Hi Rodrigo. You are asking a big question and a small one! The small one, and the easy answer, is that we have a large database list of directors from which you can select. It is simply a list, no prerequisites, however it does have some gaps, mostly obscure directors and recent foreign filmmakers such as Reygadas. Please send us an email with any directors that you find missing and would like us to add, and in the future we hopefully will have an ADD or SUGGEST button in the profile page to avoid this problem.
Now, the big question, what actually constitutes an auteur, is much more up for debate!
Carlos Reygadas definitely belongs to that list.. We WILL have a Suggest button that our team will review constantly and add to our database.
Obviously, this is kinda like the fabled chicken and egg conumdrum….However, kids, rest assured I ve always got some answers and an opionion..(.don´t hate on my spelling am victim of the British experiment in education and well, plain lazy.)
Anyways, what are we gonna go for Style? Content? Dialogue? Mise en scene? As I was a saying…it ain´t easy…..Let´s take the world´s most famous auteur..“Monsieur Speilberg” what can we say defines a speilberg film..nay, what links them? Not the fuck much, that´s for sure. Look, what in essense constitutes an auteur is his body of work, which some or indeed a majority have been liked (shock the hoi polloi….que palle) or have been a critical success. In my, not so humble opinion that´s all folks.
So, to surmise….a notable body of work, which may or may not have overlapping themes…..i.e Speilberg…sharks, red coats, young conmen….
Allen……not so much overlapping themes….as tunnel vision
Definitely a medium for Allen to espouse his stand up routine without him having to physically present it…although he certainly tries to stick himself into the visual :) I’m actually surprised since he went brit he didn’t develop a special accent…
I’m actually surprised since he went brit he didn’t develop a special accent…
An incredibly rich and relevant recent discussion on this topic can be found here.
To be classified as an “auteur”, according to Andrew Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning (which means that there must be tension between the director and the film’s material, or that the director has a commentary on the film’s story and the world conveyed). I just loosely studied this definition of the concept in my History of World Cinema class, which sparked an interesting debate. The concept of interior meaning is complicated to dissect, but is arguably the most important aspect of this definition of auteur theory.
Simply : Peter Hyams or Peter Greenaway ?. Nuff said.
Any individual with the vision and willpower to not do what has been done before.
Une personne capable d’innover son art tout en restant fidèle à soi-même, sa vision et à son style.
I’d like to see more personal definitions, this topic is very interesting.
We all agree that Mr. Nolan who is doing The Dark Knight is an auteur, so lets give him some props for giving a nice shout out to Kubrick’s the killing with the masks for the robbers in the film. Just saw six minutes of the film shot in IMAX looks amazing and they show one stunt done all natural not digital were two people repel from one building to the next very nice indeed. I apologize for going of topic but looks like Chris Nolan is about to hit a major whooper this film is going to destroy the box office. Ledger’s performance will definitely be talked about for a long long time. So i guess my question to conitnue this discussion is how long can you as a filmmaker survive as an auteur we all can’t be as lucky as Mr. Nolan who has been given free reign to a franchise that was so battered that picking up the pieces was finally realizing that asking Warner Bros. “if you let me go back to the beginning i can fix Mr. Schumacher’s taking of the ship and trying to torpedo your valuable cash cow.” I’m sure his second request was to revive the joker which at first thought i myself said how dare you. ( I also believe that batman begins is inferior to tim burtons batman, a film that should’ve but just couldn’t wait for technology just because the demand was so high and strong that it had to be made) But Ledger’s casting and subsequent death will cast this film with an aura that will be that much stronger when his performance is praised and damn if this were to occur which would be a complete rarity being his oscar nomination( which would be enough to shoot his james dean type legend into the stratospheres). Which i’m also reading he could win i seriously doubt that would occur. After this film Mr. Nolan can probably make three films from his complete vision if they all tank then i think studios will start to reel him in but for now Mr. Nolan is the king of the filmmaking world. Something Mr. Shyamalan felt and has now begun to notice that his well is almost bone dry. Is Mr. Shyamalan an auteur when he minds so much of the same themes.
Wait, who all agrees Nolan is an auteur?
Yeah, I never said yes to Nolan. Next thing, we’ll all be re-claiming Spielberg as an auteur, in spite of Indy 4 and AI: oh no wait, that already happened.
Spielberg is an auteur. Auteurship is not a moral judgment of quality of work, just continuity of expression throughout an oeuvre. Doesn’t mean Spielberg is a good auteur…
hehehe….good being the operative word. OK.
although subjective judgment is nigh impossible to avoid when discussing the word Auteur.
Depends how liberal one’s definition is, I suppose, or, going further, just how much positive judgment is implicit in the romantic notion of authorship in general.
