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
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