Auteur is the French word for “author” and just as a book has an author so must a film. Every filmmaker has their signature style, an example is Alfred Hitchcock. His films can be easily recognised.
However, it can be a bit tricky to recognise peoples work, as books are written by one author whereas film is produced by collaboration of different teams such as cinematographers, costume designers, actors etc. Therefore, there is a touch of many different styles within one film, now it is important to be able to see the individual who have clearly left a mark of their personality in the film production.
Its mostly the director who has the most control over the creative aspects of the film, however it could be a writer or producer who can also make an impact on their individual work. A good example would be William Castle and Val Lewton. They walked with the zombies in a low budget horror film made in the late 1940’s.
The auteur theory became a method of evaluating people’s knowledge on film and its history.
The theory rose when some French critics associated with the French movie journal ‘Cahiers du Cinema’. They put the theory forward to raise cultural profile of film as a creative platform. Then in 1951 Andre Bazin founded the ‘Cahiers du Cinema’. He is seen as the father of auteurism due to his love for the world view and style of different artists. For instance, Charlie Chaplin who was a rising star in that time.
Later, the younger critics developed the idea of this theory further, drawing attention to significant directors from Hollywood and Europe. One of the critics was François Truffau, he became a great filmmaker of the French new wave.
With the help of auteur’s theory, the French started to appreciate Hollywood films, they also approached to criticise the respectable French mainstream, to tell that that they had become a bit un-cinematic.
This idea slowly drifted to America through Andrew Sarris, he turned this into a theory (the French did not claim this as a theory but more of a concept). He used this theory to show the importance of individual work in the industry.
“Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature” (Andrew Sarris)
As this suggests one of the primary benefits for auteurism is the idea of ‘Director as Star’ for marketing and promotional reasons. But this did make it easier for filmmakers to sell their films before the new filmmakers.
But today this theory is not limited to filmmakers but also actors. In fact, due to how the marketing campaign works now, the theory is more beneficial to film actors then the filmmakers. But the key thing is that every film has a different style.
However, there are some problems with this theory.
Firstly, this enables any director to be an auteur. Which means that even a terrible director like Ed Wood can be an auteur. It is also possible for a director to personally carry out the whole production and every aspect of it, which could only give him/her the whole credit.Furthermore, the auteur critics were not interested in the history of films, but I personally think that this has changed now as I see it as different aesthetics for films. For example, retro aesthetics in films is seen a lot in films. Strangers Things a Netflix show, is based in the late 1990’s, along with a retro aesthetic.
Overall I think that this is a very interesting theory, and I would think that it is very important to have a style which can help make your film look very professional and also help others get inspired.
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