cinama art short essay

Warning Concerning Copyright Restrictions

The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the reproduction of copyrighted material.

Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are permitted to furnish a reproduction if used for “private study, scholarship or research.” A second condition is that only single articles or chapters of a work totaling no more than 15% of the total number of pages be reproduced. Any use of a reproduction that exceeds these guidelines may be considered copyright infringement.

This institution reserves the right to refuse any request for reproduction that is deemed a violation of current copyright guidelines.

This material has been reproduced from the following source:

Date prepared:

This material is presented for use solely by authorized faculty and students of the Pennsylvania State University. Further reproduction or distribution of this material is expressly prohibited.

This material may be made available in alternative media upon request. Please contact Course Reserves Services at [email protected] or by phone at (814) 863-0324.

If you are experiencing problems viewing or printing this document, please visit http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/reserves/usingereserves.html for troubleshooting information. If further assistance is required, please send a description of the problem to [email protected] that includes the course and instructor for which the material is on reserve, as well as the title of the material.

ANDREW SARRIS _ NOTES ON THE AUTEUR THEORY IN 1962

Andrew Sarris coined the term "auteur theory," which he first used in 1962 in an article in Film Culture, introducing the type of criticism (la politique des auteurs) already prominent in the Cahiers du Cinema to American film discussion, His American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 (1968) provided a thorough assessment of American sound films, organized by the directors who made them, whose vision (or lack of same) he saw as directly responsible for the success (or failure) of each film. Along with Dwight Macdonald, Stanley Kauffmann, and Pauline Kael (with whom he had a sharp exchange over the auteur theory), Sarris was instrumental in rais- ing the standards of both American film reviewing and American film criti- cism generally, Sarris has also published books on the work of Josef von Sternberg and John Ford, as well as several collections of interviews with directors. A co-founder of the National Society of Film Critics and member of the New York Film Critics Circle, Sarris continues to write reviews for the New York Observer and to teach at Columbia University, Sarris's most recent book is You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet: The American Talking Film: History and Memory, 1927-1949 (1998),

___ As far as I know, there is no definition of the auteur theory in the English language, that is, by any American or British critic. Truffaut has recently gone to great pains to emphasize that the auteur theory was merely a polemical weapon for a given time and a given place, and I am willing to take him at his word, But, lest

be accused of misappropriating a theory no one wants anymore, I will give the ahiers critics full credit for the original formulation of an idea that reshaped my 'nking on the cinema. First of all, how does the auteur theory differ from a straight- rward theory of directors, Ian Cameron's article "Films, Directors, and Critics," Movie of September, 1962, makes an interesting comment on this issue: "The sumption that underlies all the writing in Movie is that the director is the author a film, the person who gives it any distinctive quality, There are quite large excep- ns, with which I shall deal later." So far, so good, at least for the auteur theory, ·ch even allows for exceptions. However, Cameron continues: "On the whole, accept the cinema of directors, although without going to the farthest-out emes of the la politique des auteurs, which makes it difficult to think of a bad tor making a good film and almost impossible to think of a good director mak-

a bad one_" We are back to Bazin again, q}though Cameron naturally uses rent examples. That three otherwise divergent critics like Bazin, Roud,

ameron make essentially the same point about the auteur theory suggests a

451

452 THE FILM ARTIST

common fear of its abuses. I believe there is a misunderstanding here about what the auteur theory actually claims, particularly since the theory itself is so vague at the present time.

First of all, the auteur theory, at least as I understand it and now intend to express it, claims neither the gift of prophecy nor the option of extracinematic perception. Directors, even auteurs, do not always run true to form, and the critic can never assume that a bad director will always make a bad film. No, not always, but almost always, and that is the point. What is a bad director, but a director who has made many bad films? What is the problem then? Simply this: The badness of a director is not nec- essarily considered the badness of a film. If Joseph Pevney directed Garbo, Cherkassov, Olivier, Belrnondo, and Harriet Andersson in The Cherry Orchard, the resulting spec- tacle might not be entirely devoid of merit with so many subsidiary auteurs to cover up for Joe. In fact, with this cast and this literary property, a Lumet might be safer than a Welles. The realities of casting apply to directors as well as to actors, but the auteur theory would demand the gamble with Welles, if he were willing.

Marlon Brando has shown us that a film can be made without a director. Indeed, One-Eyed Jacks is more entertaining than many films with directors. A director- conscious critic would find it difficult to say anything good or bad about direction that is nonexistent. One can talk here about photography, editing, acting, but not direction. The film even has personality, but, like The Longest Day and Mutiny on the Bounty, it is a cipher directorially. Obviously, the auteur theory cannot possibly cover every vagrant charm of the cinema. Nevertheless, the first premise of the auteur theory is the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value. A badly directed or an undirected film has no importance in a critical scale of values, but one can make interesting conversation about the subject, the script, the acting, the color, the photography, the editing, the music, the costumes, the decor, and so forth. That is the nature of the medium. You always get more for your money than mere art. Now, by the auteur theory, if a director has no technical competence, no elementary flair for the cinema, he is automatically cast out from the pantheon of directors. A great director has to be at least a good director. This is true in any art. What con- stitutes directorial talent is more difficult to define abstractly. There is less dis- agreement, however, on this first level of the auteur theory than there will be later.

The second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personaiity of the director as a criterion of value. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit cer- tain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels. This is an area where American directors are generally superior to foreign directors. Because so much of the American cinema is commissioned, a director is forced to express his personality through the visual treatment of material rather than through the literary content of the material. A Cukor, who works with all sorts of projects, has a more developed abstract style than a Bergman, who is free to develop his own scripts. Not that Bergman lacks personality, but his work has declined with the deple- tion of his ideas largely because his technique never equaled his sensibility. Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder are other examples of writer-directors without ade- quate technical mastery. By contrast, Douglas Sirk and Otto Preminger have moved up the scale because their miscellaneous projects reveal a stylistic consistency.

