This is without clicking the link right now, but I do have suspicions on this theory and I don’t think I have settled on accepting it.
Christian,
I would say that most people with a serious interest in film are aware of the contributions of those who work on a film beyond the director, etc., so in a sense, it’s more of a critical shorthand. For me, though, who directored a film is consistantly the best indicator of whether or not I’ll like the film, so I follow directors.
I agree pretty much with what Mark says. Plus, I find various directors styles/concerns interesting and I enjoy seeing ones who can distinguish themselves from others.
No, that’s not true at all. There are some filmmakers like Fincher who have never written a word in there entire career, and depend on others to do so. Fincher only picks and choses whatever specs comes his way, and by no means does he come up with any ideas whatsoever other than where to put the camera. This is true of many directors. Are they the primary creative influence in their films then? No. Of course not.
Also, most would consider Charlie Kaufman an auteur even before he directed Synechodche because he is the strongest creative influence of the films.
great link. thanks for sharing it. very interesting ideas. my only complaint is her trashing of “the big sleep”. that, and her emphasis on value judgments.
There are some filmmakers like Fincher who have never written a word in there entire career, and depend on others to do so. Fincher only picks and choses whatever specs comes his way, and by no means does he come up with any ideas whatsoever other than where to put the camera. This is true of many directors.This is true of many directors. Are they the primary creative influence in their films then? No. Of course not—-
There are a number of different definitions of what exactly an auteur is, but Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks were two of the filmmakers championed by the Cahiers writers as auteurs. Hitchcock didn’t write his screenplays, Hawks only rarely contributed to his screenplays. Also, on what are you basing the statement “by no means does he come up with any ideas whatsoever other than where to put the camera?” Based on Fincher’s films and what I’ve read, I’m of the impression that he is more involved in the various aspects of his films than are most directors.
Seems the theory is at its lowest point nowadays in the post modern era of gender issues post colonial studies and such… Still I find it very useful in my own film going experience. Just a matter of who the auteur is.
Usually it is the director sometimes the producer or even the special effects designer – like Ray Harryhausen.
The writer can be the auteur too.
Hitchcock didn’t write his screenplays
Hitchcock had the final word on every word in his screenplays.
Yeah, but that isn’t the same thing, is it?
I dispute Kael’s sanity when she claims that she has never or never wants to see a film more than once.
Just a matter of who the auteur is. Usually it is the director sometimes the producer or even the special effects designer – like Ray Harryhausen. The writer can be the auteur too.—-
reviewing Taxi Driver Jonathan Rosenbaum argued that the film had 4 autuers: Scorsese, Schrader, Deniro and Bernard Hermann.
Even if you “dispute Kael’s sanity,” I invite you to listen to the clip. Regardless of your feelings toward Pauline Kael, her writing and reviews can be incredibly intelligent and even inspiring. Please allow yourself to approach her criticism without pre-judgement: it can be very rewarding and thought-provoking. Then you can dispute her.
Some directors are auteurs and for others, that’s not their style.
As ironic as that statement is…. it’s still true.
—PolarisDiB
“Pauline Kael, her writing and reviews can be incredibly intelligent and even inspiring.”
I read a lot of Kael when I was younger. As a unique genre of almost…crito-biography, wherein she uses her own life to tell her impressions of the movies, I found her entertaining and probably still would. As criticism, i find her and her disciples depressing.
My mom had a vehement dispute with auteur theory the other day, It got pretty damn heated.
On a serious note, say whatever you will about Pauline Kael, but she really could write.
The auteur theory is so simplistic and facetiously all encompassing there really isn’t anything of substance to dispute about it.
I dispute Kael’s sanity when she claims that she……. never wants to see a film more than once.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine:
everything about a novel moment is….. starting fresh …. you aren’t embroidering a bank of previous experiences ……..because when it’s the “first”, there are so many things to remember. The list of encoded memories is so dense…… because the brain records new experiences….. differently…….brains use more energy to represent a memory when the memory is novel…… first memories are dense…..when something is new your brain writes it down in a lot of detail. …..you notice more and you feel more….. you write more down in your brain….. your brain has to use up more energy to represent the new object. when you’ve seen something a lot before…….. your brain……doesn’t have to spend much effort, and it doesn’t write down much memory about it.
