What is auteur?
Questions of Auteurism
A Case Study of Peter Weir
What is auteur?
1 A director who make films which reflect
his/her personal vision and preoccupations.
2 A director who has a distinctive style and
consistent themes.
SIGNATURE Vision
SIGNATURE Style
François Truffaut, ‘Une Certaine
tendence du cinéma française’
(A Certain Tendency in the French
Cinema) 1954
What is auteur?
• Though film making is collaborative work
• Directors called auteurs oversee all narrative, visual and
audio elements of motion pictures.
• “The filmmaker/author writes with his camera
as a writer writes with his pen.”
‘Caméra Stylo’ (camera-pen) Alexander Astruc,
‘Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde’, L’Ecran
Français, 30th March, 1948
What is auteur?
• Auteur or metteur-en-scène
• Auteur - a director who expresses his/her
unique preoccupation and holds on to his/her
signature style
• Metteur-en-scène (one who puts it in the scene theatre director) - a (highly) competent film
maker but lacks ‘the consistency that betrayed
the profound involvement of personality’
Who Are Auteurs?
• Directors who have a distinct visual style …
• Directors who have a consistent theme … Jean
Renoir (humanism), Douglas Sirk (melodrama)
… Theo Angelopoulos (modern Greek history),
Ken Loach (left-wing social consciousness)
Alfred Hitchcock
Orson Welles
Stanley Kubrick
Wong Kar Wai
Jean Renoir
Douglas Sirk
Theo Angelopoulos
Ken Loach
Auteur Theory (Politique des auteurs)
• Auteur theory - a critical attitude to consider
a film as a product of a single person director - auteur
• Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory’,
1964
Auteur Theory (Politique des auteurs)
Film criticism and film studies based on auteur
theory:
(1) to analyse a film as a work of a single author
(auteur)
→ auteurism
(2) to identify the characteristics of a director’s
work which makes him a auteur
→ auteurism
Criticism against auteur theory
• Filmmaking as collaborative and
collective actions.
• Making a film involves many other
creative talents than director.
• Scriptwriter, photographer, editor, art
director, actor, etc.
Criticism against auteur theory
Figures other than directors,
who played a prominent
role include:
Cesare Zavattini (19021989)
Screenwriter for Vittorio De
Sica and Luchino Visconti
Shoeshines, Bicycle Thieves,
Umberto D, Bellisima, etc.
Criticism against auteur theory
Ruth Prower
Jhabvala (1927 - )
Screenwriter for
James Ivory
Room with a View,
Howard’s End,
Remains of the Day
Criticism against auteur theory
Gordon Wills
Most important
cinematographer in
the 70s and 80s
The Godfather, Annie
Hall, Manhattan, All
the President’s Men
Gordon Willis, Manhattan
Gordon Willis, The Godfather
Gordon Willis, Annie Hall
Gordon Willis, All the President’s Men
Criticism against auteur theory
• Vittorio Storaro
• Italian cinematographer
who have worked for
first Bernardo
Bertolucci, and then
Carlos Saura and
Francis Ford Coppola
Vittorio Storaro, Last Tango in Paris
Vittorio Storaro, Goya
Criticism against auteur theory
• Miyagawa Kazuo (1908-1999)
Greatest Japanese
photographer, operated the
camera and shot for
Mizoguchi Kenji, Kurosawa
Akira, Ichikawa Kon and
Shinoda Masahiro
Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojinbo,
Tokyo Olympiad, McArthur’s
Children
Kazuo Miyagawa, Rashomon
Kazuo Miyagawa, Ugetsu
Kazuo Miyazawa, Yojinbo
Miyagawa Kazuo, Tokyo Olympiad
Kazuo Miyagawa, Floating World
Miyagawa Kazuo, McArthur’s Children
Criticism against auteur theory
• David Lean (1908-1991)
British film director
Established the classic
editing techniques
Edited for film directors
such as Anthony Asquith
and Michael Powell
Pygmalion, Major
Barbara, 49th Parallel
Criticism against auteur theory
• Lean edited all his films
• His editing techniques and methods
influenced may film makers: notably Steven
Spielberg and George Lucas.
Criticism against auteur theory
• Alexandre Trauner
(1906-1993)
French art and
production designer
Le Jour se léve, Les
Enfants du paradis, Le
Portes de la nuit, Kiss
Me Stupid, Don Giovanni,
Round Midnight, Subway
Alexandre Trauner, Les Enfants du Paradis
Alexander Trauner, Round Midnight
Alexandre Trauner, Don Giovanni
Alexandre Trauner, Subway
Auteur or Anti-auteur
• Positif, founded one year after
Cahiers du cinema in 1952
• Firm opposition to author theory
• Film making is a collaborative
and collective work.
