Visual Culture #3 - Auteur Theory

The lecturer was ill last week so we had to research various links for independent study. This week, she went through her PowerPoint she was going to do last week, so now our weeks have gone all wibbly wobbly.

https://www.tumblr.com/search/tv:%20wibbly%20wobbly%20timey%20wimey

The auteur theory suggests the "camera as steelo". They then talked about The French New Wave (50s-60s), the most famous example being The 400 Blows. In the 1800s, France was prosperous with the industrial revolution and the leader in new technology with the Eiffel Tower. With the invention of photography, artists had to be more expressive and experimental. This era was also known as 'Belle Epoque' ('Beautiful Life') where people lived life to the full. A few examples of films from the late 1800's are the Lumiere Brothers and Voyage Dans La Lune.

http://67.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m32kccxUQL1qzxt5zo1_500.gif

World War 1 saw a decrease in French technology and the film industry. Filmmakers managed to appeal so they could produce one film every seven films America produced. They broke free from traditions with 1920s surrealism, with films such as Un Chien Andalou. 

http://s2.photobucket.com/user/Christopher4myspace/media/Une%20Chien%20Andelou/5_zps3748b392.gif.html

Poetic Realism was the next era of filmmaking where people yearned for the Golden Age. And apparently "the nazis were another thing altogether". The next era was Calkiers de Cinema (sp?) with Andre Bazin in the 60s where they opposed plot as it was too mainstream.

Mise-en-scene tends to be the auteur's focus, with directors having "interior meanings". However some criticism of the theory is that films should be films in their own right, and if to understand a director's interior meaning, you have to watch all of their films? Or if it's collaborative? Can we even class it as a theory, is it too general?

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In Tuesday's session, we covered Agency, The Auteur and The Audience. A few key terms;

• Agency: state of acting (action or power)
• Auteur: director gives film character. Practice is distinctive
• Auteur theory: 'director-as-author'. Oversees all audio and visual elements. Personal stamp.
• Audience: interprets work, can be imaginary or real.

“[audience] consists of those persons who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” - L. F. Bitzer

Personal/collective agency informs creative process and defines the final shape of the work. The author has free reign to be an active auteur. An agent auteur tends to be a writer, actor, director. Woody Allan is a good example of this, with his autobiographical context with a very visceral sense of his culture. The audience also relate to this (I think that's what the lecturerwas saying? I'm not quite fluent yet. Kinda lost concentration at this point, his PowerPoints are too long and wordy). 

Me trying to decipher the lectures

https://www.tumblr.com/search/m:%20midnight%20in%20paris

Here I wrote "personal agency negotiated creative act in a social context", not quite sure what that means.

The audience and auteur's needs can be similar or dissimilar, each with different consequences (I can't quite deciper my notes about this sadly. Something about authenticity). One scenario is when the author produces work they want to do and the audience is given what they want. An example of this is Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

http://giphy.com/search/great-dictator

Another scenario is that the key agent imposes authority and uses his free expression to give the audience what they think they want. A good example of this is public information films.

However, the audience can sometimes hold authority and get the outcome they want. An example can be the spontaneous applause after Lady Dianna's funeral.

Or, a compromise can be reached and a topic can be valued by both parties. An example can be Oh! What A Lovely War.

Auteur Theory - Independent Study

Today the lecturer wasn't in so we were given a document with links on to research, so I will be summarising my findings on this blog post.

Translated from the French, auteur simply means "author," but use of the term in relation to cinema, has caused much controversy and critical debate. Does a film need to have an author? Perhaps, to qualify as "art".
  
There's all-sorts of hyperlinks on the website so I had a look at the mise-en-scene section and found a really interesting quote;

"the originality of the auteur lies not in the subject matter he chooses, but in the technique he employs, i.e., the mise-en-scène , through which everything on the screen is expressed..." (Hillier, 1986, p. 142).

http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/Auteur-Theory-and-Authorship.html 


Originally conceived in France, the idea of the filmmaker as auteur was never thought of as a theory until Andrew Sarris brought it across the Atlantic in the 1960s. Sarris applied the newly formulated theory to American film history, focusing on the careers of specific directors and classifying them by their successes and talents. His version of the auteur theory placed constraints on the classification of directors and filmmakers.

“over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature”

https://eng3122.wordpress.com/auteur-theory/


In 1954, François Truffaut wrote an essay entitled A Certain Tendency in French Cinema. In this work he claimed that film is a great medium for expressing the personal ideas of the director. He suggested that this meant that the director should therefore be regarded as an auteur. 

"There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors" - Truffaut

Auteur Theory suggests that a director can use film-making in the same way that a writer uses a pen. It is a medium for the personal artistic expression of the director. Auteur Theory also suggests that the best films will bear their maker’s ‘signature’, which may act like the stamp of their individual personality or perhaps even focus on recurring themes within the body of work.

This website then goes on to talk about Hitchcock as a case study.

http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/staffhome/siryan/screen/auteur%20theory.htm


The “auteur theory” embodied by the famous French New Wave directors gave the films the ability to be innovative yet familiar. The vision allowed the audience to see stories that were usually more of a comment on the traditional than something in the realm of confusing. 

La peau douce aka The Soft Skin (François Truffaut, 1964) as a case study.


http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/10-overlooked-french-new-wave-films-that-are-worth-watching/2/


Truffaut developed a reputation for the passionate way he advocated for or condemned a film under his review, gaining the nickname “the grave-digger of French Cinema”. His first feature length movie, Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows), ushered in the French New Wave. Armed with an auteur theory and a lighter camera, New Wave films became idiosyncratic (peculiar) and free to shoot on location. They had in-jokes for the cinematically educated. Many experimented with unconventional styles of production. Truffaut was at the centre of this movement, and arguably his work outlasted it. 

“Truffaut’s passion for cinema, the desire that it stirred in him, animates every movie he ever made, every scene, every shot."

A few films by Truffaut as case studies.

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/10-films-that-had-the-biggest-influences-on-the-cinema-of-francois-truffaut/

Style-Over-Substance

However, some filmmakers try too hard to make a film look artistic and forget about plot and characterisation. A film delving in style over substance would be one that heavily overlooks the quality or legibility of the content it presents to a viewer. A filmmaker might deem flashy sets, quick, fast-paced editing, and an innovative soundtrack to substitute for a narrative that, for instance, might contain flat characters, unrealistic relationships and an embrace of horrible cliché. 

A few filmmakers that do this as a case study.

http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/10-famous-filmmakers-regularly-accused-of-style-over-substance/