OK, Kael was a highly skilled writer and thinker for sure, personally I agree with her assessments about 60% of the time and strongly disagree with plenty of her reviews (BADLANDS, CLOCKWORK ORANGE**…….I don’t know why she went on that Citizen Kane campaign exactly yeah yeah I get it that the Mankiewicz should have gotten way more credit but that’s the way they rolled in the early 40s) etc etc
But look, who cares really? What I think, or for that matter what Pauline Kael thinks regarding any film? How do YOU feel about (x) film? Does it move you, does it work for you, or not? That’s all that matters, and it’s a totally subjective thing. I’m stating the obvious.
With respect to the auteur thing: either a director has great ideas, and the ability to assemble a team to help her/ him execute these ideas, or he/ she doesn’t. There are those who can pull this off again and again (and we can’t disregard the importance of having a supportive force, be it in the form of a producer, spouse, writer/ co-writer, D.P., composer, etc, nobody operates in a vacuum) , and there are those who cannot.
I will venture to say that the auteur concept has led to some pretty crappy films. Filmmakers assuming they can throw up whatever they want because in their own estimation they’re qualified to do it. Certainly artists like Cassavettes spawned legions of mediocre filmmakers, doing it “guerrilla” style, hours and days and weeks of shaky boring handheld nonsense. But there’s gems in there as well, so I choose to cherry pick and not dwell on the negative
film is beautiful
For me, it’s not so much the theory that I adhere to but rather I use it as a kind of guidance system. I think it’s the best way to really appreciate a filmmaker’s work; by becoming familiar with his/her entire catalog and appraising him/her based on the entirety of that instead of only a couple films viewed randomly. Context has a lot to do with appreciating an artist’s work and for film, but that doesn’t mean that just because I think Bergman was a wonderful filmmaker that I’m going to call a film like The Serpent’s Egg a flawless film when it simply isn’t (though there was a lot I liked about it – but that’s for another thread) … or any filmmaker that I admire, none of them had a “perfect” output, which is the attraction for me; a filmmaker’s flaws are much more interesting when the filmmaker has “achieved” a certain level in my mind.
Honestly, Christian, I admire Kael as a contrarian and polemicist more than as a workaday reviewer of films.
The auteur definition I’m familar with emphasizes that directors (who might be considered as such) carry themes through their films that make them identifiable. Fincher falls into this bracket – whether he wrote the scripts for his features or not, it doesn’t matter. Scorsese doesn’t write his own material. He is considered an auteur by majority because his style is recognizable and he often tackles similar themes.
So many directors never manage to “stand-out” when they make films, whereas others clearly heap themselves upon the production and you feel their personalities in the frame. When you watch something and you say to yourself, “This feels like a Fincher film”, or “a Scorsese movie,” then the director has obviously done their part in achieving “auteur” status. You recognise the way their moves make you feel – and that can only happen if the director has directed films with themes and tones that are similar. You start to expect it when you see their further works.
I feel it’s crucial that you “feel” the presence of the director in the film. That’s auteur.
Then, again, at the other end of it, isn’t “auteur” so terribly obvious a term? It’s almost certain that the film will reflect the style of whoever directs it. It’s going to happen anyway. I think we use auteur to define those directors who are more established in the tone of their own films. We leave out those directors who seem to have just put the page onto the screen in the most “normal” and “obvious” way.
People will dispute whatever comes to hand. People dispute that the world is round and travels around the sun, too.
I wish that this thread had stayed on the validity of the auteur theory and whether it has an relevance in today’s media climate. Maybe we can get back to that.
