Notes on Auteur Theory

Cult of the Auteur: Hawks (Andrew Sarris)

- Auterism: expression of an existential humanism inflected by phenomenology. Astruc and “Birth of a New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Pen,” the camera-stylo. Truffaut and “A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema,” praising the writer/director. Cahiers du Cinema: key organ for the propagation of auteurism, attacking the established system. Andrew Sarris and the Americanization of Auteur theory. Auteurism picked up in academia by American institutes in the 1960s. Auteurism leading to subjectivism more than ontology/epistemological questions (not so much a theory). Varda using the term cine-ecriture by 1955. Rohmer and Chabrol write the first book on a single director, Hitckcock (1957). Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema (1968), argues there were artists actively at work in the Hollywood studio system. Auteurism arguing against elitism, arguing for popular directors like Hitchcock and Hawks. Peter Wollen combines Structuralism and interest in other creative personnel with auteurism. Auteurism as deciphering meaning via style (ex. Hawks), movies are not transparent objects, but texts that must be worked up. Bazin, just before his death in 1958, warning against the excesses of auteur criticism and cult of personality. Auteur critics praise and analyze weak movies by so-called auteur directors (like Hawks Monkey Business or Hitckcock’s To Catch a Thief), and ignore movies by directors they dismiss (Maltese Falcon by Huston, Casablanca by Curtiz). Marc Vernet in Aesthetics of Film, “the term auteur is too tainted by pop psychology to be allowed to be used today, too strong temptation to reduce a film to the director as sole creator.” Howard Hawks as an example: Professional camaraderie of men and women must prove themselves “worthy” of male group. Group = isolated from larger society, hints of homosexual/homosocial, marriage is not an option. Thematic oppositions: Regression/humiliation among the men. Next to every Hawks hero is another who has been stipped of his mastery. Cautionary tales with simple oppositions. To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Rio Bravo (1959).

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962)

- Valance all the way on the gun side, Stoddard all the way on the book side, Doniphon somewhere in the middle. Valance a lot more savage than Doniphon, uses a whip. The law books in Young Mr. Lincoln and here. Tom is the unofficial guardian of the town. Repression in John Ford characters.

Auteur (Ford) and Genre (Western) theories

- Peter Wollen, The Auteur Theory [Hawks and Ford]. 2 school of Auteur critics: those concerned with thematic motifs and those who stressed style and mise-en-scene. Auteurs vs metteur-en-scene. Hawksian world: adventure drama vs. crazy comedy, the positive and negative poles of the Hawksian vision. Hawks’s all male community. Wollen: the auteur theory needs further development. Wollen evaluating auteur theory. For him weak auteurs simply repeat the same themes and motifs while great auteurs have shifting relations. The director as an unconscious catalyst, life/times and bio of directors, we shouldn’t focus on these. Wollen wants to stay with the film as text, not going back to the director. FORD, foreground various motifs and themes, oppositions in Ford: Garden vs Desert, Savage vs Civilization, Male vs Female.