What is auteur?

1
What is auteur?

• Questions of Auteurism
• Case Study of Peter Weir

2
What Is Auteur?

• 1 A director who has made films which reflect
• his/her personal vision and preoccupations.
• 2 A director who has a distinct style and
• consistent themes.
• François Truffaut, Une Certaine
• tendence du cinéma française
• (A Certain Tendency in the French
• Cinema) 1954

3
What Is Auteur?

• Directors oversee all visual and audio
  elements of motion pictures.
• Better consider a director as the author of a
  film rather than its writer.
• The filmmaker/author writes with his camera
• as a writer writes with his pen."
• Caméra Stylo (camera-pen) Alexander Astruc

4
What Is Auteur?

• Auteur Theory in English language film
  criticism
• To be qualified as an auteur - technical
  competence personal style in feel and looks
  interior meaning
• Andrew Sarris, Notes on the Auteur Theory, 1964

5
Who Are Auteurs?

• Directors who have a distinct visual style
  Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells Stanley Kubrick,
  Wang Kar-wai
• Directors who have a consistent theme Jean
  Renoir (humanism), Douglas Sirk (melodrama)
  Theo Angelopoulos (modern Greek history), Ken
  Loach (socialist conscience)

6
What is auteurism or auteur theory?

• To analyse a film as a work of a single author
  (auteur)
• ? auteurism / politique des autteurs
• To identify the characteristics of a directors
  work which makes him a auteur
• ? auteurism / politique des autteurs

7
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Filmmaking as collaborative and collective
• Actions.
• Making a film involves many other creative
• talents than director.
• scriptwriter, photographer, editor, art
  director, actor, etc.

8
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Cesare Zavattini (1902-1989)
• Screenwriter for Vittorio De Sica and Luchino
  Visconti
• Shoeshines, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D,
  Bellisima, etc.

9
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Ruth Prower Jhabvala (1927 - )
• Screenwriter for James Ivory
• Room with a View, Howards End, Remains of the
  Day

10
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Gordon Wills
• Most important cinematographer in the 70s and
  80s
• The Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, All the
  Presidents Men

11
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Miyagawa Kazuo (1908-1999)
• Greatest Japanese photographer, operated the
  camera and shot for Mizoguchi Kenji, Kurosawa
  Akira, Ichikawa Kon and Shinoda Masahiro
• Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojinbo, Tokyo Olympiad,
  McArthurs Children

12
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• David Lean (1908-1991)
• British film director
• Established the classic editing techniques
• Edited for film directors such as Anthony
  Asquith and Michael Powell Pygmalion, Major
  Barbara, 49th Parallel

13
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Alexandre Trauner
• (1906-1993)
• French art and production designer
• Le Jour se léve, Les Enfants du paradis, Le
  Portes de la nuit, Kiss Me Stupid, Don Giovanni,
  Round Midnight, Subway

14
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Credit for Round Midnight (1986)
• Producer Irwin Winkler
• Director Bertrand Tavernier
• Writer David Rayfiel, Bertrand Tavernier
• Music Harbie Hancock
• Editor Harmand Psenny
• Production Design Alexandre Trauner

15
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Positif, founded one after Cahiers du cinema in
  1952
• Firm opposition to author theory
• A signed article naming the most overrated
  directors Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Howard
  Hawkes and Alfred Hitchcock

16
Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Legitimacy of privileging a director - can a
  director be more important than his film?
• There are no good or bad films, but there are
  only good or bad directors. Truffaut

17
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Peter Weir (1944 - )
• Australian born and now working in Hollywood
• Worked in ATN-7 (a TV company in Sydney)
• Made documentaries for CFU

18
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
• A tale of private-school girls who mysteriously
  disappear in the Australian outback.

19
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Gallipoli (1981)
• Rural Australian boys are caught in the
  slaughter of WWI in Turkey.

20
In the Case of Peter Weir

• The Year of Living Dangerously (1983),
• Two Western journalists fall in love while a
  third-world capital collapses.

21
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Witness (1985)
• It brings a city detective into the unfamiliar
• world of Pennsylvanias Amish community.

22
In the Case of Peter Weir

• The Mosquito Coast (1986)
• An American with his family trying to establish
• civilization in a remote jungle and ending in a
• disaster.

23
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Green Card (1990)
• A comedy in which a Frenchman tries to obtain a
  green card on bogus marriage with an American
  woman.

24
In the Case of Peter Weir

• Truman Show (1998)
• A story of one mans life not knowing that he is
  a star of a 24 hour TV series.

25
Weir as an auteur

• Juxtaposition of
• civilization and primitiveness the knowable
• and the unknowable culture and nature
• Clashes of civilizations and cultures
• Erosion of humanity by civilization