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Post by london777 on May 16, 2017 15:51:57 GMT
Manfromplanetx wrote in Bat Outtaheck's useful thread "Cinema Techy Talk 101": I agree, and invite him (or anyone) to kick off.
Speaking for myself, I think the interest will not lie in those directors who are generally recognized as "auteurs" (Truffaut, Bergman, Lynch, Welles, etc) but in those who are debatable, but let the thread wend where it will.
I think manfromplanetx's definition bears repeating here: I personally am sold on the "auteur" theory and largely judge films on how well they adhere to it, although I am also capable of appreciating many films that are more impersonal or are a collaborative effort.
I guess there are two reasons for my prejudice in favour of "auteur" movies.
1) My formative years of film-watching were the late 'forties to late 'sixties, when the theory was all the rage and serious films were usually judged accordingly.
2) I am typically English and approach the arts from a literary standpoint rather than a visual one. I am also clueless at any technical stuff and my eyes glaze over at discussions of how different film-stocks or lenses can affect a film. I see films as "visual novels" rather than, say, "moving paintings" or intricate assemblages of technical skills. I accept that this limits my appreciation of some movies and there are many exceptions. A novelist normally has total control over his art. All he needs to produce a masterpiece is a notebook and pencil. A film director is in a totally different situation but the films I most admire are those where the director has inspired, bullied or cajoled the rest of the team to serve his vision.
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Post by teleadm on May 16, 2017 19:24:02 GMT
Found a site called Auteur movies for beginners, and maybe that could be a good (??) place to start to get a hang of what auteur movies is.
10 movies that was mentioned in chronological order:
Jean Renoir: The Rules Of The Game (1939)
Kenji Mizoguchi: Ugetsu Monogatari (1953)
Federico Fellini: La Strada (1954)
Luis Buñuel: The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955)
Ingmar Bergman: Wild Strawberries (1957)
Stanley Kubrick: Paths Of Glory (1957)
Terrence Malik: Badlands (1973)
Zhang Yimou: Raise The Red Lantern (1991)
Wong Kar-Wai: Chungking Express (1994)
Pedro Almodóvar: Volver (2006)
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Post by mikef6 on May 16, 2017 19:50:51 GMT
I personally am sold on the "auteur" theory and largely judge films on how well they adhere to it, although I am also capable of appreciating many films that are more impersonal or are a collaborative effort. The practice of the director auteur now dominates because of how it has changed. When first defined by the French critics, the proper auteur was a director working genre films within the studio system who, nevertheless, manages to present a singular vision through both style and consistent themes and story elements. Under this definition, John Ford's westerns and war movies were the work of an auteur, but "The Grapes of Wrath" was not because it was a "message" picture. Also, directors like John Huston who suited his style to the story he was filming is usually left off of auteur lists of the 1960s. The influence of this theory grew so strong that by the 1970s, the director HAD become the "author" of the movie his/her name was on, even if they were independent of studio control, picked their own scripts to shoot, were often their own producer, their own writer, and sometimes - like Spielberg - even owned the studio. What we have now - and it is pretty much worldwide - is the reality of the director/author but with a definition far from where it began.
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Post by bonerxmas on May 16, 2017 19:59:23 GMT
thats not really what the auteur theory was about, the theory was that all this hollywood studio schlock flooding into france after wwii (marshall plan made france get rid of its quota for american imports), these films had artistic merit, but you could only see it if you rounded up all the movies by one director and looked for common motifs
french love to do stuff like that, claim that only they, the french, can recognize the truly great foreign artists, applying all kinds of theoretical speculation (the cartesian tradition)
controversial because even the directors themselves - ford, hawkes, hitchcock - denied they were making artistic statements, ford really hated that kind of talk
also: these movies were written by different people, a lot of them were just adaptations of books, how could you treat "grapes of wrath" as a statement by ford, or "rebecca" as a statement by hitchcock
the theory didnt apply to people like orson welles or chaplin, they actually presented themselves as artists and helped write the screenplays, so you could treat them the way you did playwrights
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Post by london777 on May 17, 2017 0:02:01 GMT
... these movies were written by different people, a lot of them were just adaptations of books, how could you treat "grapes of wrath" as a statement by ford, or "rebecca" as a statement by hitchcock Is that bonerxmas' view, or are you still only reporting the view of French critics? Either way, I do not see that as a problem at all. A great artist could easily steal the work of another (in this case the plot and characters) and forge it into his own statement as an auteur. Maybe not in the two examples you cite, but as a general principle.
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Post by london777 on May 17, 2017 0:30:02 GMT
... these films had artistic merit, but you could only see it if you rounded up all the movies by one director and looked for common motifs. A bit off message perhaps, but this is now my view of Film Noir. Now I am retired I have been able to watch again dozens of Film Noirs I watched as a kid in the '40s and '50s and, in many cases, not again until now. All the time I was not re-seeing them I held a rather lofty valuation of Film Noir movies, as products of some lost golden age. Now I am watching them again, I realize just how crappy they are (with some notable exceptions). Bad acting, plots with more holes than a Swiss cheese, poor continuity, etc, etc. Has this diminished my love of Film Noir? Not at all, because I judge it as one body of work, and the way they repeat tropes or ring the changes on them is fascinating. I had a friend who collected milk bottles. (Do they still sell milk in bottles, by the way?). Each single bottle was the most banal piece of design but as a collection over decades it was impressive, revealing subtle social and graphic changes, and a local museum was more than happy to house it when he emigrated. I wonder if this sheds some light on our desire (well some of us, anyway) to designate "auteurs". Maybe the collector's instinct has something to do with it? We see a movie by a certain director which we admire and seek out his (or her) other films. It satisfies the collector's instinct to see them as a group, with some common features, even if we have to stretch a few points. I have just had a drastic purge of my DVD collection, partly for lack of space but more because I know that, in the brief time left to me, I will never get round to viewing many of them again, so best to give someone else the opportunity to do so before DVDs go the way of 8-track stereo. I have retained all the film noirs (however feeble) and discarded some better films. Similarly I have kept the weaker films of certain directors (for example, John Sayles) because I see them as part of an auteur's body of work, while throwing out better movies by directors who are not auteurs.
