<< What does
"auteur" mean? >>
Auteur means author in French. The term got applied to film
when the critics associated with the post-war French film
journal Cahiers du cinema decided that Hollywood movies
should be appreciated as art. They had a Romantic
understanding of art as the self-expression of an artist. Who
is the artist who makes a commercial movie? The producer? The
screenwriter? The star? The cinematographer? These critics
decided that the author (or auteur) of a movie was its
director. So now you have discussions of the work of
Hitchcock, Howard Hawkes, Billy Wilder. The theory has been
widely influential, which may be why it seems so obvious to
people today, although it has had its critics (Kael was one)
and still seems quite debatable to me.
Alan
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