what exactly is the auteur theory in cinema?
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Auteur theory is studying art by looking at the person who made it, the “auteur”; trying to understand a movie or book or painting in the context of other movies or books or paintings made by the same person. In cinema, the auteur is generally the director; in some pure, idealized view of what cinema is, everyone else working on the movie is working to realize the director’s vision.
You might criticize this by saying the movies have a lot of moving parts, and no one person actually controls a movie, or that not everything in a movie is directly tied to anybody’s real life. Indeed, there are times to apply it and there are times not to. It’s a lense, but not perscription lense, more like a magnifying glass or sunglasses
You mostly see auteur theory applied to indie arthouse films. If you ever see people talking about an auteur director, they’ll mean a director whose movies have lots of similar elements: Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorcese, that kinda guy
The idea that the director is the auteur/author, the main visionary behind the film.
It really only makes sense within the larger context of film criticism, especially its history. It came at a time when films were becoming industrialised, and studios exerted the most control over the process since they were providing the money and other resources.
The director was just their employee. This was known as the *studio system*.
So the auteur theory arose as a response to this – that the director wasn’t just there to implement the studio’s vision but that they were the driving creative force aka the author of the film.
Auteur theory says that films have main traits 1. Boring 2. Action 3. Intensity 4. Recreation 5. Motion 6. Stimulation 7. Theme 8. Death. Secondary traits exist according to the author. 1. Elongated 2. Very Long 3. Super Intense 4. Shaky Camera 5. Drug Themed 6. Military Themed 7. Streets Themed 8. Terrorist Themed 9. Medical Themed 10. Space Themed 11. Anime 12. Cartoon. A third set of traits exist 1. Filling 2. Drama 3. Action 4. Livestyle 5. Marketing. Movies may make you feel a few things: 1. Good 2. Bored 3. Horrible 4. Revived 5. Extremely Good. Movies use specific themes per movie that make them interesting. 1. Boring Revival 2. Action Revival 3. Intensity Revival 4. Motion Revival 1.1 Boring is Action 1.2 Action is Intensity 1.3 Intensity is Recreation 1.4 Recreation is Stimulation 1.5 Motion is Death 2.0 Young Male Lead 2.1 Stupid Male Lead 2.2 Strong Female Lead 2.3 Intelligent Male Lead 2.4 Intelligent Female Lead. A extra may be sourced from some ranges. 1.0 Extra has a suitable voice for the role 1.1 Extra has the ability to hold for the toilet 2.0 Extra is especially suited for the job 2.1 Extra has the ability to cook for themselves, but an extra can just be anybody. An actor in modern cinema can fulfill particular role requirement 1. Boring 2. Action 3. Intensity 4. Recreation and also an actor for a AAA movie is generating their own 5. Motion as well. The role of the director is to provide specific additional. A director also provides 1. Boring 2. Action 3. Intensity 4. Recreation but only provides one at a time for direction, and like that provides 5. Motion 6. Stimulation 7. Theme 8. Death.
So we’ve got some answers heavily skewed by the Americanization of the auteur theory.
In its original form, the auteur theory was a manifesto created by French critics and filmmakers who were displeased with the commercial French film industry of the time. In their minds, the problem with the commercial film industry was that there was no central creative voice. The producer was in charge of the overall production, but the screenwriter wrote the story, the director was in charge on set, the editor pieces things together in post, etc.
They desired a form of cinema more in line with the traditional arts, where there is one singular artist or author. And to achieve this, they focused on the director, and suggested that the director should do *more* than direct—they should also write and produce the film, and in some cases even edit or shoot the film. With one person writing, directing, and producing, this would allow for a singular “author” (*auteur*) of the film.
But as part of this, the auteur theorists also looked at filmmakers—particularly American filmmakers—who had a distinctive style that they brought from film to film, and used them as a model for what an auteur should be. They looked at filmmakers like Hitchcock, for example, and said “well, since most of his films have very similar themes, aesthetics, and narrative tropes, he must be responsible for that consistency as a strong creative voice” (the problem here was that a filmmaker like Hitchcock worked with many of the same collaborators in film after film, and that *collaboration* was partly responsible for the consistency, but that’s a separate conversation).
The problem was that all of this was written in French, and when these ideas got brought to America by critics like Andrew Sarris, they only latched onto the idea of directors with a strong consistency of style. These critics used auteurism as a way to celebrate the great directors of American cinema, and many of the “film brats” of the ‘60s and ‘70s—the first generation of Hollywood filmmakers to come out of film school rather than apprenticing in the studio system—also latched onto this. As budding directors, they *loved* the idea that the director is the author, full stop. And so the auteur theory got simplified into the very reductive idea that “the director is the author”.
In reality, those filmmakers who qualify as “auteurs” are those who don’t just direct—they also produce their own films, and often have a hand in writing as well. When you see directors accepting an Oscar for Best Picture, it’s *not* because they directed it; it’s because they also produced the film (since Best Picture goes to the film’s producers, not the director).
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