The Origins And Usefulness Of Auteur

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.

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.

A film director controls a film's dramatic and artistic aspects, and over a number of their films, they produce recurrent themes or characteristics of style seen throughout their creations by the use of repeated subject matter, being referred to as their 'preoccupations'. When a director's style is recognizable, they are considered an ' auteur', denoting that they influence their films so strongly, to the extent that they are considered a kind of author of their movies. This is supported by the quote "Over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature.”, from Andrew Sarris, a Prevailing Film Critic of the Late 1900's, whom pioneered the auteur theory. Many directors were reviewed by Andrew Sarris, namely established and popular director Tim Burton, who is deemed as an auteur, particularly for his preoccupation with Gothic Horror literature, and its common elements. Some of his famous movies of the last fifty decades, include 'Alice In Wonderland', 'Edward Scissor Hands' and 'Big Fish'. Burton's preoccupations are prominent in all previously mentioned films.

There are many theories explaining what an auteur is, but I am not going to chose a specific theory to correct or criticize, instead I am merely going to use the term to prove that Wes Anderson has been and still is considered an important director whose work is made in a consistent manner yet still manages to be new and exciting. The auteur theory for some is considered ‘outdated’, so it seems strange to be using such term to describe a director who is recognized as an indie, contemporary American auteur, however for those who choose to believe that the auteur theory is evolving, it is useful. Wes Anderson, himself, “resists overarching theories about his works” (Empire Magazine issue 297, March 2014), believing that he is not an auteur,

The auteur theory is an idea or principle, which states that the film is a reflection of a director’s creative personal vision, as if to say the he or she is the primary author (which in French, means “auteur”). This theory first came to be in 1954, by a French film director named Francois Truffaut. The auteur theory’s birth was through the French New Wave, which was a group of new French filmmakers during the 1950’s and 1960’s. In the beginning, the theory received positive and negative responses. And to this day, it will create a heated debate. Many have questioned the theory, because there are usually multiple people involved in the development of a film. Ultimately, a film

The term Auteur seems to bless a privileged group of filmmakers with an almost messiah-like legacy. Men such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Fritz Lange are believed to inhabit the ranks of the cinematic elite, and not surprisingly most critics are more than willing to bestow upon them the title of Auteur. By regarding filmmaking as yet another form of art, Auteur theory stipulates that a film is the direct result of its director's genius. With the emerging prominence of auteur based criticism in the 1950?s, the role of the director became increasingly integral to a film's success. However most would argue that this form of criticism didn't reach its apex until 1960s, when Andrew Sarris released his

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.

What is an auteur? Answer this question with detailed reference to one film director: Alfred Hitchcock

In the early days, the French word “author” is also known as auteur. The Auteur Theory proposes that a film reflects the director’s personal creative force behind their films. It differs one director from the other, all giving out different creative ideas when making films.

The first premise of auteur theory, which acts as a criterion of value to identify directorial talent, is technical competence in all aspects of mise-en-scène (Sarris, 1962, pp 562). Although Sarris does not specify what constitutes ‘good’ filmmaking, technical competence implies a director’s efficiency to manage the production stages (Morley & Silver, 1977) with an “...elementary flair of the medium and a technical mastery...” of “...sets, costumes, cinematography, editing, music and so forth” (Chaudhuri, 2013, pp 23). By expertly manipulating these technical aspects, Anderson creates a balanced, stylised reality in many of his films known as formalistic classicism. Moonrise Kingdom (Moonrise) is a prime example of Anderson’s impeccable