However, since the subject of Pauline Kael came up (and up and up), I feel obliged to repeat something I posted on another thread some weeks ago:
Some personal reminiscences and thoughts about the late, not-so-great Pauline Kael:
1. I only met her once, briefly, at a Manhattan screening room. Throughout the showing, she was smoking and talking in a loud voice to the movie (“Cut already!”). Afterward, my friend berated her for smoking and annoying the other people around her and she let loose some invective and walked off.
2. Regarding “her” Citizen Kane Book: Many years ago, one of my UCLA mentors, Howard Suber, organized a conference on Kane at UCLA. He had devoted 10 years to carefully researching the film and interviewing many of the participants. Kael attended the sessions and proposed writing a book with Dr. Suber. She even gave him an “advance” of $500. For that sum, he turned over to her ALL of his years of meticulous research.
She then obtained a huge advance from Little, Brown Publishers and created The Citizen Kane Book, without ANY acknowledgment of Suber’s contributions (She claimed the $500 check was “payment in full” for his documents) . In the book, she ended up distorting many of Suber’s conclusions (particularly about the use of process shots in the film + the “truth” about who wrote the screenplay — both Welles AND Herman Manciewicz did, as the credits indicate), aspects that have since been disputed by Peter Bogdanovich and Welles himself.
3. When I heard about this story, even before meeting and studying with Dr. Suber, I was getting my M.A. at NYU Film School and we were trying to come up with a group film project for a Practicum class. Hence was born Citizen Kael, a 16mm. spoof movie loosely based on Kane that told the story of how Pauline Kael had duped a naive and trusting professor. For instance, Kael’s dying word is “Suber” and a check burns in a fireplace at the end. Interestingly enough, the title role of Kael was played by my fellow M.A. student at the time, Barbara Leaming, who went on years later to write the definitive (and long) biography of Orson Welles!
4. For the record, I did not like Kael’s film criticism (with a few exceptions), apart from her actions against Howard Suber. Her taste, if one could call it that, may have been “direct” and “honest” but being direct and honest can also drift into being obnoxious and overbearing. As others have said, it was not just that I disagreed with her opinions; it was HOW her opinions were expressed. (Her Marienbad review was particularly egregious in that regard, since it read as an anti-intellectual and anti-artistic screed at a time when the European art cinema was trying to establish its international credentials.) And her “style” also contributed mightily to the tensions within the New York film community when she frequently and publicly dissed Andrew Sarris and Renata Adler, the other major critics of that era.
Although I occasionally agreed with some of Kael’s preferences (her likes and dislikes), I almost never agreed with the “reasoning” she brought to bear in defending her favorites or consigning films she didn’t like to the ash heap of cinema history. So, whether she wrote well or poorly, with vigor or not, or how many times she watched a film doesn’t matter that much to me. It was her basic ASSUMPTIONS about movies, and her ASSUMPTIONS about how to write about them, that I questioned.
As I remember it, she championed a number of key films in the days when critics mattered. I’m thinking of LAST TANGO IN PARIS, NASHVILLE, and THE LONG GOODBYE, as well as SOME Godard films. But many other U.S. and international reviewers were also trumpeting these now-classic movies. Kael usually praised them for breaking down sexual barriers or bending generic codes. Her bent was therefore sociological and somewhat genre-based. She rarely showed a keen eye for a masterful tracking shot or sound edit. Dwight MacDonald, who she often misquoted, said that Kael was “stronger on the intellectual side than the aesthetic side” (and I don’t think he was calling her an intellectual; I think he meant that she could summarize the ideas of a film but couldn’t explain HOW its style affected people).
5. On the positive side, it was good that her praise often got people into the theaters for some groundbreaking films, but the fact that she also discouraged people who were “game” to see something a little different like MARIENBAD (alright, a LOT different!) should also be part of the record. After all, who would want to go to a “Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Party” and watch La notte, Last Year at Marienbad, La dolce vita, 8 1/2, etc. She even panned West Side Story, apparently largely because it was getting TOO MUCH praise from other reviewers! Sure, one has to make a name for oneself and distinguish oneself from your “rivals,” but why make that the basis of a review? What about THE FILM?
