AHSS*1070 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Akira Kurosawa, The Hurt Locker, North American Railroad Signals
Chapter 13: Film Authorship
-Movie-goers use a film director as an organizing principle
-their films are seen as consistent in style and themes
-knowledge of director’s historical and biographical information helps analyze, interpret,
and evaluate latest film
-Term auteur originates with notion of literary author, the primary creative force behind a piece
of literature
-Director is primary creative source and their films express distinctive vision of the world
-French critics/filmmakers saw Hollywood as creative force in filmmaking along with European
film industry
The Idea of the Auteur
-Post World War II French cinephiles looked to film as a medium of personal expression, making
analogies with writing
-Francois Truffaut argued that some directors do more than translate a pre-existing work on the
screen: auteurs imbue their films with their creative identities like authors do
-Auteur theory challenged prevailing view of aesthetic superiority of European cinema over
American
-Theory not only reconsidered popular films as potential works of art; also spurred debates about
which directors deserved to be called auteurs
-In USA discussion of authorship appeared in Film Culture and The New Yorker magazine, in a
well-known debate between film critics Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael
-American film critic Andrew Sarris developed criteria for evaluating whether a director was an
auteur
-Sarris’ criteria:
1. technical competence
2. distinguishable personality
3. interior meaning (underlying connection between director’s vision and subject matter)
-Weaknesses in Sarris’ criteria, according to Pauline Kael:
1. technical competence doesn’t take into account visual artistry
2. celebrating the distinguishable personality favors directors who repeat themselves
3. interior meaning is vague
4. the criteria, the notion of the auteur, doesn’t reflect the collaborative nature of film
-Auteur approach views director as the primary source of meaning
-Some film theorists argue that meaning of any film exceeds intentions of the person or people
who created it
-complexity inherent in any narrative by insisting that only authorized readings be linked
to some notion of what a director meant to convey might be ignored
-Powerful notion of film authorship also exerts influence on filmmaking as economic practice
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
Movie-goers use a film director as an organizing principle their films are seen as consistent in style and themes knowledge of director"s historical and biographical information helps analyze, interpret, and evaluate latest film. Term auteur originates with notion of literary author, the primary creative force behind a piece of literature. Director is primary creative source and their films express distinctive vision of the world. French critics/filmmakers saw hollywood as creative force in filmmaking along with european film industry. Post world war ii french cinephiles looked to film as a medium of personal expression, making analogies with writing. Francois truffaut argued that some directors do more than translate a pre-existing work on the screen: auteurs imbue their films with their creative identities like authors do. Auteur theory challenged prevailing view of aesthetic superiority of european cinema over. Theory not only reconsidered popular films as potential works of art; also spurred debates about which directors deserved to be called auteurs.
