FILM 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Erectile Dysfunction, Revolutionary Socialism, Psychopathy
Document Summary
The auteur theory - the director as auteur. Authorship: the best known theory of cinema. It asserted that the central significance of individual creativity in cinema. They locate the creativity in the director: when you study literature, you focus on the writer. When you study paintings the painter is the author. It focuses on the director as the main creator of the film. This adds spectatorial pleasure, because we have new films by famous directors. It creates pleasure of going to see these new films. Film critics have used the principle of authorship to argue the artistic respectability of cinema and attribute status of creative artist to those working within the industrial system: this places directors in international pantheons. It forced the cultural and institutional of the film in the academic world: all of this started in the 50"s and 60"s with cahiers du cinema. What they did was to write articles about the politics of authors.
