Transcript Auteur
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
, 30th 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 (1902 1989) 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 70s and 80s
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, McArthur’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, 49th 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 private school 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 the 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