To look at an auteur is to look at all his work and not part of it. That their can be good auteurs and bad auteurs. I think Truffaut said that the worst film of Jean Renoir is still better than the best film of Jean Delannoy. “There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors.”
Godard says “It concentrated on recognition of a director’s contribution as a creator of images as opposed to the screenwriter. It’s a grammar of narrative imagery which must constantly be renewed to ward off stereotypes and routine.”
My suggestion would be to read Bazin “La Politque Des Auteurs” (If you can find an english version) and maybe that can help who ever is curious. Let me know how it is to. :)
Come on guys how can you question Nolan as an autuer when would a film like memento come out in the hollywood system. Now if the judgement is you dont like Nolan than that is another matter. I for one as you can tell like Nolan come on who didnt like the prestige. As for Spielberg of course he is an auteur but he is in the enviable position of having a tremendous following that he caters to. I mean indy 4 sucked yet it still made a decent buck. For all it’s worth all i am saying is how long can you have your freedom to make the films that you are really passionate about. I read about Todd Haynes and “i’m not there” and they asked how much fun he had making it. And he very plainly sad it wasnt fun at all it was exhausting, from the time he wanted to make the film which is when we are most excited till he got it actually shot he said in all that time getting rights and financing it, becoming a serious venture that at one point he just wanted it to end. Point being that a labor of love will drive you crazy and exhaust you when you dont have the budgets that Spielberg and Nolan do. Just take a look at Francis Ford Coppola a true auteur in every sense of the word, man lost his home to make his movie.
whatever has been said is definitely true. but what can one say when CULT is brought into discussion? i think it is definitely biased to consider some directors/writers as “auteurs” or not. of course there are the geniuses but that doesn’t mean others are of less importance. everyone speak of what they have to say. or what they are capable of saying.anyways, i would rather that “the auteurs” had a wide range of motion pictures (like imdb) so as to converse even of “stupid” movies. in that way we get out of the classical formalism of the movies of the past and we can exchange experience of watching even blockbuster stupidly-american (i’m not being offensive) cinema. any movie as any “auteur” have something to say.
Well i think we talk about a wide range of films both from the hollywood sysytem, independent circuit, and foreign markets. All in all we are growing and if you ask the older members like dkaz, t, efe, and halim the library is expanding. So just check out some of the other forums and you will see that we touch on all films cult , shitty, grand and just plain dumb films. So enjoy!
My input here to the large question at hand (what is an auteur?) takes it pretty literally.
Without getting caught up in who qualifies as an auteur or whether or not their work fits a certain criteria, since those are impossibly subjective arguments, let’s take auteur simply as it was meant by Truffaut, the most widely known source of the phrase in this context. And when he said it, he meant simply “author”. “Auteur” is that and nothing more: the owner of the work, similar to the way an author writes a book and it is his. Good or bad, high-art or low-brow. He/she is the author, plain and simple. It is not subject to debate over quality.
The Auteur theory merely claims that the director is in this analogous position of ownership.
Let’s keep the meanings and usage of our words here consistent and pure, in terms of what the originator (Truffaut) meant.
thank you, dcdreams. finally a post that makes sense of this term.
“auteur” has been bent and twisted out of shape over the years. its not some magical term signifying quality. the auteur theory is not a qualitative judgement. everyone is an auteur. as someone else said, there are good and bad auteurs. auteur literally means author. its just because its a foreign language term (for us english speakers) that it has been given some mystique.
To be an auteur, the director’s personality and style must always be dominant in each film. Also, there needs to a common thread or theme between their body of work. I’m not a Spielberg fan, but it’s hard to argue against him being an auteur. Notice the lack of a father figure in so many of his movies. I’d be interested to know which directors working today everyone here considers to be auteurs. Certainly Wes Anderson and David Lynch. Also, I bet if Charlie Kaufman continues directing, he could be added to the category.
Re: Spielberg being an auteur.
Of course! As a 23 year old he directed Joan Crawford in an episode of “Night Gallery”. His style was evident then.. even using the infamous “Jaws shot” of racking the lens and pushing/pull the camera back/forward…. (i.e. – Roy Scheider’s reaction to hearing the screaming in the water and zoom in on his face).
His style persists even beyond his directed films. Take a look at Poltergeist and tell me you can’t notice that Spielberg was the producer of that film.
Rodrigo Martínez Serna
In filling out my profile, I was pleasantly surprised to find matches for most of the directors I like. Nonetheless, when trying to include Carlos Reygadas, the Mexican film maker responsible for the shatteringly bleak and beautiful “Japón” and the critically praised “Stellet Licht”, his name did not pop up. I know his credits are not extensive, but neither are Gaspar Noé’s, and his name did pop up.
What are the the prerequisites for being considered an “Auteur”?