Week 11 - Authorship and Auteur Theory

Earlier in the module, we looked at genre as a way to categorise and classify film texts to consider the various meanings we can derive from different genres. Also, we looked at how genres evolve over time and reflect social and cultural interests. In this topic, we are going to look at how we can interpret and analyse films through the role of the ‘author’, a concept normally attributed specifically to the role of the director. In film studies, both genre theory and authorship have historically been the two biggest areas of study, however, it could be argued that authorship has been a continuing interest for film critics, scholars and within popular discourse. We are consistently talking about film directors in various ways, even in informal discussions on cinema using the director’s name as an identifying marker of a film.

In this topic, we are going to look at the different ways in which the concept of the film author has been approached. Particularly, we will be concentrating on the development of the auteur and the criticisms levelled at auteur theory that reflect different understandings of authorship in film. As you read through, have a think about a filmmaker you feel has an interesting and unique style and how this style is characterised specifically in their films. Further, perhaps think about how this director and his or her work are ‘sold’ to us as the audience.

By the end of this topic you should understand and be able to do the following:

• Discuss some of the different approaches to film authorship

• Understand the historical development of the auteur and auteur theory

• Identify and analyse an auteur signature

• Understand some of the problems and criticisms of auteurism

What is film authorship and how is it approached?

Broadly, we can describe film authorship as a theory that films are the artistic expression of a director, and part of this topic will be looking at this approach and subsequent authorship approaches that attempt to debate this idea. Traditionally, film authorship revolves around the idea that the director is the individual who constructs and displays their creative personality through their filmic signature. This most directly refers to the notion of the auteur, a concept evolving out of France in the 1950s and practiced by French New Wave directors, such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut.

In the required reading for this topic, Janet Staiger introduces the varying conceptualisations of film authorship and the two problems that can be identified when approaching its traditional beginnings. The first of these is the rise in aesthetically focused form of textual analysis which looks specifically at the relationship between the text (film) and the reader (viewer); what Staiger refers to as “the death of the author problem” (2003, pg. 27). This problem is characterised by the theoretical turn that cinema studies took in the mid-1970s, influenced by trends in French literary theory of the time, specifically that of Roland Barthes.

The second problem Staiger notes is of the influence of the “mass-mediated media in the marketplace of ideas” (2003, pg. 27), referring to the broadening of authors collaborating in the production of films. Film studies interested in this approach arose around the 1980s and focused on the way the institutions of cinema or the various areas of the filmmaking process, such as production, circulation and exhibition, contribute to the formal construction of meaning.

While we aren’t looking at all the different forms the film author can take that Staiger describes in the reading, we will be looking significantly at the development of the auteur, auteur theory and the two problems in more depth. We will also be looking at contemporary director, Michel Gondry, as a case study for whether the auteur still exists or if this concept has transformed into something mediated by mass media.

Historical development of the auteur and auteur theory

Auteurism is probably the best-known approach to film authorship. It emerged from the interest that French critics and filmmakers took in classic Hollywood films and Hollywood directors during the 1950s and 1960s. Many of these figures wrote for the French film journal Cahiers du cinéma, a key publication in the spread of auteurist ideas and, ultimately, the establishment of auteurism as a critical theory. The best-known of these Cahiers reviewers included names such as Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer. However, it was André Bazin’s key 1957 work entitled “La politique des auteurs”, or “the auteur policy” that preempted the Cahiers critics and brought the idea of the auteur to fore in critical film studies.

In his text, Bazin described authorship as a critical process whereby the critic would investigate a film for evidence of some kind of ‘personal factor’, and then suggest the continuity and even progress of this factor from one film to the next. In this way, auteur criticism proposed that the best directors would exhibit, over a period of years, a recognisable stylistic and thematic personality even though they were working within the confines of the studio system. This is what we can also call the directorial signature as if the director is signing his or her work through the consistent inclusion of specific audiovisual, narrative and thematic interests. As the Hollywood director often had little control over the choice of subject matter, script, cast and dialogue, all the textual evidence of personal expression had to be found in the mise-en-scène, the visual construction and dynamism of the story and the rhythm of the action.

