Genre and Authorship Studies

1. Genre and Authorship Studies • You will examine the application of an auteur and genre approach to the interpretation of films studied on the course. • There will be a full consideration of the benefits and limitations of auteur and genre study in 'reading' films. • The significance of auteurism and genre in relation to broader ideas of 'making' meaning will be considered. • Response to the meanings constructed in the application of an auteur and genre study will be critically explored.

2. The Power of the Filmmaker Auteur Theory With a little help from Wikipedia

3. History • 1950s-era auteur theory • Director's (or better the ‘Filmmaker’s’) films reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he or she were the primary "auteur" (the French word for 'author'). Their films bear their ‘signature’ in style, ideology etc • A present day analogy would the 'writer-director' and having control over the final cut or director's cut of a film. • Auteur theory has had a major impact on film criticism ever since it was advocated by film director and film critic François Truffaut in 1954. • "Auteurism" is the method of analyzing films based on this theory and the characteristics of a Filmmaker’s work that makes her or him an auteur. • Associated with the French New Wave and the film critics who wrote for the influential French film review periodical Cahiers du cinéma.

5. Like who? • The Cahiers writers embraced directors - both French and American - whose personal signature could be read in their films. • The French directors the Cahiers critics endorsed included • Jean Vigo • Jean Renoir • Robert Bresson • Marcel Ophüls • Americans on their list of favourites included • John Ford • Howard Hawks • Alfred Hitchcock • Fritz Lang • Nicholas Ray • Orson Welles

6. Who else? • Draw up your own list of other potential ‘Auteurs’ • List some of their signature traits to back up your claims

7. The ‘Cahiers Crew’ • French film critic, André Bazin co-founded the publication ‘Cahiers du cinéma’ the key advocate of Auteur Theory (amongst others) • Another key element of auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc's notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen" and the idea that directors should wield their cameras like writers use their pens and that they need not be hindered by traditional storytelling. • Francois Truffaut provocatively said that "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors."

8. Basic belief • Cahiers recognized that moviemaking was a collaborative industrial process. However, they proposed an ideal to strive for: • The director should use the commercial apparatus the way a writer uses a pen and, through the mise en scène, imprint his or her vision on the work (conversely, the role of the screenwriter was minimized in their eyes). • While recognizing that not all directors reached this ideal, they valued the work of those who neared it

9. A ‘New Wave’ • Much of Cahiers writing of this period was designed to lambast post-war French cinema, and especially the big production films of the cinéma de qualité ("quality films"). • They referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashioned cinéma de papa (or "Dad's cinema"). • During the Nazi occupation, the Vichy government did not allow the exhibition of US films. When French film critics were finally able to see these 1940s US movies in 1946, they were enamoured of the dark style of many of what came to be called the film noir style of US films.

10. More about “The New Wave” • New Wave theory maintains that all good directors have such a distinctive style or consistent theme that their influence is unmistakable in the body of their work. • Truffaut himself was appreciative of both directors with a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock), and those whose visual style was less pronounced but who had nevertheless a consistent theme throughout their movies (such as Jean Renoir's humanism).

11. Impact • The auteur theory was used by the directors of the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement of French cinema in the 1960s (many of whom were also critics at the Cahiers du cinéma) as justification for their intensely personal and idiosyncratic films. • Ironically, at the very moment Truffaut was writing, the break-up of the Hollywood studio system during the 1950's was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made.

12. Critics as Filmmakers • As well as Truffaut: • Jean-Luc Godard • Éric Rohmer • Claude Chabrol • Jacques Rivette

13. Narrow? • The auteurist critics wrote mostly about directors (as they were directors themselves), although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. • Later writers of the same general school have emphasized the contributions of star personalities like Mae West. • However, the stress was on directors, so screenwriters, producers and others have reacted with a good deal of hostility. • Writer William Goldman has said that, on first hearing the auteur theory, his reaction was, "What's the punchline?"

14. Criticism of the Critics • Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticizing auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director. Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines. • One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film (one person cannot do everything) and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). • In Kael's review of Citizen Kane, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland.

15. “New Criticism” • The auteur theory was also challenged and undermined by the influence of New Criticism, a school of literary criticism. • The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. • New Critics argued that the information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature. • New Critics suggested that the internal evidence of the work of literature itself--the text-- was the appropriate object of literary criticism. • This ushered in a variety of text-centred approaches to understanding literature which had tremendous influence on subsequent film theory and criticism.

16. Psychoanalysis and Film Criticism • The influence of psychoanalytic film theory also undermined the auteur theory by raising the issue of the unconscious of both the "author" and the text itself. • Subsequent theories of cultural studies also broadened the context of meaning and interpretation as manifestations of culturally determined institutions in which authors and readers (directors and spectators) as well as texts (films) and their meanings are produced and reproduced. • However, this view is disputed by the psychiatrist Rollo May (in his book "The Courage To Create") who points out that cultures depend on the visions, dreams and creative output of individuals within them to shape them. So the notion that the roots of an individual artist's work can be traced back to the collective creative product of his or her culture is circular since the product of said culture must come from the works of individual storytellers and artists within it.

17. Auteur versus genre • The auteur theory has also been contrasted with genre theory, arguing that the auteur theory is a manifestation of the cult of personality theory which tend to exclude the work of directors such as David Cronenberg, or Roger Corman amongst others, who produce highly personal movies but are mainly active in ‘genre films’. Do you think it is possible for an Auteur to produce generic films? How?

18. To sum up – In the Red Corner • For “Auteur” • Cahiers du Cinema critics / filmmakers • The director’s signature will be on a film • Proof: Auteur films look and ‘feel’ similar • Lead to a New Wave of free-thinking, personal films and filmmakers

19. To sum up – In the Blue Corner • Against “Auteur” • Critics like Pauline Kael felt the theory was narrow and exclusive because films are collaborative • “New Critics” felt the text to be more important than the director • Psychoanalysts believed that films are ‘culturally determined’ • Genre theorists believe that filmmakers are working within existing parameters of codes and conventions

20. So... • Are you an ‘Auteurist’? • If so – explain why in 100 words • If not – explain why not in 100 words or