UNIT 26 - Task 1
Auteur Theory:
My understanding of this theory is that it states/debates that it is the
director who should hold all of the responsibility for the production
of the film, basically the author of the movie, unlike the official
scriptwriter of the movie. Some people are even doubtful of this
being correct and believe that it is the editor who should gain all of
the credit for the movie because it is they who wrapped the movie up
and basically made the movie what it is when it gets released into
cinema and DVD. However these facts are debatable. This statement
arose in France in the late 1940’s, during the ‘French New Wave’
(1958 – 1965) from the focus film called ‘A Bout de Souffle’ by the
French Director Jean-Luc Godard, in which the film provided a new
approach to the film production and film style.
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/44609/auteurtheory - accessed: 8th January 2015 – authored by: Encyclopaedia
Britannica)
Is Jim Jarmusch an Auteur? :
In this task I am going to explain whether Jim Jarmusch is in fact an
Auteur or if he is not, by analysing two of his most famous films,
Down By Law and Permanent Vacation to help me come to a
conclusion and find an answer to this question.
Jim Jarmusch is one of the main directors who contributes to the
Auteur Theory, as he is the writer, director and occasionally the
editor of his movies. After watching two of Jarmuschs’ creations
(Down By Law and Permanent Vacation) I could easily see the
resemblance between the movies and could see the traits he shows in
both movies, which reveal that he is in fact the Director of those two
movies. From the mysterious, blues music found in the background of
the movies at the beginning and during the movies contents. There’s
also the atmosphere of the scenes, which also cause his skills to stand
out from the other directors traits by how the scenes are filled with
uniqueness and elaborate emotions. For his first film ‘Permanent
Vacation’, after reading through the full cast and crew list, it shows
clear proof that Jarmusch is an Auteur, as he wrote, directed,
produced and edited this movie himself, meaning that all the rights
for this movie would clearly go to him. Although, during the
production of ‘Down By Law’, after reading the cast and crew list,
there is a slightly different outcome because of the fact that Jim
Jarmusch still wrote and directed this movie but he did not produce
or edit the movie himself, which could cause a debate on whether he
deserved the entire rights to this film, therefore suggesting that he is,
in fact, not an Auteur.
Generic Proof:
His first movie was called ‘Permanent Vacation’, which was created in
the New York Film University where Jarmusch studied, in 1980. Now,
this movie focuses on one character in particular, Aloysious Parker,
with other characters surrounding him and his life as the movie
continues.
The genre of this movie is drama/thriller as there isn’t a wide range
of emotions shown in the movie, which could label it as anything but.
These genres are suggested through the longevity of the film by how
crime and mental illness is mixed in with the storyline and how they
are presented during the non-linear style of his movies. They are
shown in the editing skills of Jarmusch by how his scenes suddenly
change without any explanation of how the last scene ends or how it
is wrapped, which highly links to both the beginning and the end
scenes of the film when Aloysious rides away from Manhattan on a
boat with no explanation to what happens next or why he actually
decided to do so. This piece of information is also true for ‘Down By
Law’ even though the editor is a different person, they seemed to
have really connected with Jarmusch’ past work to try and mix it in
with their own so the viewers could still see the work of Jarmusch, at
the beginning and end of the movie, even though it wasn’t Jarmusch
himself who wrapped up the film. These genres are slightly different
for ‘Down By Law’, which is a drama/crime movie, this is apparent
because there is more crime shown in this movie than in his opening
piece of work and after looking at his first creation and then at D.B.L
there is proof that move crimes are suggested and shown, from
vandalism, which is shown in one of the first scenes of P.V, right up to
murder and child abuse, which are both shown in numerous scenes
of D.B.L.
The lighting during P.V doesn’t particularly suggest anything about
the genres as it is simply in colour, but in D.B.L the entire film is in
black and white. The desaturation could possibly make reference to
the drama aspect of the film, to try and make it more realistic to how
people look at life. The genres explained above are also shown in the
music of both movies. The first point about the music is that it is the
same in both films and it starts to play at the same points of the film,
where something mysterious has just happened, or is about to
happen. The music is a mysterious, bluesy type audio, which usually
seems to be placed in scenes which are prolonged, for example, in P.V
there is a scene when the main character walks along a road for a
couple of minutes, it is possible that this music is placed in this scene
particularly for that period of time, so that the viewers can reflect on
what they’ve seen so far and make them think about what they are
about to see, to draw in the intense emotions for both the movie and
the viewers. This exact same thing is shown in D.B.L at the beginning
of the film when one of the main characters is also walking down a
road. As well as the music exaggerating the genres of the films, there
are also the sound effects placed in the background. There is one
scene is P.V which stands out to me especially for doing this. During
the scene where the main characters visits his parents old house, you
can hear what appears to be plane and bomb noises, this is relevant
because in the scene beforehand, he explained how his parents were
killed during some kind of war and I feel that Jarmusch placed these
specific noises in that scene to try and make the past events mould
into the present, like everything was all happening at once, which
simplify intensified the dramatic course of the film. Another sound
quality which stood out to me was, again, during P.V where I seemed
to hear what sounded like bells all the way through the movie, which
I believe to suggest that Jarmusch was counting down to something,
possibly Parkers departure from his life in Manhattan.
