notes on the auteur theory in 2009

(note: this all started the other day when i convinced myself that i should go see spaz, sorry baz luhrman's australia at the dollar theater strictly on the basis that it was the work of a genuine filmmaker(as opposed to hollywood trash) thankfully, i have yet to do this...but it got me thinking)

there is a question posed in andrew sarris's notes on the auteur theory in 1962 that i beleive to be the second most important question facing the art after french critic andre bazin's famous "what is cinema?" sarris asks with humor, "how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee?" it seems as if this is the moment in time when film studies trancended the notion of a mere survey of entertainments and became a "serious" endeavor. by asking this question, sarris implies that there is indeed an answer, a way of differentiating a good director from a bad one. this way, which may or may not really exist, constitutes in some ways a science. the way that sarris describes has come to be known as the auteur theory. akin to the theory of montage which attempted to apply a science to the making of films, the auteur theory became one of the first major developments in the history of film theory that attempted to put a scientific spin on the value judgement of the art. by developing a system of context within which to place a film, auteurists turned the perception of cinema from that of petty, pithy entertainment into an artform, tinged with all the psychology, humanity, and beauty that life has to offer.

the auteur theory, or the politique des auteurs, started in 1950's france as an abstract aesthetic engrained within the writings of the film journal cahiers du cinema. the seminal early works of this movement were alexandre austruc's un camera stylo(the camera pen) and francois truffaut's a certain tendency of french cinema. the auteur theory at this time, however, was still rather undefined and served a greater purpose in the promotion of the young critic's burgeoning careers as film directors. the young writers of cahiers went on to direct feature films of great originality and keen understanding of the cinematic form under the monniker of the french new wave.

the auteur theory at this time was in its rudementary state. the cahiers critics essentially had only formed a few tenets of this burgeoning piece of theory. the main tenet at this point of evolution revolved around the idea that a director was the author of the film, that he used the camera as a pen to write his story in a manner similar to an author of a book. this was important to the new wavers, as at the time, the screenwriter dominated french cinema's "tradition of quality." truffaut set out to show how the writer's influence could be felt over the whole of france's cinematic output and was an ourage to a youthful movement full of enthusiasm. he contested that the same ten or so screenwriters, all of whom shared a similar, popularly assimilated stance, dominated the output of nearly a hundred or so films a year. this article argued the merits of such "cinematic" men and the films they made over the studio based "tradition of quality." truffaut held up on a pedestal directors like jean renoir, robert bresson, alfred hitchcock, howard hawks, and orson welles as directors whose art was not based in what truffaut beleived to be literary concerns, but was based in the image and all that was contained within. their films were considered better becuase they represented visions of a singular artistic statement as opposed to the films from writers jean aurenche, pierre bost, and clause autant-lara which the critics saw as nothing more than a popular, moralistic(often cynical and mean spirited) idealism transferred onto the preexisting aesthetic of the object of adaptation.

the history of auteurism served the cahier critics well. it started a shift in ideas on cinema that helped them immensely. by shifting the importance from dialougue/plot to the image/mise en scene, they made the director the most important figure in the film. they did this by giving the director the status of creator of the particular piece of art. this allows for the art to be put into context with the other pieces of art created by the same artist. this context and the greater idea that a single film is part of a larger whole served to turn film into a more "respectable" medium by providing a system of classification by which to study film and its merits. the placing of the diector as the high point on the totem pole that governed a "seious" artform gave the critics who revolutionized the theory a special status once they began making films. by placing themselves as sole cretors of a singular, individual vision, they, by default, garnered an audience that already respected them as artists instead of as mere entertainers and respected their films as art instead of entertainment.

the beginnings of the auteur theory paved the way for those who theorized to become auteurs. but in reality, what does that mean? the auteur theory, as conceptualized by the new wavers, doesn't really have shape. it eludes concrete definition. it still cannot answer the question it poses because of this lack of definition.

so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? in 1962, andrew sarris attempted to set up a criterion for answering that very question. for sarris, the director is not always necessarily the author of a film. sarris argues that a film's sensibilities can come from a multitude of places(producers, prevailing social concerns). occasionally, there are directors who will exude their will over their films to the point that they become authors. in these cases, the directors distinct psychology permeates the work and becomes the psychology of the piece. it is at this point that the director becomes an auteur.

and only an auteur can be an auteur. but what does it mean to be an auteur? how can one judge whether or not one is an auteur? in his article notes on the auteur theory in 1962, sarris offers up three things that he feels necessary in the consideration of a director's auteur status. an auteur's film must be technically sound, possess recognizable characteristics that link it with other films in the director's oeuvre, and an interior meaning. in sarris's mind these criteria exist as concentric circles placed within each other. an auteur is a director who moves beyond technical achievement and similar motifs and into the smaller circle of interior meaning.