The French New Wave

As mentioned in the section above, critics from the French film journal Cahiers du cinema helped establish the idea of the auteur and subsequently auteur criticism. However, a number of these critics were also filmmakers in their own right, creating a model of auteur practice.

Truffaut aimed his critique of commercial and popular cinemas towards the role of the screenwriter, who he believed diminished the creativity of the director. More specifically, he attacked the mainstream French cinema of the 1950s, which was characterised by ‘psychological realism’, a style of filmmaking privileging characters whose behaviour is motivated by their psychological makeup. For Truffaut, he believed this style (normally adapted from literature to the filmic medium) distorted the original works intent at the expense of the director adding scenes for their own personal beliefs. He also criticised filmmakers whose works have been identified by the work of the crew and technicians of the film. Essentially, Truffaut implied that mainstream French cinema was more style than substance, and in doing so he proposed a new way of making films.

French New Wave filmmaking

The New Wave is based on a different way of producing films. It privileges small budgets in order to ensure the creative freedom of the auteur filmmaker. It challenged many of the conventions that governed the technical practices of filmmaking previously and during this era — from the initial conception of the idea to the editing and post-production. The New Wave aesthetic was founded on a series of choices made from script to final film that included:

• The auteur-director as the master of the scene (matteur-en-scène), controlling all aspects of the mise-en-scène.

• The auteur-director does not follow a predetermined shooting script, preferring to shoot improvisational scenes, dialogue and performances.

• Natural location shooting is preferred.

• The auteur-director opts for a small crew.

• Direct sound is normally used, rather than sound and dialogue added through post-synchronisation. This means that background and off-screen sounds may also be heard in the films.

• There is an avoidance of heavy lighting units, instead, a fast film stock is chosen to capture the natural light.

• Non-professional actors are normally used (although some of the actors used eventually became famous, such as Jean-Pierre Léaud — The 400 Blows and Masculin Féminin). If the director has access to professionals, newer actors were normally chosen and directed in a more liberal way.

Further and quite importantly, the French New Wave was considered self-referential, meaning that it referenced both the mechanics of filmmaking and citing previous film styles, genres, films and filmmakers — particularly earlier American works.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

The 400 Blows (1959)

The next example is from Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie (1962), usually translated to English as "My Life to Live". As you watch it, consider how its form deviates from classical filmmaking in this sequence. How is it shot? What is the sound like?

Godard and Truffaut amongst their French New Wave peers pioneered both the auteur as a filmmaking practice and as a critical theory that has been integral to the development of film studies. However, it is not the only approach to film authorship, nor has it been without its critics. In the following sections, we will look at other approaches that depart from auteur theory.

The death of the author

As mentioned at the beginning of this topic, auteurist theory as we’ve been looking at is only one possible approach to issues of film authorship and is not without its critics. In the late 1960s and into the 1970s auteurism was substantially displaced by the so-called ‘theoretical turn’ in film studies. Influenced by developments in European literary theory, film studies as a discipline began to produce structuralist and ideology-oriented film criticism, which we will continue to look at in the next topic on ideology. As a result, the premises of these theories challenged the whole philosophy of auteurism.

Implied in the notion of auteurism is its reliance on humanist and Romantic notions of the individual artist as the central genius in the creative process. As Crofts (1998, pg. 315) writes, “the communication model underpinning auteurism [assumes] a transcendental subject in full control of the meanings he or she somehow directly ‘communicates’ to the reader”. Structuralist, and later, post-structuralist, critics challenged this communication-model of language by suggesting that language doesn’t simply reflect reality and meaning itself, but actively shapes the meaning we make of reality. In a text, then, language doesn’t channel meaning from author to reader in a linear and uncomplicated way. Rather, the structuralist critics argued that meaning is generated by language; meaning emerges within systems of signification — what we as a viewer, for example, think a film is about through its use of film language. In this way, structuralist theory questions the notion of the author as the sole and originating source of the film text: the author becomes a site of meaning, and it is language or signification itself which effectively takes over the role formerly ascribed to the author. Essentially, this approach places more emphasis on meaning production coming from the viewer/audience, rather than from the filmmaker.