The information which I have just wrote, I feel, could easily be a few
examples of Jim Jarmusch being an Auteur as so much of the editing
and final cuts and ideas were left down to him.
Compared to Tim Burton’s choice of genres, Jarmusch is a completely
different generic director to him, firstly, because of the way that
Jarmusch introduces his films, for example Permanent Vacation, and
how the layout of each film is based around the storyline being some
sort of disaster. For example: Jarmusch uses quite a slow, misery type
of beginning, with the music style to match this. But, Burton mainly
uses quite an upbeat style of music in ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’
and even though his movies are gothic based, there is also quite a
quirky side to it. For example, at the beginning of ‘N.B.C’, it starts with
an entertaining style of music, which, in a way, draws you into the
movie, blending in with the dull atmosphere Burton already sets,
making the need to watch more, intensify. Although, both of these
directors use a sense of drama in their movies, the intensity is
completely different by how Jarmusch, I believe, bases his movie on
realistic drama, making his movies as relatable as possible, linking
his creations to the type of crimes that used to happen a few decades
ago. Unlike Burton who seems to use the relatable storylines in his
film to his advantage by intensifying them so they are more
unrealistic and therefore, more entertaining for all ages. Based on the
genre alone, I believe that Burton is a more advanced and creative
director than Jarmusch, aside from the time differences, because
Jarmusch seems to be tailored to one target audience and one style of
genre, which you’d have to be quite mature to understand. Unlike
Burton who has been able to work with a range of genres and age
ratings, including over three completely different genres in one
movie (The Nightmare Before Christmas), most of which any person
of any age could get the grasp of, aside from the few movies he made
for the slightly older viewers (for example: Sleepy Hollow).
Although Burton has to have more imagination because of the fact
that his movies are aimed mainly at children, I still believe that his
aspect and view in the movies are more advanced and creative
compared to Jarmusch who aimed his creations to adults in which
didn’t need as much thought and depth because of the simple fact
that adults can understand a lot more than children.
Narrative Structural Proof:
For the narrative structure, there are a few points in which I can talk
about, which will make Jarmusch stand out more as a Director and an
Auteur.
At the start of D.B.L there are 3 different stories, based around three
of the main characters, which automatically shows a unique structure
to the film and also shows an opposition to the traditional 3-Act.
Personally, I think that Down By Law does actually follow the 3 Act in
a sense, because it starts with the three main characters living their
separate lives (act 1), during this time it tells the audience some key
information to help make the rest of the film understandable. And
then it shows them all meeting in prison meaning that their lives
have now collided with one another’s and in a way, become one life
(act 2). Then, they escape from prison, together, and then finally,
their lives separate once more causing the film to come to an end (act
3). The first image that was shown was that of a, more or less,
abandoned streets and buildings and I personally believe that this
gives the viewer quite an open minded feelings because, Jarmusch,
instead of making his film look all happy and peaceful, he’s focused
on the realistic side and made it so the viewers see what they see on
a daily basis and when this scene is prolonged, it suggests that it was
done strictly for the viewers to think and reflect on life and what they
see before getting stuck into the events of the movie. This piece of
information alone, suggests that Jarmusch has an Auteur style of
directing strictly by the fact that his work stands out from the other
Hollywood and Art-house directors.
Moving on to Permanent Vacation, I feel that this movie actually
moves away from the 3-Act template and becomes more of a nonlinear style film mainly because there aren’t really any turning points,
climax or resolution scenes which wrap the film up. This Jarmusch
film really goes in a straight line of sorts and ends with the main
character sailing away from his original location in the film, without
explanation of where he goes or why he actually decided to leave,
leaving it open to speculation.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after looking over my analysis on Jim Jarmusch, I
believe that he is both an Auteur and not an auteur because yes, in
some movies he seems to do everything; from scriptwriting, to
directing and editing, but in other films, he only does half of these
things, the rest is done by other professionals whom I believe should
have as much attention and credit for the completed film as Jarmusch
himself. I have also come to realise that I do not believe in the Auteur
Theory, as a movie is created and made using more than one person
and all of those people who help bring whatever movie they are
working on to life should be credited for what they did.