interior meaning is what the auteur theory according to sarris hinges upon. it also happens to be the least defined of the three criteria. as to wher technique and style (technically good diecting and recognizable characteristics) can be charted easily through the occurrence of recurring motifs and their technical execution, interior meaning is an idea represented in abstract, therefor eschewing classification. truffaut describes interior meaning as the director's temperature on the set. this is a good description for what the french regard as that certain "je ne sais quoi." but i feel it is best described by another truffaut statement.

in his essay, what do critics dream about, truffaut writes, "a succesful film had simultaneously to express an idea of the world and an idea of cinema." i like this as a quasi-definition of interior meaning. (a quasi-chimpanzee's definition, no doubt) as the meshing of a director's notion of the world with how they see cinema creates within a work a complete expression which, through its dependence upon images, refuses any verbal or literal framework for defining. in short, interior meaning is an atmosphere, or rather, it is the heaviness of the air that creates what we know as atmosphere. abstracts rule.

in reality there is no clear definition for interior meaning. but auteurs have it, and therefore, it must be open to investigation. after all, we still need to be able to tell the difference between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee. critc/scholar peter wollen believes that unlocking the mystery of interior meaning is the key to answering this question. in signs and meaning in the cinema, he drafts a blueprint for trying to answer the tricky question of interior meaning. he draws from foucault the idea that an author is nothing more than a tool for cultural appropriation. the contention in this way of thinking is that the author is nothing more than a filter for the ideals and structures of the culture that surrounds them. while this would seem to turn the notion of an auteur as the author of a text upside down, in wollen's hands it becomes something much more interesting.

wollen understands that the hierarchy that dictates that a culture controls an author who, in turn, controls a work of art reduces that work of art to the role of cultural artifact. what wollen skillfully point out is that a film's creation really exists within a synthesis of culture and author. film, to wollen, seems to represent the reaction of an author to the cultural structures around them. wollen describes the films of john ford as being portraits of ford's unease with the opposing structures that pull at him from within his cultural surroundings. he points to the oppositions such as the garden vs. natural wilderness and human law vs. natural law as recurring themes of discussion in ford's films. while at first this seems like nothing more than a charting of recognizable characteristics, therefore rendering him as a mere "stylist" on the sarris scale, in wollen's world this becomes the foundation for interior meaning.

wollen finds interior meaning in the relationship ford has with the battle being waged by these recurring opposing forces. wollen finds interior meaning in the fact that over time in ford's work, the winners of these structural battles change. sometimes these battles would overwhelm a ford hero, such as when the home based vs. nomadic lifestyle battle leaves ethan(john wayne) in the searchers on the eternal quest for the meaning provided by the missing pieces of his life. but the interior meaning, wollen points out, exists in the constant war that these opposing cultural structures are fighting. over time, this collection of wars waged on film becomes, in effect, a philosophy on life. but the workof an auteur is far from being as definitive as philosophy attempts to be. rather, the work of an auteur is more of a conversation, a continuing dialogue between the director and the issue that life has put upon them. this constant negotiation and renegotiation is where interior meaning is established as life is nothing more than one's negotiation with their problems. an auteur's work, as a whole, boils down to nothing but a filmed, cinematic representation of their dialogues with problems and how they reconcile themselves with the world that caused them.

so, how does this allow us to differentiate between a genuine director and a quasi-chimpanzee? i mean, really, how do wollen's ideas on interior meaning help to further define what an auteur does, and, more importantly, how does it help us scientifically prove one's status as an auteur. the sad part is, that here in 2009, it really doesn't mean anything. i could sit here and say that an auteur has a consistent message, or at least that they are saying something about similar things consistently. but that means nothing. there are assholes out there(like me) who would argue that michael bay is an auteur because he has a consistent discourse about explosions and how to run from them. but, again, that means nothing. basically, auteur, as it exista today, is nothing more than a phrase like hippie, yuppie, or genius. nobody really knows what those words themselves mean, but everyone feels free to use them to label others. so i say, keep the word auteur as this. keep it as a superficial label to put upon one's favorite filmmakers. this way i can keep such "non-cinematic" men such as john sayles and whit stillman on my list of favorite auteurs, whil keeping spaz luhrman as a pathetically shallow stylist.

the auteur theory is nothing more than an abstract theory that means practically nothing to the art of cinema outside of the classrooms where theory is studied. a director can not even become an auteur until a bulk of work has been made and only then is the term auteur used as a way to historically canonize the work after the fact. so, how do you tell a genuine director from a quasi-chimpanzee? you don't do it with a theory. you don't do it with auteurism. you do it with your gut. because only an auteur is an auteur, and only you can decide for yourself exactly what that means.

all i know right now is that baz is not...and i still haven't made it to australia.