That’s my rant … and I’m sticking to it.
Kael was so taken with certain films because she famously never saw a film twice.
Sure she was a colorful writer and had fair instincts but in finding it unnecessary to see a film twice or several times even she lacked any kind of real perspective imo
I wish that this thread had stayed on the validity of the auteur theory and whether it has an relevance in today’s media climate. Maybe we can get back to that—-
Yes. Perhaps we could start here. Truffuat’s “la politique des Auteurs” became Sarris’s “auteur theory.” “Theory” is not really as good a noun for what it is representing as is “la politique,” which implies something more like policy or strategy.
“the auteur theory is not so much a theory as an attitude, a table of values that converts film history into directorial autobiography … a system of tentative priorities”
—Andrew Sarris
At any rate, “la politique” was used rather differently by Truffaut and the other Cahiers writers in France, Sarris in the US, and the Movie critics in the UK (such as the early work of the late Robin Wood), so not only is the “theory” as it exist today something of a comprimise between its different schools, but each of these three groups were also aware of the practical limitations of thinking about films this way. In addition to the Sarris quote above, see Ian Cameron on Paddy Chayefsky, for example, or Angie Dickenson in The Sins of Rachel Cade:
“although directed by the excellent Gordon Douglas, was above all an Angie Dickinson movie, being entirely shaped by her personality and deriving all its power, which was considerable, from her performance”
“although directed by the excellent Gordon Douglas, was above all an Angie Dickinson movie, being entirely shaped by her personality and deriving all its power, which was considerable, from her performance”
Many films are simply actor films: a jimmy durante film, ajohn wayne film, a rodney dangerfield film, harrison ford, a stallone or bronson or marx brothers film. These films belong to them regardless of director. In other words, a john wayne film is always a john wayne film
“everything about a novel moment is….. starting fresh …. you aren’t embroidering a bank of previous experiences ……..because when it’s the “first”, there are so many things to remember. The list of encoded memories is so dense…… because the brain records new experiences….. differently…….brains use more energy to represent a memory when the memory is novel…… first memories are dense…..when something is new your brain writes it down in a lot of detail. …..you notice more and you feel more….. you write more down in your brain….. your brain has to use up more energy to represent the new object. when you’ve seen something a lot before…….. your brain……doesn’t have to spend much effort, and it doesn’t write down much memory about it.”
whoever originally said that…is a fool…and a big one.
I agree…
But prove it.
easy:
me reading Pride and Prejudice at the age of 10.
so..IF i follow the notion above, i’m supposed to to hate Austen’s novel because the only thing which stuck in my head by the age of 20 was that Darcy is an idiot and that ruined the book for me.
in other words, that first impression i had “urged” me to hate the book, thus the first moment is dense and my brain represents a new object.
horseshit, i was just not in the mood and din’t fuckin’ comprehend the material and that quote above is the epitome of bullshitness and pseudo-intellectuality. no wonder Peabody supports it.
Christian
At this point in history, we take the “auteur theory” for granted—-I don’t even think we even name it any longer, we just religiously follow our favorite directors, no matter what kind of brilliance or crap they make.
So I thought, on a site called The Auteurs, I’d post this great historical bit. Pauline Kael disassembling the auteur theory in the early 1960s to figure out what’s really behind it. It’s from a program she did on KPFA, I’ve posted it here:
www.christianbruno.com/01%20PKael_FilmCriticism_BB0829.m4a
Although she was well-known regionally in California and in less mainstream periodicals like Film Quarterly, Kael’s attack on the film intellectual establishment, and more specifically Andrew Sarris and his importation of the auteur theory, brought her to national prominence.
I love this piece. It is such a great reminder of how beliefs and theories can turn into accepted fact. And a reminder of Kael intelligence and understanding of cinema.
~Christian