What is auteur?

Questions of AuteurismCase Study of Peter Weir

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

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 cameraas a writer writes with his pen."

‘Caméra Stylo’ (camera-pen) Alexander Astruc

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

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)

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 director’s work which makes him a auteur

→ 　 auteurism / politique des autteurs

Criticism against Auteur Theory

Filmmaking as collaborative and collectiveActions.

Making a film involves many other creativetalents than director.

scriptwriter, photographer, editor, art director, actor, etc.

Criticism against Auteur TheoryCesare Zavattini (1902-1

989)

Screenwriter for Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti

Shoeshines, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Bellisima, etc.

Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Ruth Prower Jhabvala (1927 - )

Screenwriter for James IvoryRoom with a View, Howard’s End, Remains of the Day

Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Gordon WillsMost important cinematographer in the 70s and 80sThe Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, All the President’s Men

Criticism against Auteur Theory• Miyagawa Kazuo (1908-199

9)

Greatest Japanese photographer, operated the camera and shot for Mizoguchi Kenji, Kurosawa Akira, Ichikawa Kon and Shinoda Masahiro

Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojinbo, Tokyo Olympiad, McArthur’s Children

Criticism against Auteur Theory

• David Lean (1908-1991)

British film director

Established the classic editing techniquesEdited for film directors such as Anthony Asquith and Michael Powell Pygmalion, Major Barbara, 49th Parallel

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

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

Criticism against Auteur Theory

• Positif, founded one after Cahiers du cinema in 1952

Firm opposition to author theoryA signed article naming the most overrated directors: Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawkes and Alfred Hitchcock

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

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

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

• A tale of private-school girls who mysteriously disappear in the Australian outback.

In the Case of Peter Weir

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

In the Case of Peter Weir

• The Year of Living Dangerously (1983),

Two Western journalists fall in love while a third-world capital collapses.

In the Case of Peter Weir

Witness (1985)

It brings a city detective into the unfamiliar world of Pennsylvania’s Amish community.

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.

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.

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Truman Show (1998)

• A story of one man’s life not knowing that he is a star of a 24 hour TV series.

Weir as an auteur

Juxtaposition of :civilization and ‘primitiveness’; the knowab

le and the unknowable; culture and nature

‘Clashes’ of civilizations and cultures

Erosion of humanity by civilization