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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, pr ...
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 outle ...
of the late 1940s, and derives from the critical approach of André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, whereas American critic Andrew Sarris 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 th ...
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 popular culture, pop culture ...
directed his own 1960 film '' The Bellboy'' via sweeping control, and was praised for "personal genius." By 1970, the New Hollywood era emerged with studios granting directors broad leeway. Pauline Kael argued, however, that "auteurs" rely on creativity of others, like cinematographers.The Beginning of the Auteur Theory * Filmmaker IQ
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 see ...
Georges Sadoul 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 designers.


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, 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 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'', 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 th ...
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 "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" ( ar, علي بابا والأربعون لصا) is a folk tale from the '' One Thousand and One Nights''. It was added to the collection in the 18th century by its French translator Antoine Galland, who heard ...
'' 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 popular culture, pop culture ...
, 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'' 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 classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name." A ...
,
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 of ...
. 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 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 th ...
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 era,Stefan Kanfer
"The Shock of Freedom in Films"
''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'', 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, 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, first-c ...
," 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 Gregg Wesley Toland, A.S.C. (May 29, 1904 – September 28, 1948) was an American cinematographer known for his innovative use of techniques such as deep focus, examples of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' ''Citizen Kane'' ...
. 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, 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".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 descri ...
auteur was Brian Wilson, mentored by Spector. In 1962, Wilson's band,
the Beach Boys The Beach Boys are an American rock band that formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by the ...
, 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 not ...
, and swiftly became a commercial success, whereby Wilson was an early recording artist who was also an entrepreneurial producer. Before the " progressive pop" 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, no ...
* Film d'auteur * '' La mort de l'auteur'' * List of film auteurs * Philosophy of film * Vulgar auteurism


Citations


General and cited references

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * *


External links


16+ source guides: Auteur Theory/Auteurs
at the British Film Institute
Auteurism Is Alive and Well by Andrew Sarris on Internet Archive

The American Cinema: Directors and Direction 1929–1968
{{Filmstudies 1940s neologisms Artists Concepts in aesthetics Concepts in film theory Film theory