Do real film critics focus entirely on directors, or is that purely the predilection of the popular film critics? What about screenwriters, who are the only ones doing original work?
Define “real film critics.” The auteur theory was first promulgated by Andrew Sarris, who is still doing film reviews and has been since the 50s. I seriously doubt you would consider him a “popular film critic” even in his heyday. (He was successful, but just for the intellectual crowd who reads The Village Voice.)
Even before Sarris, film critics like James Agee would talk about the film’s director in pretty much the same way as auteurs – they’d use them to compare works and themes, and usually there was an unspoken assumption that the director was the run ultimately responsible for the show. Sarris only articulated it (and drew a scathing rebuttal from Pauline Kael – who in her own reviews, usually assumed the director was the auteur even though she’d never put it in those terms).
Screenwriters are certainly important, but most screenwriters aren’t the auteurs of a film. Screenplays aren’t written and filmed as is. The director and actors add things to the blueprints and there are rewrites (credited and uncredited) all through the production of a film. Most great directors are involved in the screenwriting from the beginning – choosing the story, telling the screenwriter what they want, asking for rewrites, etc.
Note that the auteur theory does not state the director is always the auteur. There are movies where the screenwriter is the person most responsible (Charles Kaufmann is the best example of this). There are even films that have no auteur (Sarris cites Casablanca). But if you look at the career of a great director, you’ll see that he returns to similar themes and ideas. So-so directors just shoot what’s in front of them, but they rarely make great films.
As a final point, a few years ago, a film critic wrote a book on screenwriters that paralleled Sarris’s The American Cinema (which blueprinted his choices for top directors). He’d pick a screenwriter (say, Jules Furthman) and try to pick out themes in his work just like Sarris had with directors. What’s most interesting was this: when the screenwriter worked with a great director (by Sarris’s list, which is still a pretty good guide to the top directors), the result was a great film. When the screenwriter worked with a so-so director, the result was a so-so film (these ratings by the gut who wrote the screenwriter book).
If the screenwriter is the one in charge, then the film will be good no matter who directs. But since screenwriters pretty consistently end up with bad films when they have a bad director and good films when they have good directors, then it’s clear that the director is the one who makes the movie.
What’s the difference between “real” film criticism and “popular” film criticism?
I think real film school geeks and “serious” critics tend to love the auteur theory of film most of all. I think they generally at least want to regard the director as the “author” of the film, but directors who write their own material (like an Ingmar Bergman or a Woody Allen) are the people they get the most wet about. Directors who work with screenwriters, but who have a distinctive style and direction (like a Scorcese or a Spielberg) rank next in esteem.
Screenwriters who aren’t directors can still be highly regarded, just as actors can be, but yeah, from everything I’ve read on the subject, they don’t see a screenplay as a movie, and the director is still seen as the closest thing to an ultimate “author.”
Is “author” the best word to use in this case? I know some people won’t like my using a sports comparison but can it be argued that the director’s role is ultimately more like that of a coach or manager?
A director has a “body of work”. A critic (or anyone else) can “obsess” over it just as much as “roles played by an actor” or “music by a composer”, I suppose.
No, the editor and producer respectively hold those roles. The director tells the actors what to do, the cameramen when to shoot and the screenwriters what to change.
If the movie is great, everybody claims some credit. If it stinks, well, all the other participants will find work easily enough. The director will be the one with some notoriety to live down.
The coach analogy isn’t a good one. Basically, the director takes the script and makes changes. Sometimes it’s to accommodate the production (say, cutting a scene) or an actor (he wants to read the lines differently, or add a line that helps illuminated the character). Maybe it’s choosing the shot and using the environment to make a scene work better.
Most major directors – people like Hitchcock, or Hawks, or Ford – would be very involved in the scriptwriting, whether they got credit for it or not. An illuminating example is in Raymond Chandler’s comments about working with Hitchcock on Strangers on a Train. Chandler kept writing drafts and Hitchcock would look at them and give specific instructions on how to rewrite. Chandler and Cenzi Ormond eventually turned out a script that Hitchcock liked.
Chandler also complained that he found it next to impossible to write the opening to indicate that Bruno didn’t know who Guy was and followed him onto the train; that there was no way to write the script so that it didn’t look like the meeting was planned. Yet Hitchcock managed to dispel that issue without a single word of dialog, by simply showing the two men’s shoes as they walked to their seat.
The script is never shot straight*. Movies are collaborative, and actors and others make suggestions. The editor edits it in order to make it work. But at the end of the day, it’s the director who says, “Yes, do it that way,” or “No, it doesn’t work.” Because of that veto power, it means the director is usually ultimately responsible for what’s on the screen.
Obviously, there are times when the director just shoots the script, or where the producer takes control, or where everything just comes together. But in most cases, it’s the director who controls the film.
*I happen to have the original script for the Doctor Who episode “Blink.” While a great script overall, there are many things that were cut out of the final product. For instance, when Sally’s pulls back the wallpaper in the opening scene to reveal the word “Beware,” you were supposed to hear a “dramatic chords, over the top, like from a cheesy old horror movie.” It turns out to be her cell phone ring tone. That entire bit was gone in the finished version.
I’m not a film critic, real or otherwise, but the best predictor of a film I’ve come across is the director’s previous work.
That’s still fairly hit and miss, though.