Can an actor ever be the auteur of a film? Usually it’s the director, sometimes the producer or screenwriter. But what about the actor? I wouldn’t count famous director/actor combos; John Wayne certainly brought a lot to his movies with John Ford, but Ford was still the dominant creative force in that partnership: Ford continued to make mostly great movies even when he wasn’t working with Wayne, while Wayne alone wasn’t enough to make a movie great when he wasn’t working with Ford (or another great director). Ditto Robert DeNiro and Martin Scorsese.
So how about it? Who are the auteurs of the acting world? The closest I can think are the occassional bad movies that are saved by a single great lead performance, but usually that’s not enough to make the movie as a whole great if the director/screenwriter/producer are only mediocre. But on the flip side, a great director can take mediocre actors and still turn out a great movie. Some of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest movies, for example, star only mediocre actors, such as “Strangers on a Train,” “Vertigo” (Kim Novak, not Jimmy Stewart), “The Birds,” etc.
*This thread inspired the countless times I’ve heard in the past week, “Deja Vu should be good – it has Denzel Washington in it!” Well, Washington’s a good actor, but I saw Deja Vu tonight and his acting didn’t make a whit of difference in the face of bad directing and a plot-hole ridden screenplay!!
Not just by acting, no. Too much gets changed in the editing. But an actor can be the creative force behind a movie or series - for example, Patrick McGoohan was the auteur of The Prisoner, though he neither wrote nor directed all the shows. He of course did a lot more than act on it, though.
Certainly they can. Andrew Sarris, who first proposed the auteur theory, indicated that there were some actors who were auteurs, primarly comics. He listed the Marx Brother, W. C. Fields, Mae West, Harold Lloyd, and Jerry Lewis.
What happens is that the actor creates a persona and has the story written around that that character. In most cases, the actor is also involved in the writing, but that’s not strictly necessary. The Marx Brothers used many different directors and writers, yet the characters and themes were similar. Note that their films had a variety of directors, mostly (except for Leo McCarey) undistinguished otherwise.
A more modern, and non-comic, example would be Stephen Seagal. His films have simliar themes, and he tends to stick with weak directors who are willing to let him have his way. Similarly, the auteur of Battlefield Earth is clearly John Travolta, whose tried to follow his own vision.
Remember – the auteur is the one whose vision informs the film, and who deals with similar themes throughout his career. The auteur theory does not say that only the director is the auteur, only that it’s more common, but there are directors who aren’t the auteurs of their films and films that have no auteur at all (e.g., Casablanca)
Hmm… if I understand you correctly, this might be an example- Steve Martin wrote Shopgirl, and then played a major role in it when it became a movie… but he didn’t direct it. I imagine he had a lot of influence over his role, and the overall movie, on the set.
But consider the influence of Thalberg on* A Night at the Opera*. That is hardly something an auteur would allow. The Marxes had comic personas from vaudeville and Broadway, and writers wrote around them, to allow room for them to do their bits. Perelman tells of his first readthrough to them - I did not get the impression that they had input to the story, but did no doubt on the details of the bits. Was Moe Howard an auteur?
If Groucho was responsible for the anti-war content of Duck Soup, I might give that one - but I’ve never heard he was.
Jerry Lewis, I believe, had a lot more artistic input in his films - but he counts from the writing and producing, more than just the acting.
It’s clear that an actor can be the auteur - look at Orson Welles - but not ONLY as an actor. He or she must have other significant roles in the creation of the film also.
I was going to mention this exact list, though I would add that more recent examples would be Jim Carrey & Adam Sandler, in that the contribution of the director (the typical manifestation of the “auteur”) is secondary to the influence of the star. Of course, there are exceptions (like the former’s work with Michel Gondry & the latter’s with Paul Thomas Anderson), but if you assess their body of work as a whole, the dominance of their force of personality is paramount over any individual director’s touches or flourishes.
Another good example would be Jackie Chan. Although he directs some of his films, you’d be hard-pressed to tell which were directed by him and which were directed by others because they’re all subservient to Chan’s vision, regardless of whose name’s on that credit. In a similar vein, the choreographer Busby Berkeley made a greater imprint on the fabric of the films he worked on in the 30s than any of the rather interchangable directors Warners assigned to those projects.
In many ways, the more limited or pigeon-holed the actor is, the more likely they are an “auteur” since projects are created and developed around them (whether it’s Abbott & Costell or Danny Kaye) with the input of the director, whether a hack or a talent, often a mere afterthought.
In the 1940s, Orson Welles had the magician’s trick of making the films he was in look like they were directed by Orson Welles. I’m thinking of Jane Eyre and The Third Man.
That’s a stereotyped image of “auteur.” What kind of creator wouldn’t welcome a good suggestion from someone else? Remember, Hitchcock didn’t write his own scripts, yet he’s considered an auteur. While it’s true he chose scripts he wanted as worked with writers who did things his way, but his writers wrote Hitchcock films in the same way that Thalberg put together a Marx Brothers film: by playing to what the ultimate auteur’s strength.
But Perelman wrote with the Marxes in mind and the Marxes ad libbed plenty of it (other writers have said that in order to write a scene for Harpo, you wrote “Harpo enters” and he did the rest). In addition, other than Leo McCarey, the Marxes did not work with strong directors and were able to enforce their own craziness by sheer force of will.