Industrial concerns

Auteurism was also attacked on more practical grounds by critics claiming that its notion of authorship underestimated the impact of the real conditions of film production. That is, it was recognised that the filmmaker wasn’t a totally independent artist but someone who relied not only on finance, but on the skills of others: writers, cinematographers, musicians, and stars. This style of industry-oriented criticism sees genius, not in the author but in the system, specifically, the commercial system that enables the production of high quality films.

In another way, film is a collaborative effort that takes a team of creatives working together from pre-production right through to the stages of production and exhibition. Under the category of ‘author as a sociology of production’, Staiger (2003, pg. 41) notes the collaborative process of film authorship is attributable to those who make a “distinguishable contribution to the film”. We could think of examples, such as cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who has been critically discussed as creating the ‘impressionistic look’ of Wong Kar Wei’s films.

Now that we have gone through some of the different approaches to film authorship, consider which one makes more sense to you. What kind of filmmaker are you — the individual in creative control or a collaborative author?

In terms of meaning generation, who creates the meaning of a film? The director or the viewer?

Contemporary auteurism — the celebrity auteur

Despite these criticisms of auteurism, there is perhaps a feeling in contemporary film studies that the concept of auteurism has more or less triumphed, albeit in a form which is perhaps modified from the initial Cahiers understanding. Auteurism is now widely practised in film studies even by those who have some reservations about it. Some of the more obvious signs of its triumph include the fact that film festivals still typically offer retrospectives of the work of particular directors, cinema studies departments still offer units dealing with specific directors, and film publishing still tends to privilege monographs of particular directors. It also seems that film audiences increasingly choose films as much for their directors, as they do for their genres or stars. In other words, auteurism has become a kind of commercial category, a distribution and marketing strategy, for organising audience reception.

Today, in the era of mass media, there are endless possibilities and strategies for making the director visible and subsequently shaping him or her as an auteur-star. Characteristic of this concept is looking at a director as a marketable image and an agent who actively constructs and classifies this image. Here we can also see how auteurism is still prevalent today in contemporary film studies and popular film discourse where audiences increasingly seem to choose films on the basis of who it is directed by. One reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that directors are now marketed — and market themselves — in a manner we would traditionally associate with film stars. This means that the director seems to function as something like a brand — an image which attempts to persuade consumers of a product (a film’s) quality prior to purchase or experience (Branston, 1996).

One of the key factors that initially assisted in constructing the director’s brand and raising their public profile in the contemporary era was the rise of DVD technology and more recently BluRay, that contain extra-textual and associated materials in special features. Director commentaries, making-of featurettes, interviews and various other promotional material — ads for the film, reviews, photo galleries, trailers of other films by the same director — all work to consciously construct the image of the director as a unique, creative and authoritative individual. In this way, the artistic expression of the contemporary director extends far beyond the parameters of their film texts; this artistic expression is inherently connected to the celebrity industry of Hollywood (Corrigan, 1991).

You can discuss some examples of the celebrity auteur in tutorials, however, perhaps one very obvious figure whose image has been ‘packaged’ in this way is Quentin Tarantino.

Film scholar Timothy Corrigan (1991) suggests that we understand Tarantino as a contemporary auteur for the way that he has reworked the language of contemporary film, revising figures of violence, communication and morality. He is famous for his tough yet irreverent dialogue, his fractured storylines and his pop culture and cinephilic obsessions. It has become common knowledge that he worked in a video shop until he was 32 and is a bit of a geek, which informs both his image and his creative signature. Further, we could argue that the Tarantino brand is something actively constructed by, among many other things, the DVD releases of his films.

So the contemporary auteur is an auteur-star — a performer in their own right, a brand, even a franchise. Think of the way Tarantino’s name is used in the promotion of other films — the tag ‘Quentin Tarantino presents’ before the title of Hostel (2005) or the promotion of Tarantino as a “Special Guest Director” on Sin City (2005) and even TV show ER (1994–2009). When we see or hear the name ‘Tarantino’, we expect a particular kind of film, and like what we have already understood with the marketability of genres and audience expectations, the name Tarantino holds a distinct commercial promise. Something to discuss further in tutorials may be how close to the origins of auteurism the celebrity auteur is positioned and vice versa.