• A signed article naming the most
overrated directors: Fritz Lang,
Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawkes
and Alfred Hitchcock
• While Cahiers du cinema praised
those auteurs to the skies.
Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Legitimacy of privileging a director - can a
director be more important than his film?
• ‘There are no good or bad films, but there
are only good or bad directors.’ François
Truffaut
Mizoguchi Kenji (1898-1956)
Irredeemable Suffering:
Images of Japanese Women
Mizoguchi’s Major Works
Mizoguchi Kenji (1898
Tokyo - 1956 Kyoto)
In the SILENT era
• Resurrection of Love
(1923)
• Bridge of Japan
(Nihonbashi, 1929)
• Cascading White
Threads (Takino Shiraito,
1933)
Mizoguchi’s Major Works
In the PREWAR period
• Osaka Elegy (Naniwa
Elegy, 1936)
• Sisters of Gion (Gion no
Shimai, 1936)
• The Story of the Last
Chrysanthemum
(Zangiku Monogatari,
1939)
Mizoguchi’s Major Works
•
•
•
•
•
•
POSTWAR masterpieces
The Life of Oharu (Saikaku Ichidai Onna, 1952)
Ugetsu (Ugetsu Monogatari, 19553)
Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho Dayu, 1954)
Crucified Lovers (Chikamatsu Monogatari,
1955)
The Tales of the Taira Clan (Shin Heike
Monogatari, 1955)
Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai, 1956)
Osaka Elegy (1936)
• Ayako becomes the mistress of her boss, so she
can pay back her father’s debt and provides her
brother with college fees. When she is abandoned
by her benefactor, she turns to the street.
Sisters of Gion (1936)
• Umekichi and Omocha are geisha in Kyoto’s
Gion district. The former feels obliged to help
her bankrupt patron, but the latter believes her
sister is wasting her time and money on a loser
and coward. Omocha’s view is vindicated but
her pragmatism does not bring her happiness
either.
The Story of The Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
• Kikunosuke, son of a master Kabuki actor, falls in
love with Otoku, the wet-nurse of his brother.
This provokes his father’s anger and he is
expelled from his troupe. He is allowed to rejoin
it on the condition that he separates from Otoku.
The Life of O-haru (1952)
• Once a lady-in-waiting at the imperial court,
Oharu falls in love with a man below her station.
They are forced to be separated. Oharu is sent to
the court as concubine for the lord who lacks a
male heir. The lord’s infatuation and obsession
with Oharu caused jealousy among his first wife
and court ladies. After giving birth to a baby boy,
The Life of O-haru (1952)
she is sent back home.
Oharu is then sold to
Shimabara as a courtesan to
pay off her father’s debt.
After leaving Shimabara,
she is betrayed by a man
who fancies her and her
employer. She ends up
becoming a cheap street
girl.
Ugetsu (1953)
• A potter is seduced by a wealthy noble woman
and abandons his wife. When he comes to his
senses and returns to his home, he is kindly
received by his wife, who is but her ghost.
Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
• A compassionate governor
is sent into exile. His wife
and children try to join him,
but they are separated in
the journey. The mother is
murdered and the children
are sold as slaves. The
sister sacrifices in order to
liberate her brother.
Street of Shame (1956)
• About lives of prostitutes
in the days before prostitution are banned.
Yasumi, the most beautiful
and successful, manipulates
customers; Mickey is an unsentimental rebel;
Michi’e supports her sick husband and a new-born
baby; Yumeko supports her son but is ashamed of
her profession; Yori’e hopes to settle into marriage
but is betrayed by her ‘fiancée’.
Images of Japanese Women
• Mizoguchi’s thematic concerns consistently
found in his films
His films reflect:
• (Expected) roles of women in the feudal and
traditional society
• Exploitation and abuse of women – as the
‘second-class’ members of the society.
Images of Japanese Women
• Ugliness of men who prey on women
• Beauty of women who resist the power of men
but finally succumb to it.
• Women’s self-sacrifice (or forced self-sacrifice)
for their family (parents, brothers and sisters,
husbands, children, and lovers)
• Atonement brought for the sin committed by men
by way of women’s self-sacrifice
Images of Japanese Women
• ‘… a commitment to feminism and progressive
politics…’ Interpretation by Alexander Jacoby
• Are Mizoguchi’s films feminist and do they take a
progressive political stance on issues of women?
• Comassion and sympathy towards suffering
women; indictment against men’s cruelty,
selfishness and violence
Images of Japanese Women
• Female perseverance and self-sacrifice are
made to look as if they were beautiful and
virtuous acts
• Isn’t this the glorification of women’s suffering
rather than denouncement.
• Female masochism
• Doesn’t this lead to a tacit affirmation of the
position and role of women?