Interesting question. I’d say “yes,” though one could argue that it could have been Jules White and, in some, Del Lord. Remember, though, an auteur is not necessarily a great filmmaker; he’s merely the controlling sensibility of the film.
But if the film is written to take advantage of the actor’s persona, that is a significant role in its creation.
I’d say that the audience input from when Opera went on a road tour were suggestions. The entire major love interest plot was Thalberg’s, and absent from Monkey Business, Horsefeathers, and Duck Soup. (And not very important in the first two movies.) Thalberg reworked what a Marx Brothers movie looked like to make it more commercial, and succeeded. I’m in the Duck Soup is the epitome of Marx camp, but the movie going public wasn’t.
There’s the famous story that Kaufmann, in the wings at Animal Crackers, telling someone to be quiet, he just heard one of his lines. I agree that there is a class of movies written around the persona of an actor or actors - most Bob Hope movies also qualify. The audience expects the actor to react a certain way to a given situation. I’m not a French movie critic, but I don’t recall reading anything that says these qualify as auteurs. It’s more a commercial than an artistic thing, I think. Just as in rampant serialization and comic and TV adaptations today, the audience often wants to go to a movie that won’t surprise them.
There is always someone like this. I think of an auteur as being the controlling sensibility of a series of films in a similar way. Directors for hire in the '30s controlled a film, but were hardly auteurs because each was different. John Ford, on the other hand, would qualify.
Depends on what you mean by significant. I’d say that an actor walking in, getting handed a script written around a persona perfected decades before, does not have a significant contribution. The Elvis movies were written around him - was he an auteur?
But Thalberg did not create or mold the Marxes personas. Before Thalberg, Groucho was a wise cracking con man, Harpo was a mime who used a lot of visual puns, and Chico was a dumb Italian immigrant who mangled the language. After Thalberg, Groucho was a wise cracking con man, Harpo was a mime who used a lot of visual puns, and Chico was a dumb Italian immigrant who mangled the language. There were changes (primarily the love interest), but the characters were well-established before they went to MGM.
As I said, Andrew Sarris, who devised the auteur theory, specifically stated that the Marx Brothers are auteurs.
Agree. And the Marx Brothers directors, other than McCarey, were were directors for hire. But the themes and characterizations of the Marxes were consistent over their career (even in Room Service, which wasn’t written originally for them.
I’d say so – not a major one, but if you want to assign auteurship to Elvis movies, it’s clearly Elvis* or maybe Colonel Parker. Remember, Elvis created that persona, so if someone is using his creation, then his is its auteur. There were other teen idols of his age who never had his success, which indicates that Elvis was able to do more than just sing.
*Calling someone an auteur doesn’t necessarily say the movies are good; just that the main themes (even if trivial) of a group of films can be linked to a particular artist.
Let me add that the Marxes were very conscious of their screen personas and would refuse to to anything to detract from it. When it was suggested that Harpo speak on camera to hype the movie, Harpo just shook his head.
Stating first that I’ve got issues with most of the auteur thing, there are certainly cases where the lead actor exercises a huge amount of control over the project. Especially if he’s the Executive Producer as well as actor.
Case in point: Spartacus. Stanley Kubrick directed it, but it’s definitely not a “Stanley Kubrick” film. It’s missing his chaqracteristic style and touches. Kirk Douglas starred, and was exec. producer. He had just been directed by Kubrick in Paths of Glory, which was definitely a Kubrick film, and reportedly liked him enough to want him to direct.
I love Spartacus (the script by Dalton Trumbo alone makes it worthwhile), but I have to wonder what kind of relationship existed between Kubrick and Douglas that resulted in Kubrick’s typical style being so muted in this case. There’s atrory there, I’ll bet.
For a less highfalutin’ case, consider The League of Extraordinaty Gentlemen. sean Connery was exec producer and star, which explains, i think, why Allan Quartermain doesn’t start out as a drugged-out broken-down exhero to be reclaimed, but is control from the get-go. And Ms. Murray needn’t exert herself, thank you. (Abnd it gives Tom Sawyer another reason to be there besides placating American audiences who want one of their heroes – he gets to be the Young and Upcoming Hero that Quartermain can Pass the Mantle Onto.)
Granted, it seems increasingly unlikely that we’re ever going to see a fully faithful adaptation of an Alan Moore gtraphic novel (which is why I’m not in a hurry for anyone to make Watchmen into a flick), but this explains why everything seems to hjave been restructured around Quartermain.
Kubrick wasn’t the first choice as director. Anthony Mann was, and had shot a week’s worth of scenes when he was replaced (Mann directed the opening sequence, and prepared the gladiatorial bouts). So, Kubrick had nothing to do with the script or casting. Kubrick later referred to himself as just a hired hand on that project.
Kirk Douglas wrote in his autobiography (ghost written by my friend Linda Civitello), “My association with Stanley is a strange one. I don’t know of any other director that I did more for, to get him started in filmmaking.” On the other hand, “And yet, of all the directors I have worked with, Stanley places second to none. He is a brilliant director.”
If I’m reading this all correctly, I would suggest Andy Serkis, for his depiction of Gollum. Peter Jackson and his creative department had a fairly clear vision of what they wanted from Andy. Andy walked on the set, started climbing around on rocks and doing the voice, and Jackson scrapped most of what they had planned for Gollum in favor of what Andy came up with.
