Absolutely. Groucho stayed in character on “You Bet Your Life” and they all kept their personas right into the 1950s. So did W C Fields (who I’d grant being an auteur since he had a bigger hand in the writing of this films.) i also agree that the films don’t have to be good - look at Ed Wood or Russ Meyer. And I thought about mentioning Col. Parker also as the real auteur for Elvis.
I’ll give you one more example then I’ll shut up - since this is now purely terminology. I saw the guy who played Mr. Kimball on Green Acres in an Ozzie and Harriet movie made years before. He had a walk on role, the the movie stopped (not that it was going anywhere ) as he did the same shtick he did as Mr. Kimball. Now, either he wrote his own bit or the writers, knowing his character, wrote it for him. If he’s an auteur - I give up.
That’s just in reference to one character. The word “auteur,” as it’s being used in the thread (though not necessarily how it is traditionally used) is meant to designate the person whose overall vision drives the entire film; the author of the “same page” that the entire collaborative enterprise is “on.” The word “auteur,” however, is not interchangeable with the word “author”; if it were, it wouldn’t have it retained its French when it began to be used in English-language criticism; we’d just say “author.” The term “auteur” doesn’t really mean “the guy who’s mostly in charge of any particular movie.” In fact it’s not, traditionally, used in reference to any one single movie. An auteur is a person–usually a director, with notable exceptions–whose personal vision tends to be apparent from film to film; across a body of work. As such, the people mentioned by Reality Chuck certainly qualify. I’d be hard pressed to include any present day actor in that list, however. Having a limited range as an actor, and only being capable of playing one character in whatever movie you’re in, does not make you an auteur. Cary Grant was great at what he did, though he didn’t have much range as an actor. He was not an auteur. Neither was Shirley Temple, or Jim Varney.
The auteur theory, like all good criticism, is descriptive, not prescriptive: it’s an attempt to better understand art that’s already been made, not an attempt to codify rules for how to make art. It came about well after the fact. Certain French critics that many different movies, of many different genres, seemed to nonetheless have certain themes and elements in common. They discovered from this that certain Hollywood directors (Nicholas Ray is the one that always comes to mind, as a director who covered so many different genres, but with his own distinctive stamp) left their personalities all over their films. The kind of personality that can’t really be apparent when you’ve only seen one film, because with a sample of 1 there is no pattern; the personality can just as easily be that of the collaboration. But when the same personal stamp shows up on film after film, no matter the makeup of the collaborative team, Bingo, there’s an auteur at work.
Only by the most abstract perversion of the “letter” of the auteur theory, totally ignoring its “spirit,” can you call Sylvester Stallone or Shirley Temple or Adam Sandler the “auteur” of their movies. And even in that case, it’s their respective limitations that necessitate the similarities between their movies, not any kind of “vision.”
You could still make a case for Jackie Chan, though. Unlike Adam Sandler, who has essentially fallen by accident into a job that pays $20 million a picture (I recently saw “Click” on an airplane; it was abysmal, and Sandler was abysmal in it) Chan at least does have a vision of sorts that drives the pictures he’s in.
Actually, Adam Sandler has been an executive producer on all his movies since The Waterboy in 1998. In his case, it is more than an honorary title. Getting script approval, director approval, having a say in casting, etc. help define the tone and “personality” of his films. I don’t like his films at all, generally speaking, but you don’t “accidentally” fall into $20M films. Not for as long as he’s been doing it. It reflects a meticulously crafted effort to build a persona/“genre” orbiting exclusively around him, and he is the one responsible for creating, molding, and advancing this formula. It may seem like a “perversion” of the auteur theory, but I think it is a perfectly appropriate use of the term.
Imagine you read a unique, truly original, kick-ass script. Imagine your heightened expectation at seeing this script make its way to the screen. Now imagine that, before any director or other cast have entered the picture, Adam Sandler becomes attached to the project. Are you still going to be excited about the project? Probably not as much (to be kind; you may be devastated). Why? It isn’t just because you may not like Adam Sandler; it’s also because this terrific potential the script has has been compromised because now this is going to be “An Adam Sandler movie”. There’s all sorts of baggage that comes with that description beyond his mere presence as an actor. The kind of humor, the setpieces he prefers, the supporting players he invites back again and again, the formulaic arc & ending you can expect–those are all hallmarks of his personality. Sure sounds like a (gulp) “auteur”'s influence to me.
I don’t really like the idea of an actor as an auteur (despite what Sarris said), but a great case can be made for Trey Parker and Matt Stone in BASEketball. Despite not writing or directing it, it’s their film through and through. They led the script in ways they wanted it to go and improvised most of the dialogue and almost all of the jokes.
Depp works with directors very well. When he’s working with a true auteur, like Burton, Depp’s “vision” does not do battle with Burton’s; he’s a great collaborator, and puts all his effort into helping Burton fulfill *his * vision.
Depp’s movies do not have a unifying personality, or theme, like the “oeuvres” of true auteurs do. So far, only the actors named by Sarris, via RC, seem to fit the bill.
I think the closest examples might be when a particular performance essentially is the movie. I think this applies to comedic performances especially (what is Pet Detective but a pure comedic performance by Jim Carrey?), but may also apply to other kinds of singular performances (martial artists like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan, for instance).
I disagree, in general, that “auteurship” can be decided on a movie-per-movie basis. I think there must be another term for that; or if there isn’t, maybe there should be. “Auteur” already has a perfectly valid definition, and “he who holds the most influence over this or that movie” ain’t it.
I agree that Parker and Stone had some creative clout on that movie, but that makes them . . . actors with creative clout. Not “auteurs.”
There seems to be a misconception that every movie made must have an identifiable auteur: whoever had the most creative control over that one movie. But again, that’s not what the word means. Many, many–most–the vast majority–of films made are auteurless: they are true collaborations; movies by committee. Identifying the single most influential person in that bunch does not make him/her an auteur.
Welles is considered on auteur based almost solely on Kane. This can perhaps be argued but the French New Wave was not watching Touch of Evil over and over when they dubbed Mr. Welles. This is especially considerable because Mank and Toland made great and arguably equal contributions (Welles listed Toland’s name next to his own in the credits.)
And here’s your multi-film connection (which I disagree with but I’ll have to come back to that later or I’m going to be late for work):
Parker and Stone play essentially the same characters in BASEketball and the rest of their movies.
-Packer (Parker) and Humphrey (Stone) in Cannibal!
-Stan (Parker) and Kyle (Stone) in South Park (do they get extra points for auteuring the television show?)
-Gary (Parker) in Team America (no equivolent Stone character that I recall in that flick.)
But again, that’s just typecasting. Steven Seagal plays a mumbling sociopath in every movie he’s in. That doesn’t make him an auteur; it just happens that when they need a mumbling sociopath for a B-list action movie, Steve is usually available. When you need a pretty guy with rocks in his head, you call Ashton Kutcher, but that doesn’t make him the auteur of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” If you need a scary drill sergeant you want to call R. Lee Ermey’s agent, but R. Lee Ermey was not the auteur of “Full Metal Jacket.”
Look, if you consider them auteurs, they’re auteurs. It’s term of theory and opinion, not science. I’m not sure why think it’s so important to convince me to rethink everything I’ve ever thought about the auteur theory–which would be lot of rethinking; I own most of Sarris’s books and have been working my way through Bazin. Probly not gonna happen. I’ve contributed my opinion to this thread, but I’m not really willing to go to the mat on this particular issue.
If you’re inclined, try to track down a later edition of Sarris’s The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 and read the intro and the afterward; pretty fascinating stuff, puts a lot of this discussion into perspective.