Is Tim Burton an Auteur? :
In this article, I am going to explain whether or not Tim Burton is an
Auteur, by analysing two of his films: The Nightmare before
Christmas and Corpse Bride to help me come to a conclusion and
therefore an answer to this question.
After looking at the credits for ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’
(1993), I’ve discovered that Tim Burton was only the writer of this
movie, which means I can already suggest Burton as not being an
Auteur because he is not the director of this film. Although, this
statement can be overlooked because Burton did much more in his
movie ‘Corpse Bride’ (2005) taking the role of the Director, writer
and producer and therefore he could be argued as an Auteur.
Generic Proof:
Through his career as a film director, producer, artist, writer and
animator, his reoccurring genres involve: dark, gothic, macabre
(disturbing/concerned with or causing a fear of death), quirky horror
and 3D animation. All of these genres are obvious when you watch
Burton’s films, such as Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before
Christmas because they have such a close similarity to each other by
the layout and the atmosphere of the movies themselves. Burton also
has traits, which involve: 3D animation, dark theme and certain
actors reoccurring in different films (e.g. Johnny Depp and Helen
Bonham Carter). (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/ accessed: 8th January 2015 – authored by: IMDB)
‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ was created using both animation
and clay figures and is a fantasy/gothic genre based movie, which is
heavily suggested through the movie and during the opening credits
of the film, as well as the fact that it is a Tim Burton film and his traits
are clearly obvious whilst watching his movies.
The genre of the film is shown especially in the way Burton has
edited the film. The entirety of the film is based around darkness and
uniqueness, even when the subject of Christmas is brought into topic,
Burton still decides to twist the idea of Christmas and make it his
original gothic styled theme. There is one scene in-particular, which
shows this, when the main character, Jack, is trying to bring
Christmas into his Halloween world and begins to attempt to make
decorations but when he does they all seem to turn out Halloween
based, as if the idea of merging the two holidays together is
impossible, making the movie to suddenly have a quite depressing
and sad vibe, giving the audience the idea that nothing can be
changed or bettered, even if you tried your hardest. Although this
vibe does eventually get flipped when the entire Halloween town
eventually come on board with Jacks idea and help the Christmas
town to save Christmas. If this movie was produced and worked on
by burton alone, this would not have been the probable ending, but,
because Walt Disney Productions had some say it how the story as
wrapped up, it ended happy, along with the ending itself being
explained beforehand. This information compared to that of Burtons
film ‘Corpse bride’ is almost similar, as the genres and editing skills
used in The Nightmare Before Christmas are identical to those found
in Corpse Bride, yet again suggesting the outstanding traits and
responsibilities that Burton shows and the suggestion that Burton is
in fact an Auteur. Although neither of the films are considered major
‘horror’ movies, the iconography is slightly similar which gives both
movies the gothic intensity, which Burton intended. For example,
during both films, there is a high-key lighting, which is harsh and
therefore gives the film a more dismal atmosphere and, in a way,
gives the audience some insight to what they are about to watch.
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121164/ - accessed: 15th January
2015 – authored by: IMDB)
The lighting in both of these films, again, has a very big impact in
what genres they are given, as well as the fact that the lighting
techniques Burton has indicated in both movies are identical. Like I
said earlier, one of Burtons traits is the dull and gothic effect he has
placed in his movies and these two movies have that effect. There is
basically no lighting in these two movies, the entire streaming time of
his creations are surrounded by darkness, which could suggest
something about Burton as a person and how he feels towards life,
making another assumption that he portrays life in his movies as dull
and no sense of change strictly because he believes this to be true for
actual life.
The music chosen in both of these movies are relatively morbid. For
example the song ‘Remains of the Day’ from Corpse Bride and ‘This is
Halloween’ from The Nightmare Before Christmas have quite a
mixture of emotional suggestions in them as well as the morbidity
and gothic side, they also have an entertaining and quite funny theme
to them making both of the movies less dull than they originally are
and more entertaining. Also, the non-diegetic sound which is in the
scenes are quite mysterious and very well suited to the scene and
what is happening in that particular scene. For example, there is a
scene during which ‘Jack’ dresses himself up to look like Santa Claus
and then kidnaps Santa Claus to ask for his help, the music is very
adventurous and mischievous which seems to match the happenings
of that scene perfectly causing the scene to have an even bigger effect
on the audience.
