Politique des auteurs
March 10, 2010 by Vincent Li Sun
Auteur theory, as I see, does not have a certain definition, so it might not be easy to understand. Generally, it could be described as a personal style and characteristic of one film director.
As Andrew Sarris mentioned in his essay Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962, the auteur theory is made up with three things: director’s technical competence, director’s personality to how the film unfolds and the interior meaning. He described these three things as a concentric circle, which the “technique” is the outer circle, the “personality” is the middle circle and the “interior meaning” is the inner circle. He also claimed that this concentric circle can be achieved either beginning from the outer circle or the inner circle, but all three of them must be fulfilled, in my understanding, to become an auteur.
I think Andrew Sarris has somewhat consummated Bazin’s explanation of auteur theory (“le politique des auteurs” according to Bazi), since it appears that Bazin only brought up the general idea of it, which is that “auteur theory was a way of choosing the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard of reference, and then assuming that it continues and even progresses from one film to the next.” (Bazin) It is true that auteur theory is the body of a director’s works instead of the direction of one film, there is no way we can tell if the director has a specific personality for his works until we have seen a series of his works.
I believe it is very important for a director to be an auteur in order to become a great director, or at least a memorable one. It is not hard to imagine that if one directs films in all different kinds of styles, he might not even be remembered by many audience since we might not able to find a focus point on him, therefore, we might not remember him as we do for those who continuously presenting similar style of works. As we can see, great directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Tim Burton, Steven Spielberg, etc. could all be considered auteur. Despite the directing style, I think even the fact that Hitchcock appears in every film he makes can be his style which fit into the idea of auteur theory. Nevertheless, I don’t deny the possibility of exceptions.
Peter Wollen, in his essay, used Howard Hawks as an example, which is a very good one, to explain auteur theory. According to Wollen, even though Hawks worked in almost every single genre, he still had a particular visual style and tempo, which seemed like a world with his own styles created by himself, and that, made him an auteur. As I mentioned above, in my opinion, Tim Burton is also an example. Despite other works of his, we can see especially through two of his films, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the new released Alice in Wonderland, which both have the similar style.
Another idea I found interesting is what Dyer presented in his writing Stars. As what I understand, he brought up the idea of stars in the films being auteur. It is very different because auteur as we usually talk about is for directors, we normally ignores the fact that stars could possibly be auteur either. In the case which stars are auteurs, director then become less visible as an auteur, as I could conclude from some examples such as Bruce Willis, Jacky Chan, etc., who has bring their style (action hero) to the films, although they could have been the director themselves. So I guess there is a limitation of the number of auteur in films.
*Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjMkNrX60mA
and Tim Burton’s Exhibition @ MOMA until April if any of you are interested.
I think auteur theory was a much more diffuse idea when it originated in France, until it was adopted in America by people like Sarris who tried to create a concrete, objective set of rules or guidelines by which to identify who was or wasn’t an auteur, which is after all a pretty subjective task. I find it interesting how it seemed to inspire a sort of militant attitude either for or against it in America. I’d be interested to know whether theorists and critics in France also felt a similar seismic divide among their ranks. I actually thought that Bazin’s criticisms of auteur theory were very similar to Kael’s except that his were delivered without the vitriol.
I like what you said about directors being memorable only when they are auteurs. But there are plenty of great films that we remember even if we don’t remember who directed them, and does that somehow detract from that director’s accomplishment of having made a great film?
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