Case study — Michel Gondry

We can approach Michel Gondry as an auteur on a more specific level by identifying a set of narrative, formal and thematic interests that are common throughout his films. Born on May 8th, 1963 in Versailles, France, Gondry has directed numerous music videos, feature films, animations, and documentaries. Some of his titles include:

Fiction films

• Human Nature (2001)

• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

• The Science of Sleep (2006)

• Be Kind Rewind (2008)

• “Interior Design” segment in Tokyo! (2008)

• The Green Hornet (2011)

• Mood Indigo (2013)

Documentaries

• I’ve been twelve forever (2004)

• Block Party (2005)

• The Thorn in the Heart (2009)

Within these films, Gondry displays particular markers of his style that are recognisable to his audience. This is what we could label the ‘Gondry’ signature. These include:

Formal techniques

• In-camera and in production visual effects (low key, DIY aesthetic)

• Post-production and CG visual effects to create a surrealist style breaks down the logical boundaries of time and space. This example ties the formal and thematic elements together.

Narrative and thematic interests

• Surrealist influences

Gondry’s visual style draws from a surrealist mode of filmmaking characterised by the deconstruction of time and space (as we logically understand it and in film terms). A lot of his imagery is constructed within the realms of fantasy, normally derived from the character’s imagination or unconscious — the unconscious was a key interest for the early surrealist filmmakers as well, but we will delve further into this in week 11.

• Romantic interpersonal relationships

A majority of Gondry’s fictional films and some of his documentaries revolve around various interpersonal relationships. For his fictional works, they are generally of a romantic nature — Joel and Clementine from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; couple swapping in Human Nature between Lila and Nathan and Puff and Gabrielle; the struggles of Hiroko and Akira in Tokyo!; and Colin’s desperation to save his lover Chloé in Mood Indigo. Gondry has also explored relationships within his own family, chronicling his aunt and cousin’s connection in his documentary, The Thorn in the Heart.

• Exploration of childhood/childlike innocence

Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep — Dressing up in costumes; role-playing; playing games; using your imagination

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — Regressing back to childhood memories; some good, some not so good, but they help determine who we are as adults and our relationships with others.

So on one level, we can describe Gondry as an auteur insofar as we can identify common themes and styles across the body of his work.

However, perhaps we could also consider Gondry as an auteur on another level — that of the celebrity auteur as exemplified in the images below. As you can see, his name is used here as an identifier and creates a sense of ownership.

References and further reading

Branston, G. & Stafford, R. (1996). The Media Students Book. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

Corrigan, T. (1991). A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam. USA: Rutgers University Press.

Crofts, S. (1998). “Authorship and Hollywood”. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies. eds. John Hill and Patricia Church Gibson. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Pgs. 310–326.

Staiger, J. (2003). “Authorship approaches”. Authorship and Film. In David A. Gerstner & Janet Staiger (Eds.). London; New York: Routledge. pp. 27–57.

Gondry image sources

Be Kind Rewind

http://www.freewilliamsburg.com/archives/2008/01/

http://www.firstshowing.net/2007/must-watch-michel-gondrys-be-kind-rewind-trailer/

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

http://www.archdaily.com/309676/films-architecture-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind/

http://seul-le-cinema.blogspot.com.au/2009/04/eternal-sunshine-of-spotless-mind.html

http://busaff.com/movie-quotes/eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-quotes/

Everlong music video

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/21928?page=1024

Mood Indigo

http://ahamagazine.cl/blog/?p=614

The thorn in the heart http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/dec/09/documentary-world-cinema

The Science of Sleep

http://armchairbuff.blogspot.com.au/2007_06_01_archive.html

http://coquette.blogs.com/coquette/2006/09/the_science_of_.html

https://emptypicturesfilm.wordpress.com/surrealist/1-science-of-sleep-2006/

Tokyo

http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/michel-gondry-tokyo