Film History Week 9
3/21/12
 Film Noir
 Auteur Theory
 Stanley Kubrick
The Blacklist
Film History
Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama
Film History
Film History
Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama
Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama
Film History
B-Movies
Film History
The Coming of Television
Film History
Film History
The Parallel Development of Film & Television (First 50 Years)
Film History
Film Noir
on Film Noir
Film History
Film Noir
Click on the
image to the
right to see a
PDF.
Film History
Film Noir
Click on the
image to the
right to see a
PDF.
Film History
Film Noir
“Genre” Signatures
1. Urban Setting
2. Dark, Usually Rain-Soaked Streets
3. Customarily Concerned with Crime and Criminals
4. A Pervasive Cynicism
5. Seedy Sexuality
6. A “femme fatale” of Central Importance.
7. “[A] range of plots—the central figure may be a private eye (The Big
Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The
Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen
lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of
circumstance (D.O.A.)” [Wikipedia].
The Auteur Theory
Film History
http://davidlavery.net/Courses/3870/Extras/Auteur_Theory.htm
Film History
François Truffaut,
"Une Certaine
Tendance du Cinéma
Français" ("A Certain
Tendency in French
Cinema"), Cahiers du
Cinéma (1954)
Film History
Andrew Sarris (US):
Auteurism’s American
champion
Film History
 Drawing on the original insights of the French, the
American critic Andrew Sarris translated the auteur
theory into an American idiom.
 For a time, under the influence of Sarris’ goal of
converting "film history into directorial
autobiography," American intellectuals interested in
the movies began to think and talk and understand
the movies through the specially-ground lenses
provided by the auteur theory.
 "Over a group of films," Sarris insisted in what
amounts to his foundational principle, "a director
must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style,
which serve as his signature. The way a film looks
and moves should have some relationship to the way
a director thinks and feels" (Sarris 586).
Film History
 Truffaut formulated the original auteur
theory in opposition to the
monopolization of film art by writers.
 Sarris’ critical venture was likewise
undertaken "against the wind." He
sought to undermine the too-great hold
of sociological and political critics. He
wanted to talk about the art in the
movies he loved, not their social
significance.
Film History
“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism
can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of
‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had
formerly been lavished on stars, or that
formalists lavished on artistic devices, the
auteurists now lavished on the men—and they
largely were men—who incarnated the
auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was
resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was
back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.”
Robert Stam (88)
Film History
The auteur theory’s appeal, the critic Peter
Wollen has noted, was obvious: it "implie[d]
an operation of decipherment . . . reveal[ing]
authors where none had been seen before"
(77). Film directors, it was argued, and soon
thereafter generally assumed, could put their
stamp on a wide variety of movies, even in
several genres. Their attention was not
focused solely on American directors, of
course; they also singled out for praise
French auteurs like Abel Gance, Jean Vigo,
and Jean Renoir.
Film History
•The auteur theory was ready to accept, of course, that
"Just as not every conductor is a Leonard Bernstein, so
not every director is an Alfred Hitchcock" [Dick 147]).
•Not all directors became maestros—those individuals
Sarris categorized as "Pantheon Directors"--but many
shed their anonymity, their earlier work now
retrospectfully interesting, their new films anticipated.
•The works of a wide variety of directors were
catalogued, in some cases exhaustively. And it was not
only the movies of these directors that came in for
greater scrutiny. The writings of auteurs and available
interviews with them concerning their film aesthetics
and methods were also put under the microscope.
Film History
Film History Week 9
Stanley Kubrick
(American,
1928-1999)
"[Like the monolith in 2001, Stanley
Kubrick] was a force of supernatural
intelligence, appearing at great
intervals amid high-pitched shrieks,
who gives the world a violent kick up
the next rung of the evolutionary
ladder."--David Denby
Film History
Killer’s Kiss
(1955)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
The Killing
(1956)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Paths of Glory
(1957)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Spartacus (1960)
It's like the end of Spartacus.
I've seen that movie half a
dozen times, and I still don't
know who the real Spartacus
is. That's what makes that
movie a classic whodunit.
--The clueless Michael Scott
on The Office (Season 6)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Lolita (1962)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Dr. Strangelove,
or How I Learned
to Stop Worrying
and Love the
Bomb (1964)
Stanley Kubrick on the
Film History Blog
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
2001: A Space
Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick on Film History Blog
My Mentor, W. R. Robinson, on 2001:
“2001 and the Literary Sensibility”
”The Birth of Imaginative Man in Part
III of 2001: A Space Odyssey”
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
A Clockwork
Orange
(1971)
Stanley Kubrick on the
Film History Blog
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Barry Lyndon
(1975)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
The Shining
(1980)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Full Metal
Jacket (1987)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
Eyes Wide
Shut (1999)
Stanley Kubrick
Film History
AI (Steven
Spielberg,
2001)
Stanley Kubrick?