by Oliver Spicer
As it stands, the auteur theory (which credits certain directors as ultimate author of their films) is the most widely accepted film theory by the cinema-going public; even if the French New-Wave magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, where the idea of auteur originated, is absent from their minds when ordering overpriced popcorn.
This is because the notion of director as author is embedded throughout the modern production, distribution, and reception of a film. Once a role left uncredited by studios in the Silent Era, the directors name is not not only present inside the film in the form of flashy title cards - but also beyond the projector to posters, headlines, and memoirs. Just as films are wrangled together by period and genre, studios sell boxsets of a directors full work and viewers comprise lists of must-see directors and their must-see career triumphs. The diagnosis may be egotism - but there is a reason why Hitchcock gets away with his name on the title sequence three times.
Yet, the widely accepted silhouette of the auteur theory only creates a further need to understand its finer aspects. And ironically, the fact the auteur theory is a fusion of multiple authors and articles only furthers the need for definition. Three articles from Cahiers du Cinéma, and their summarization by American critic Andrew Sarris all need to be introduced to grasp the ill-defined edges of the auteur…
“A Certain Tendency of French Cinema” is the first article of note. French New-Wave fans (which you can identify from their ability to inhale a cigarette in one jump-cut) will know the writer Francois Truffaut from his avant-garde classics
In a more positive section of the article, the term auteur is mentioned after Truffaut lists off directors he adores as as “auteurs who often write their own dialogue and in some cases think up the stories they direct.”
From this article an opposition to adaptation is shown to form the roots of the auteur theory, as well as containing actions that are repeated by later writers such as separating directors by their auteur status and focusing on the processes of production.
“La Camera Stylo” is the next article worth mentioning, with critic Alexandre Astruc creating the metaphor of a “camera pen” to dream up a new cinema where the “film-maker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen”
. To achieve this, Astruc notes that film must fully develop into a language in order to meld the roles of director and screenwriter into one.
Astruc is just as critical towards adaptations as Truffaut is, adding that screenwriters perform “idiotic transformations”
to the classics they are adapting in order to fit them into the form of cinema. But by using the metaphor of the ”camera-pen“ to embody his thoughts, it also relates the director more parallel to the literary authors of the books and plays that are wrongly visually translated.
can be seen as a summation of the previous articles and thoughts of Cahiers du Cinéma by critic Andre Bazin into a “policy of auteurs”. Many of the unique points added by Bazin are recognisable in the modern conversation about auteurs. This includes Bazin stating that certain films are more reflective of their auteurs than others - and that auteurs can make flops, and non-auteurs can achieve great film (although he assures us the later case is mostly by chance).
Yes, adaptations are once again looked down upon like the two previous articles. Yet like many of his other essays, Bazin uses references to artists and significant authors to bring in ideas about aesthetics and artistic value in to his manifesto of the auteur. At points the director is placed above the novel author or baroque painter, with Bazin exclaiming that the directors role has a certain complexity due to the production and audience reception of a film.
But when “the auteur theory” is referenced in modern film discourse, it is not directly referring to Truffauts dislike of the ‘matteur-en-scene’ director, Astrucs ‘Camera Pen’ symbolism, or Bazin’s summative ‘policy’. Instead, it is American critic Andrew Sarris and his article “Notes on the Auteur Theory” that is brought to mind - which aimed to simplify and define the cinematic philosophy more rigorously.
And although the original ideas have been overwritten by the over-success of Sarris in defining the auteur, he opens the article giving “the Cahiers critics full credit for the original formulation of an idea that reshaped my thinking on the cinema”. For what nuance is taken away from the original texts, Sarris can be awarded for adding an exactness to the theory that was absent in its original formation: inventing a helpful test of “three concentric circles” that a director must satisfy to be labelled as auteur.
The Outer Circle: Technical Ability
This trial is the most simple and clear-cut out of the three. Sarris rules that a director is “automatically cast out” of the auteur list if they “have no technical competence, no elementary flair for the cinema”. This includes giving substantial direction and understanding the grammar of cinema - linking to Astruc’s “Camera Stylo” model. A director is more than an artist, it is a job and a person must be successful in performing as the role of director before an auteur status is granted.
The Middle Circle: Stylistic Personality
Out of the array of ideas presented in both the French and American notions of the auteur, this idea of directors having certain stylistic ‘signatures’ across their body of work has travelled the furthest. It has been used to whittle down the aesthetics and moods of directors into a handful of common traits. Their styles have superseded their films and themselves - making inseparable the idea of Orson Welles and deep focus, Hitchcock and suspense, Christopher Nolan and time, Wes Anderson and his picture-book compositions…
What is interesting about the ‘signatures’ assigns to directors is their range of categories. Some are more specific camera or editing techniques, whilst others are themes, common actors, types of narratives, or genres. It adds a certain pleasure to watching a directors whole work - an incentive to consume. Sarris himself states the auteur theory is concerned with “patterns” in a filmmaker’s career - supplementing interest for an audience to contrast and compare style among a single director.
