwood, likewise, has voiced a similar discontent and has stated, ""¦in America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience. Not to say that it's all bad, but it leaves a lot of the rest of us out of it. To me cinema can be a much more friendly world if there's a lot of things to choose from" ("Clint Eastwood Biography"). He has also commented

An auteur is a singular artist who controls all aspects of a collaborative creative work, a person equivalent to the author of a novel or a play. The term is commonly referenced to filmmakers or directors with a recognizable style or thematic preoccupation.

The director is responsible for overseeing creative aspects of a film. They develop the vision for a film and carry the vision out, deciding how the film should look. The director may also be heavily involved in the writing and editing of the film, as well as managing the script into a sequence of shots, coordinating the actors in the film and supervising musical aspects. The Auteur Theory suggests that films contain certain characteristics or ‘signatures’ that reflect the director’s individual style and give a film its personal and unique stamp. Hayao Miyazaki is one such auteur whose entertaining plots, compelling characters

An auteur is a director who personal creative vision and style is expressed through films. The term auteur is originated in France and is French for author. There are different ways in which a director can express their vision in films and show who they are. There are many directors that are considered to be a auteur such as: Quentin Tarintino, Tim Burton, Kathryn Bigelow, Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen. The director I have chosen as an auteur is Spike Lee.

Bordwell, D. (1979). The art cinema as a mode of film practice. Film Criticism, 4(1), 56-64.

In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as a prime example of an auteur, a theory that emerged in the 1950s by Truffaut, in the ‘politique des auteurs’ of Cahiers du Cinema (Tudor 121). The auteur theory, as defined by Andrew Tudor, is premised on the assumption that “any director creates his films on the basis of a central structure”(140) and thus, if you consider their films in relation to each other, commonalities can be found within them. These commonalities work to demonstrate the view of the director as “the true creator of the film” (Tudor 122). Evidence of an auteur can be found in examining a director’s creative tendencies, in their distinctive themes and motifs, stylistic choices,

During the 1940’s, the idea of the auteur theory arose. It was crafted by Andre Bazin, who was a French film critic, and Roger Leenhardt, a filmmaker. They stated that a film should represent the directors vision. Another French film critic, Alexandre Astruc, enhanced the auteur theory by expressing that directors with their camera should be like writers with their pen. This would make a director’s films all have the same type of aspects. Once a director makes a number of films, a certain “finger print” can be seen throughout his creations.

What attracts us to the movie theatre on Friday nights? Is it the commercials we see? Or is it all the gossip we hear from friends and TV talk shows? Well for many, it is the critiques we read and hear almost every day. One who specializes in the professional evaluation and appreciation of literary or artistic works is a critic. The profession of movie criticism is one of much diversity. Reviews range anywhere from phenomenal to average. Not only are movies created for the entertainment and sheer pleasure of the audience, they create a market of jobs and open doors to the world of financial growth. The success of these films, whether they are tremendous or atrocious, is not only dependent of the actual film, but

Many people may have a specific style in which they like to dress. A woman might have a signature lipstick she enjoys wearing, a man might have a distinct cologne that stands out from the rest. Movies are not too far apart in comparison. Sometimes people find films more enjoyable than others, and often do not realize they come from the same director. The Auteur theory is a that defines the director as the sole author of the entire film, adding his or her own personal style. When it comes to the world of animation, director Hayao Miyazaki is a pioneer in auteur. His specific directorial style is seen in many of his films in which he manages to make films enjoyable to adults of all ages. Kiki's Delivery Service was one of director Miyazaki's

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

An auteur is a filmmaker whose movies are characterized by their creative influence. Garry Marshall is an American filmmaker, he has directed more than 15 films in his career. Garry Marshall’s films The Princess Diaries, Valentines Day and Overboard share a common theme of love and a genre of romance and comedy, he likes to use the same actors in his films and have the common plot of a double twist. Garry Marshall likes to keep to the same character persona and film techniques but these generalized similarities are not obvious to the audience, therefore Garry Marshall is not a recognizable Auteur.

Auteur Theory is based on three premises, the first being technique, the second being personal style, and the third being interior meaning. Furthermore, there is no specific order in which these three aspects must be presented or weighted with regard to a film. An Auteur must give films a distinctive quality thus exerting a personal creative vision and interjecting it into the his or her films.

The intention of this essay is to discuss the romantic notion of a film director who has etched their own cinematic vision into the body of their film work, and whether the theory and practice is dead and an infringement of the spectator’s imagination and is it the spectator who finds meaning in the film. I will be closely looking at critical material, primarily André Bazin and Roland Barthes and applying them to several case study films directed by Christopher Nolan including The Following (1998), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010), to examine whether Nolan possesses the qualities of an auteur and if so, does that imply an ideological view of what the auteur resembles or an artistic one.

There is no straightforward answer when one asks the question of: “What exactly makes a great director?”. The truth is that it can be an array of different factors, from the director having a distinctive or original way of shooting scene, to him or her having a well-written script. But what separates a great director from an iconic one, is how their films inspires not only the current, but also the new generation of filmmakers. The well-known Quentin Tarantino is one of those iconic directors. Born Quentin Jerome Tarantino on 27 March, 1963, he is arguably one of the most famous/influential modern directors of our generation to such an extent, that his name alone can sell a movie. Just as recognisable as his name, is his directing. Renowned