Narrative Structural Proof:
This movie clearly has a linear structure to it, as it does in fact have
separate points where the story seems to take a sudden change, for
example, at one point in the film, the main character ‘Jack Skellington’
finds the Christmas town. Being someone from a Halloween town,
this causes quite a shocking twist when it turns out that he actually
loves the town and Christmas itself.
When it comes to the 3-Act structure, The Nightmare Before
Christmas is one of those films, which definitely follows the structure
quite closely; including the three plots twists, which seem to put the
film into perspective. The first plot twist being Jack finding the door
to the Christmas town (act 1), during this time you discover that the
main character isn’t in fact happy with what he does for a ‘living’ you
could say and is searching for some manor of change or difference,
which actually reflects on the reality of the story. The second, Jack
deciding to take Christmas into his own hands, which, yet again, can
also give a sense of reality to us as this specific act can easily link to a
human experience of trying something new and not fully
understanding it until someone explains its purpose (act 2) and third,
everything goes back to a sense of ‘normality’ and all the characters
are happy where they are at that stage of the movie, and this part of
the film I feel, wraps the story up perfectly by how Burton, even
slightly, explains where each of the main characters, and the others,
have made it too and what they would be doing if there was ever a
sequel made, causing the end scene to be a closing scene for the
entire film (act 3 - the end).
As well as The Nightmare Before Christmas, ‘Corpse Bride’ has a
linear structure because the movies plot suddenly changes at certain
points of the movie, at the beginning, middle and end. For example, at
the beginning of the movie, you obviously think that the main
character, Victor, is going to marry the other main character, Victoria,
but instead ends up accidently marrying him to Emily, the Corpse
Bride. Giving the movie a sudden twist, which makes the audience
wonder how the film is going to turn out.
Moving onto ‘Corpse Bride’, the 3-Act structure is also relevant as, yet
again, they’re three main plot lines, which make up the entire movie.
The first being the fact that the main character, Victor, accidently
marries a corpse bride, Emily, instead of his original fiancé, Victoria
(act 1), the second being that Emily is suddenly set to marry another,
even though herself and Victor are in love and the wedding with
Emily was unintentional. Although, the fat of accidently marrying the
wrong person is, debatably impossible, there is a sort of realism to
the fact that a person can marry someone by mistake, realising only
afterwards, that they made a mistake and therefore must try and
work round what they have done to accomplish some sort of peace
between all involved (act 2). And finally, Victor and Victoria
eventually get married and Emily finds peace, this ending could link
in to the point I have just made about a sense of realism and finding
peace once the problems between certain people have been resolved
but, just like The Nightmare before Christmas, it has a closed ending
which wraps the movie up nicely, without the audience having to ask
questions about what happens next to the characters, as this
information is more or less obvious once the film reaches it’s end (act
3). The fact that these traits are so close to the other works of
Burton, I have to say at this point that Burton is a strong Auteur
Director.
Conclusion
In conclusion, after looking over what I have found about Tim Burton
and analysing two of his movies in as much detail as I can, I believe
that Tim Burton is definitely an Auteur Director because of many
reasons. One, being the fact that he likes certain actors
(collaborators) such as; Johnny Depp and Helen Bonham Carter for
the simple fact that they are close friends of his in reality and because
of the fact that both actors/actresses perform so well in his funny yet
gothic films. Another reason I believe this is because of the running
theme of his movies being gothic yet entertaining, which means that
any movie of his can be spotted from the opening titles, simply from
the layout and feeling of the opening scenes and afterwards. Another
point which will help support my conclusion is the fact that Burtons
animated movies all have a similar, or even identical, 3D animation
technique which seems to give a style of uniqueness to it, therefore
telling people, if they didn’t know already, that the particular movie
was one of Burtons works.
After viewing and researching both of these famous directors, I don’t
believe in the Auteur Theory because I feel that a movie isn’t thought
of, worked on and completed by one person in-particular, it is a team
effort, which requires so many peoples hard work and concentration
so that any movie can be released on time and at the best that the
whole team can do, meaning that everyone involved should be given
credit and take responsibility for what they have achieved over the
period of time in which they have worked on that movies/movies.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Auteur Theory description
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/44609/auteurtheory - accessed: 8th January 2015 – authored by: Encyclopaedia
Britannica)
Tim Burton biography
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/ - accessed: 8th January
2015 – authored by: IMDB)
The Nightmare Before Christmas
(http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/ - accessed: 15th January
2015 – authored by: IMDB)
Corpse Bride (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121164/ - accessed:
15th January 2015 – authored by: IMDB)