What is auteur?

Questions of AuteurismA 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 distinct style and consistent themes.

François Truffaut, ‘Une Certaine tendence du cinéma française’ (A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema) 1954

What is auteur?

• Directors (auteurs) oversee all narrative, visual and audio elements of motion pictures.

• SIGNATURE THEME AND STYLE

• “The filmmaker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen.” ‘Caméra Stylo’ (camera-pen) Alexander Astru

c, 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 u

nique preoccupation and holds on to signature style

• Metteur-en-scène (one who puts it in the scene - theatre director) - a (highly) competent filmmaker but lacks ‘the consistency that betrayed the profound involvement of personality’

Who Are Auteurs?• Directors who have a distinct visual style …

Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells …Stanley Kubrick, Wang Kar-wai

• Directors Directors who have a consistent theme … Jean Renoir (humanism), Douglas Sirk (melodrama) … Theo Angelopoulos (modern Greek history), Ken Loach (socialist conscience)

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)

To analyse a film as a work of a single author (auteur)

→ 　 auteurism / politique des autteurs

To identify the characteristics of a director’s work which makes him a auteur

→ 　 auteurism / politique des autteurs

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

Cesare Zavattini (1902-1989)

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 IvoryRoom with a View, Howard’s End, Remains of the Day

Criticism against auteur theory

• Gordon WillsMost important cinematographer in the 70s and 80sThe Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, All the President’s Men

Criticism against auteur theory• Miyagawa Kazuo (1908-199

9)

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

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

• 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

Criticism against auteur theory

• Credit for Round Midnight (1986)

Producer: Irwin Winkler Director: Bertrand Tavernier Writer: David Rayfiel, Bertrand Tavernier Music: Harbie Hancock Editor: Harmand Psenny Production Design: Alexandre Trauner

Criticism against auteur theory

• Positif, founded one year after Cahiers du cinema in 1952

• Firm opposition to author theory• A signed article naming the most overrated d

irectors: Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawkes and Alfred Hitchcock

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

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Peter Weir (1944 - )

• Australian born and now working in Hollywood

• Worked in ATN-7 (a TV company in Sydney)

• Made documentaries for CFU

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

• A tale of private-school girls who mysteriously disappear in the Australian outback.

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Gallipoli (1981) Rural Australian boys are caught in the slaughter of WWI in Turkey.

In the Case of Peter Weir

• The Year of Living Dangerously (1983),

An Australian journalist is assisted by a local Indonesian cameraman while the third-world capital collapses.

In the Case of Peter Weir

Witness (1985)

It brings a city detective into the unfamiliar world of Pennsylvania’s Amish community.

In the Case of Peter Weir

The Mosquito Coast (1986)An American with his family tries to establish civilization in a remote jungle and ending in a disaster.

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Green Card (1990)

A comedy in which a Frenchman tries to obtain a green card on bogus marriage with an American woman.

In the Case of Peter Weir

• Truman Show (1998)

• A story of one man’s life not knowing that he is a star of a 24 hour TV series.

Weir as an auteur

Juxtaposition of :civilization and ‘primitiveness’; the knowab

le and the unknowable; culture and nature

‘Clashes’ of civilizations and cultures

Erosion of humanity by civilization