What is auteur Questions of Auteurism A Case

What is auteur? Questions of Auteurism A Case Study of Peter Weir

What is auteur? 1 A director who make films which reflect his/her personal vision and preoccupations. 2 A director who has a distinct style and consistent themes. SIGNATURE François Truffaut, ‘Une Certaine tendence du cinéma française’ (A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema) 1954

What is auteur? • Though film making is collaborative work • Directors (auteurs) oversee all narrative, visual and audio elements of motion pictures. • “The filmmaker/author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen. ” ‘Caméra Stylo’ (camera-pen) Alexander Astruc, ‘Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde’, L’Ecran Français, 30 th March, 1948

What is auteur? • Auteur or metteur-en-scène • Auteur - a director who expresses his/her unique preoccupation and holds on to his/her signature style • Metteur-en-scène (one who puts it in the scene theatre director) - a (highly) competent film maker but lacks ‘the consistency that betrayed the profound involvement of personality’

Who Are Auteurs? • Directors who have a distinct visual style … Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells … Stanley Kubrick, Wang Kar-wai • Directors who have a consistent theme … Jean Renoir (humanism), Douglas Sirk (melodrama) … Theo Angelopoulos (modern Greek history), Ken Loach (socialist conscience)

Auteur Theory (Politique des auteurs) • Auteur theory - a critical attitude to consider a film as a product of a single person - director - auteur • Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory’, 1964

Auteur Theory (Politique des auteurs) To analyse a film as a work of a single author (auteur) →　auteurism To identify the characteristics of a director’s work which makes him a auteur →　auteurism

Criticism against auteur theory • Filmmaking as collaborative and collective actions. • Making a film involves many other creative talents than director. • Scriptwriter, photographer, editor, art director, actor, etc.

Criticism against auteur theory Figures other than cirectors, who played a prominent role Cesare Zavattini (19021989) Screenwriter for Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti Shoeshines, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Bellisima, etc.

Criticism against auteur theory Ruth Prower Jhabvala (1927 - ) Screenwriter for James Ivory Room with a View, Howard’s End, Remains of the Day

Criticism against auteur theory Gordon Wills Most important cinematographer in the 70 s and 80 s The Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, All the President’s Men

Criticism against auteur theory • Vittorio Storaro • Italian cinematographer who have worked for first Bernardo Bertolucci, and then Carlos Saura and Francis Ford Coppola

Criticism against auteur theory • Miyagawa Kazuo (1908 -1999) Greatest Japanese photographer, operated the camera and shot for Mizoguchi Kenji, Kurosawa Akira, Ichikawa Kon and Shinoda Masahiro Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojinbo, Tokyo Olympiad, Mc. Arthur’s Children

Criticism against auteur theory • David Lean (1908 -1991) British film director Established the classic editing techniques Edited for film directors such as Anthony Asquith and Michael Powell Pygmalion, Major Barbara, 49 th Parallel

Criticism against auteur theory • Alexandre Trauner (1906 -1993) French art and production designer Le Jour se léve, Les Enfants du paradis, Le Portes de la nuit, Kiss Me Stupid, Don Giovanni, Round Midnight, Subway

Criticism against auteur theory • Credit for Round Midnight (1986) Producer: Irwin Winkler Director: Bertrand Tavernier Writer: David Rayfiel, Bertrand Tavernier Music: Harbie Hancock Editor: Harmand Psenny Production Design: Alexandre Trauner

Criticism against auteur theory • Positif, founded one year after Cahiers du cinema in 1952 • Firm opposition to author theory • A signed article naming the most overrated directors: Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawkes and Alfred Hitchcock

Criticism against Auteur Theory • Legitimacy of privileging a director - can a director be more important than his film? • ‘There are no good or bad films, but there are only good or bad directors. ’ François Truffaut

In the Case of Peter Weir • Peter Weir (1944 - ) • Australian born and now working in Hollywood • Worked in ATN-7 (a TV company in Sydney) • Made documentaries for CFU

In the Case of Peter Weir • Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) • A tale of privateschool girls who mysteriously disappear in the Australian outback.

In the Case of Peter Weir • Gallipoli (1981) Rural Australian boys are caught in the slaughter of WWI in Turkey.

In the Case of Peter Weir • The Year of Living Dangerously (1983), An Australian journalist is assisted by a local Indonesian cameraman while third-world capital collapses.

In the Case of Peter Weir Witness (1985) It brings a city detective into the unfamiliar world of Pennsylvania’s Amish community.

In the Case of Peter Weir The Mosquito Coast (1986) An American with his family tries to establish civilization in a remote jungle and ending in a disaster.

In the Case of Peter Weir • Green Card (1990) A comedy in which a Frenchman tries to obtain a green card on bogus marriage with an American woman.

In the Case of Peter Weir • Truman Show (1998) • A story of one man’s life not knowing that he is a star of a 24 hour TV series.

Weir as an auteur Juxtaposition of : civilization and ‘primitiveness’; the knowable and the unknowable; culture and nature ‘Clashes’ of civilizations and cultures Erosion of humanity by civilization