Week Five: Auteur Theory

I started out with quite a bit of confusion about what auteur theory actually is - largely because this week's theorists apparently disagree not only on the validity of theory, but also on a coherent definition. Sarris gives us three premises for auteur theory: the technical competence of the director as a criterion of value, the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value and what he calls "interior meaning," an elusive concept that " . . . is extrapolated from the tension between the director's personality and the material" (Sarris 562). What I took away from Sarris was that auteur theory "emphasizes the body of a director's work rather than isolated masterpieces . . ." (Sarris 563) and that an auteur is a director with a clear and distinguishable style, an "author" whose hand is always (and ideally) clearly visible in his work.

Pauline Kael writes in response to Sarris, and it's clear she's rather disgusted with him, at one point admitting outright to being "angry" (Kael 273). She questions his concept of "internal meaning" as well as the ways in which she perceives auteur theory to privilege repetition and redundancy, and then she goes on to snarkily debunk Sarris' premises, claiming that " . . . sometimes the greatest artists in a medium bypass or violate the simple technical competence that is so necessary for hacks . . ." (Kael 267), that "often the works in which we are most aware of the personality of a director are his worst films - when he falls back on the devices he has already done to death . . ." (Kael 269) and that "Their ideal auteur is the man who signs a long-term contract, directs any script that's handed to him and expresses himself by shoving bits of style up the crevasses of the plots" (Kael 273). Kael claims auteur theory in general (and Sarris in particular) dismisses writer-directors in favor of those who direct any movie that comes their way regardless of the quality of the script. For Kael, there is an inherent disregard for content and subject matter in auteur theory, and she sees it as way of justifying and intellectualizing an interest in "silly movies." Auteur theory, Kael claims, is "anti-art" (Kael 280)

Somewhere in the middle, it would seem, is Wollen, who claims that " . . . what auteur theory demonstrates is that the director is not simply in command of a performance of a pre-exsting text . . ." but rather " . . . incidents and episodes in the original screenplay or novel can act as catalysts; they are the agents which are introduced into the mind . . . of the auteur and react there with the motifs and themes characteristic to his worl. The director does not subordinate himself to another author (Wollen 576, emphasis added). Wollen seems to like auteur theory, but does not privilege it in the way that Sarris does. He says, " . . . it is important to detach the auteur theory from any suspicion that it simply represents a 'cult of personality' or apotheosis of the director . . . that the auteur theory argues is that any film, certainly a Hollywood film, is a network of different statements, crossing and contradiction each other, elaborated into a final 'coherent' version" (Wollen). Autuer theory is one tool in the critic's toolbox, one way of decoding. In my reading, Wollen is explicitly problematizing Sarris' idea of authorship and even his conception autuer theory itself when he says, " the auteur theory argues that any single decoding has to comete, certainly in the cinema, with noise from signals coded differently" (Wollem 579), referring to signals "coded" by other participants in the creation of the film. Auteur theory seems to give the director sole credit for the finished product of the film. As in the section I italicized above, it is the director's story, or becomes so.

So what does all that mean? I don't know that I have formed an opinion myself on auteur theory, though I admit to finding Kael's argument the more convincing of the two extremes, (simply having a distinguishable style does not seem to me to be evidence of quality, though Kael may go too far in her angry dismissals). I'm left thinking about an auteur's body of work in relationship to Foucalt's author-function. It's not about the director as a person, but rather about the way his name embodies a style and the way a perception of personality comes through in that style, the ways that the works attributed to him come together to form a coherent whole.

*Wollen says, "The auteur theory does not limit itself to acclaiming the director as the main author of a film. It implies an operation of decipherment; it reveals authors where none have been seen before" (Wollen 566). The point is made in both the Wollen piece and the Kael piece that American directors did not have the same degree of creative control over their films. What does the concept of authorship mean in a medium like film, which is innately collaborative? Kael illustrates what she sees as the absurdity of auteur theory by drawing a literary analogy to the works of Clarence Budington Kelland and Dosteoyevsky, in which the former comes out ahead. Should directors be judged by the same (or similar) criteria as writer? Should they be?

*Kael says that, " . . . auteur theory, silly as it is, can neverthless be a dangerous theory - not only because it constricts the experience of the critics who employ it, but because it offers nothing but commercial goals to the young artists who may be trying to do something in film" (Kael 285). In the pages proceeding, she seems to be setting up something of a dichotomy between art and commercial films. Are commercial products ever good films for Kael? Can the art film really be separated from the commercial product? (Last week's theorists would, of course, say no).

*Bazin is mentioned several times. How does his focus on the technical aspects of film fit in with auteur theory?

*Ideas of authenticity and individuality seem very important to auteur theory. Coming back to Foucalt's author-function, what does Orson Welles' F is for Fake have to say about the idea of authorship and attribution when style and "personality" can be faked well enough to fool the experts?