NOTES ON THE AUTEUR THEORY IN 1962 453

The third and ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapo- lated from the tension between a director's personality and his material. This con- ception of interior meaning comes close to what Astruc defines as mise en scene, but not quite. It is not quite the vision of the world a director projects nor quite his attitude toward life. It is ambiguous, in any literary sense, because part of it is imbed- ded in the stuff of the cinema and cannot be rendered in noncinematic terms. Truffaut has called it the temperature of the director on the set, and that is a close approxi- mation of its professional aspect. Dare I come out and say what I think it to be is an elan of the soul?

Lest I seem unduly mystical, let me hasten to add that all I mean by "soul" is that intangible difference between one personality and another, all other things being equal. Sometimes, this difference is expressed by no more than a beat's hesitation in the rhythm of a film. In one sequence of La Regle du Jeu, Renoir gallops up the stairs, turns to his right with a lurching movement, stops in hoplike uncertainty when his name is called by a coquettish maid, and, then, with marvelous postreflex con- tinuity, resumes his bearishly shambling journey to the heroine' s boudoir. If I could describe the musical grace note of that momentary suspension, and I can't, I might be able to provide a more precise definition of the auteur theory. As it is, all I can do is point at the specific beauties of interior meaning on the screen and, later, cat- alogue the moments of recognition.

The three premises of the auteur theory may be visualized as three concentric cir- cles: the outer circle as technique; the middle circle, personal style; and the inner circle, interior meaning. The corresponding roles of the director may be designated as those of a technician, a stylist, and an auteur. There is no prescribed course by which a director passes through the three circles. Godard once remarked that Visconti had evolved from a metteur en scene to an auteur, whereas Rossellini had evolved from an auteur to a metteur en scene. From opposite directions, they emerged with comparable status. Minnelli began and remained in the second circle as a stylist; Bufiuel was an auteur even before he had assembled the technique of the first cir- cle. Technique is simply the ability to put a film together with some clarity and coherence. Nowadays, it is possible to become a director without knowing too much about the technical side, even the crucial functions of photography and editing. An expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the director 's chair. How do you tell the genuine director from the quasichimpanzee? After a given number of films, a pattern is established.

In fact, the auteur theory itself is a pattern theory in constant flux . I would never endorse a Ptolemaic constellation of directors in a fixed orbit. At the moment, my list of auteurs runs something like this through the first twenty: Ophuls, Renoir, Mizoguchi, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Ford, Welles, Dreyer, Rossellini, Murnau, Griffith, Sternberg, Eisenstein, von Stroheim, Bufiuel, Bresson, Hawks, Lang, Flaherty, Vigo. This list is somewhat weighted toward seniority and established reputations. In time, some of these auteurs will rise, some will fall, and some will be displaced either by new directors or rediscovered ancients. Again, the exact order is less important than the specific definitions of these and as many as two hundred other potential auteurs. I would hardly expect any other critic in the world fully to endorse this list, especially

454 THE FILM ARTIST

on faith. Only after thousands of films have been revaluated, will any personal pan- theon have a reasonably objective validity. The task of validating the auteur theory is an enormous one, and the end will never be in sight. Meanwhile, the auteur habit of collecting random films in directorial bundles will serve posterity with at least a tentative classification.

Although the auteur theory emphasizes the body of a director's work rather than isolated masterpieces, it is expected of great directors that they make great films every so often. The only possible exception to this rule I can think of is Abel Gance, whose greatness is largely a function of his aspiration. Even with Gance, La Roue is as close to being a great film as any single work of Flaherty's. Not that single works matter that much. As Renoir has observed, a director spends his life on vari- ations of the same film.

Two recent films-Boccaccio '70 and The Seven Capital Sins-unwittingly rein- forced the auteur theory by confirming the relative standing of the many directors involved. If I had not seen either film, I would have anticipated that the order of merit in Boccaccio '70 would be Visconti, Fellini, and De Sica, and in The Seven Capital Sins Godard, Chabrol, Demy, Vadim, De Broca, Molinaro. (Dhomme, Ionesco's stage director and an unknown quantity in advance, turned out to be the worst of the lot.) There might be some argument about the relative badness of De Broca and Molinaro, but, otherwise, the directors ran true to form by almost any objective criterion of value. However, the main point here is that even in these frothy, ultracommercial servings of entertainment, the contribution of each director had less in common stylistically with the work of other directors on the project than with his own previous work.

Sometimes, a great deal of com must be husked to yield a few kernels of inter- nal meaning. I recently saw Every Night at Eight, one of the many maddeningly routine films Raoul Walsh has directed in his long career. This 1935 effort featured George Raft, Alice Faye, Frances Langford, and Patsy Kelly in one of those famil- iar plots about radio shows of the period. The film keeps moving along in the pleas- antly unpretentious manner one would expect of Walsh until one incongruously intense scene with George Raft thrashing about in his sleep, revealing his inner fears in mumbling dream-talk. The girl he loves comes into the room in the midst of his unconscious avowals of feeling and listens sympathetically. This unusual scene was later amplified in High Sierra with Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino. The point is that one of the screen's most virile directors employed an essentially feminine nar- rative device to dramatize the emotional vulnerability of his heroes. If I had not been aware of Walsh in Every Night at Eight, the crucial link to High Sierra would have passed unnoticed. Such are the joys of the auteur theory.

1962