I can’t seem to get a good, concise definition of the term “auteur”. I have visited a few websites but they mainly talk about “auteur theory” which based on the varying interpretations seems to be whatever you want it to be. Any help appreciated.
As far as I know, the term “auteur” refers to a certain type of director. It may apply to other artistic mediums, but I’ve never heard it in that context. Generally, an auteur is a filmmaker who “imposes his vision” upon the films he makes; they are definitively “his” films. Often auteurs are young and controversial, or at least differing in style from the norm.
What occ said, or, for the same idea expressed in more words, try Encyclopedia Britannica:
Thank you AW and occ.
The auteur theory has been badly misunderstood over the years. As originally postulated, it meant the director had the final control, BUT not all directors were “auteurs,” because they didn’t use that control to create their own vision (You can’t really make a case that Sam Wood was a auteur, for instance. Some movies had the writer as the auteur (I’d put “Shakespeare in Love” in that category), others had the actors as auteur (the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields) and some really had no auteur at all (“Casablanca” or “Wizard of Oz”).
My understanding is that the term originated from “Cahiers du Cinema” the film magazine that Francois Truffaut was a prime mover in. (“Cahiers” meaning “exercise books”, as in school)
A prime example of an auteur was Alfred Hitchcock. He planned and supervised every aspect of his movies very closely, rather than merely superintending an assemblage of factory talents as most Hollywood studio directors did.
You know of course, that Truffaut published his lengthy interviews with Hitch in book form. He is often revealingly naive in his perceptions, and for many the theory of auteurism is no longer a profitable way of examining movies. Unless you’re an academic, perhaps.
Redboss
PS
My beloved partner and boyf is a university lecturer, with a specialty in french cinema, so I’ll check this answer with him, and if you have any thorny essay topics coming up you can feel free to email me for inside knowledge, hehehe.
What everyone already said.
The “auteur” school of film criticism began in the 1950s, and brought the insight that some films were indeed works of art, with a single creative inspiration behind them. Such directors as Hitchcock, Chaplin, John Ford, D. W. Griffith, Fellini, Renoir, Kurasawa, and many others fit this model well. Each of them has common themes and visual styles through all his movies, in much the same way that Van Gogh and Picasso, or Beethoven and Mozart (say) tend to have their own themes and styles.
The auteur theory. in a nutshell, is that the director has the most responsibility for putting together all the different bits that make up a film, and so was the one to credit as “auteur” (author) when such credit seemed reasonable.
The idea became abused as people started to credit/blame the director for everything, in every movie. Film is clearly a co-operative endeavour, and independent parts like the actors, the musical score, the cinematography, the script, the editing, etc all play a part. While the director is usually responsible for putting it all together, he/she is not the only creative force.
The other extreme to which the theory was carried was the notion that a great director ALWAYS makes great movies, and that a fourth-string director can NEVER make a great movie. This is as silly when talking about movies as it would be when talking about paintings or plays or novels any other art-form.
I personally find that the auteur approach is certainly applicable as a critical method for many directors. It is also provides an easy vocabulary for talking about the film as a whole. It’s easy to talk about the painter as the single creative force behind a painting, or the writer as ditto behind a play or novel, and the auteur theory allows the same vocabulary and critical approach to be used for movies.