Film Authorship: Director as artist or 'auteur'

Jean-Luc Godard -  film 'auteur'

§"The director is both the least necessary and the most important component of film-making. He is the most modern and most decadent of all artists in the relative passivity toward everything that passes before him. He would not be worth bothering with if he were not capable now and then of sublimity of expression almost miraculously extracted from his money-oriented environment." §(Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, p.37)

 

Lesson 5: Film Authorship

Look at three of the directors we have looked at so far: Alfred Hitchcock (North by NorthWest, Psycho), Quentin Tarrantino (Pulp Fiction), Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Jurassic Park, ET)

Answer the following questions in your group:

What is distinctive about this director? – What raises him or her above the crowd?

Discuss in relation to:

Mise en scene and Mise-en-shot

Key structures of narrative (cause/effect logic, key narrative devices, ordering of events)

Narration (omniscient/restricted, voice-overs)

Themes (subject matter)

Dialogue

Sound (diagetic and non-diagetic)

Any other distinctive qualities in their films

“The auteur policy values the personality of a director precisely because of the barriers to its expression. It is as if a few brave spirits had managed to overcome the gravitational pull of the mass of movies.” (American Cinema)

So - What are the implications of viewing the director as an artist or “auteur”? Think about this in terms of the film industry and also in terms of film as ‘significant form’ – the Formalist view that films should be seen as a serious rival to the other established visual arts.

Put all your notes on your BLOG !!