The Final Circle: Interior Meaning
The final vault Sarris presents has more of an ambiguous tone to his earlier definitions. It is too often disregarded as impossible to decode after the sentence “Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between the director’s personality and his materal”
is recited. But some effort must be taken to fully understand all the aspects of auteur theory before further discussion, and ‘interior meaning’ offers the most unique perspective out of the article.
Personally, this is the act of auteurs placing themselves in their films above the desire to follow the narrative. When film is first learned, film form (cinematography, editing, mise-en-scene, sound, acting) is often said to match the emotions of a scene. Fast editing is used for high intensity, a close up has increased emotion, a melancholic score. The term “psychological realism” comes to mind, referenced by all three Cahiers writers, which means a reflection of inner thoughts on-screen. It is almost the foundation of film analysis. Yet here the translation between emotion and form is skewed, where the director inserts their temperament between the two - adding element that are meaningful to themselves but go against the whole.
Overall, Sarris does succeed in summarizing the previous writings on auteur and brining the concept to the largest film producing country. What it lacks in a representation of the original thoughts of the Cahiers critics, it makes up for in its ease of application.
Although the term was integrated quickly into the vocabulary of film studies, it is not without its criticisms. Pauline Kael is the most notable example, arguing that the communal aspect of filmmaking is omitted by the theory in her article “Circles and Squares” that tears down ever word in Sarris’ article with the same attitude of distain that brought Truffaut to write the first article on the topic. David Kiplin also offers a counter theory named the ‘Schreiber Theory’, stating that it is the screenwriter who should be awarded the achievement of auteur. Yet, the later piece has a weaker proposition due to simply shifting the crown of the director to another role whilst still ignoring the anti-collaborative faults.
Furthermore as the auteur theory is one of names, it is also important to discuss the lack of figures outside of Europe and Hollywood mentioned by writers - and the exclusion of female directors (even to the extent that Sarris genders the auteur as male throughout his article). However, this exclusion has been slightly mended by the appreciation of female auteurs (Louis Weber, Agnès Varda, Sofia Coppola) and global directors (Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Guillermo del Toro) from both historical and contemporary cinema in the modern study of filmmakers - with some of these underrepresented groups in the original articles containing the most potent and earliest examples of auteurs.
Validation of the auteur theory can be seen as impossible due to the many sub-ideas that have been added by each contribution. Instead, if we are to accept the simple overall definition that “specific directors are the ultimate authors of their films” - then the theory is much more digestible as true. Kael’s points on collaboration are the best opposition available, probably equally believed by the movie-going public and definitely those who are interesting in filmmaking. The subject should be carefully approached to not belittle the hundreds of people that work on a modern production other than the director. But, a contributor is different from an author - and auteur directors have shown to oversee as much of the production as possible. This also is true with writers (to counter the Screiber Theory), as according to Astruc the best auteurs are their own screenwriters.
Reshaped and grown, the auteur theory has changed through the addition of every new author’s thoughts. Yet, this does not mean there are no new angles to view the concept of the auteur from. One limitation of previous writings is the focus on how to identify an auteur from a regular director, instead of exploring why auteurs exit fundamentally. By finding the causal mechanism of why certain directors make unique works of art, the overall theory can be defined once more.
An auteur given the same idea as another should produce a drastically different final film.
Clay is placed on a wheel and shaped, and the final pot formed is not only defined by the taste of the artist - but also the proportions of their hands. It is the same for handwriting, where the dimensions of the writer’s hands and range of motion in their joints effect the look of the words.
There is one part of an act of creation that is intended, such as the words chosen on a page, but the other is the unintentional personal touch that is given and impossible to remove. This also applies to thoughts, where the arrangement of the mind effects the way different people can think.
Maybe directors do place repeated motifs in their films, repeated camera angles to please an audience or find a tone within their career. But, the auteur theory should celebrate the subconscious transfer of idea onto screen instead.
When writing with Astruc’s ‘Camera Pen’, the auteur inserts themselves into their films by showing the story told through the handwriting of their mind. This creates not only a view into their inspirations, but also the mechanics of their inner psychology that formed the on-screen action. No-one else could create a film like themselves, reflecting the belief of originality and style of the auteur, because no two psyches are organised the same.
This transfer of the temperament of a director onscreen is only possibly when they are allowed to make substantial decisions throughout the process of production. Truffaut’s notion of the auteur that would inspire other writers was created out of spite for the adaptation and over-scripted films, which automatically restricts the thoughts of a director.
Yet when done correctly, an authentic style of film is delivered to the audience by the director. And if they look beyond the screen, the fingerprints of the auteur are revealed.
by Oliver Spicer, July 2023