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Post by Nalkarj on May 17, 2017 1:10:17 GMT
thats not really what the auteur theory was about, the theory was that all this hollywood studio schlock flooding into france after wwii (marshall plan made france get rid of its quota for american imports), these films had artistic merit, but you could only see it if you rounded up all the movies by one director and looked for common motifs french love to do stuff like that, claim that only they, the french, can recognize the truly great foreign artists, applying all kinds of theoretical speculation (the cartesian tradition) controversial because even the directors themselves - ford, hawkes, hitchcock - denied they were making artistic statements, ford really hated that kind of talk also: these movies were written by different people, a lot of them were just adaptations of books, how could you treat "grapes of wrath" as a statement by ford, or "rebecca" as a statement by hitchcock the theory didnt apply to people like orson welles or chaplin, they actually presented themselves as artists and helped write the screenplays, so you could treat them the way you did playwrightsWhile you're right to some degree, Bonerxmas, I disagree vigorously with the bolded statement, and I think my argument in this respect is demonstrable. In a large way, the British magazine Movie brought the "theory" (somewhat of a loaded term because the original French critics at Cahiers and other publications did not use théorie but rather politique-- policy, not theory) there, and the American critic Andrew Sarris brought it here. Both Movie and Sarris thought Welles and Chaplin brilliant auteurs, along with such other non-writer filmmakers as Hitchcock, Ford, and Hawks. Both writer-directors and non-writer-directors can be auteurs. The dependent principle is not one's scriptwriting abilities but rather one's ability to show a clear, visible worldview in one's works, one that transcends artisanship and approaches artistry. Gary Ross is a writer-producer-director but not an auteur. I can detect no similitude of mindset or worldview running throughout Pleasantville, The Hunger Games, and Seabiscuit. Orson Welles is a writer-producer-director and an auteur. There is the same tone, the same manner, the same way of looking at the world, the same artistry (that damn word again!), in Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Mr. Arkadin. Finding that connection is impossible in a non-auteurist framework, and finding it is a joy of auteurism. While there is an argument to be made against auteurism--albeit one that I don't find it particularly convincing, especially when one understands la politique--I don't think the concept that Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock denied artistry (which is true only in a few cases) points to a lack of artistry, for numerous reasons. Those whom we consider artists have done the same throughout history; even if they didn't believe it to be so themselves, they can't deny a certain, recognizable view of the world that they were putting in to their works, whether painting or sculpture or literature. As with those fields, so with films, which was (in my opinion) auteurism's great revelation. It is nigh-impossible ( pace Pauline Kael, the anti-auteurist par excellence who nevertheless gave into subliminal auteurist leanings and adopted DePalma as an artist) to look at Hawks's, Ford's, or Hitchcock's oeuvre and deny that each man has an easily recognizable worldview, whether you agree with that worldview or not. Call it artistry or artisanship (and one must be a decent artisan before one becomes a great artist), think of it as basic critiquing or over-elaborate analysis, it's there. You have to see the movies to find it, but it's there--in the shot choices, the framing, the editing, the actors' playing, even the scripts (with which the director has more to do than one usually thinks). The main contention re: auteurism nowadays is whether to apply that viewpoint to all directors, some directors, etc. And what of such great films as The Wizard of Oz and Casablanca, which are incredible products of collaborative creation? And that's a discussion which I think Sarris covered but which nevertheless we must have (AS certainly didn't have the last word, good though he was). Hope that all makes sense. EDIT: I will also add that a filmmaker need not always be a director to be an auteur. (Producers David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, and Val Lewton were all arguably auteurs, as were comedians W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, Stan Laurel [of Laurel and Hardy], and--yes, for better or worse--Jerry Lewis.) No, not always, but usually, and that's the point.
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Post by london777 on May 17, 2017 2:00:23 GMT
Great post, Salzmank, much as it pains me to admit it. ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png)
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Post by Nalkarj on May 17, 2017 2:17:12 GMT
Thanks, london777. And, seriously, I don't want to have tensions between us; I'm just being as silly as you are. As much as it pains me to admit it. ![:)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/smiley.png)
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Post by telegonus on May 18, 2017 8:59:17 GMT
I have no dog in the auteur theory fight one way or the other. Sometimes it works for me, at other times not.
It seems to work better when discussing European cinemah than American movies. Still, love him or hate him, Sam Fuller, writer and director, was in my opinion a true auteur (FWIW).
Edgar Ulmer, when he could be, absolutely. Detour is Ulmer all the way even as he didn't write the screenplay he shaped the film.
Also classic era (my favorite): James Whale and Tod Browning, masters of horror and the uncanny, and very different men, I regard both as auteurs.
Of the more mainstream directors I think it's fair to state that men like John Huston, Preston Sturges, Joe Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder,--writer-directors all--were auteurs, even as these men would occasionally take on a film as an "assignment".
On the old IMDB I was involved in many discussions with other posters over the years, with my friend Clore and I,--we both really know our Hollywood history and the purely "business" nature of business--often discussing certain films and periods in film history in which the studio was as much the auteur as the actual director, allowing, needless to say, for the usual exceptions.
I think of Warners in the Thrties-Forties, in which top in-house director Michael Curtiz helmed many of the studio's best pictures, but by no means all. Curtiz might have been assigned All This And Heaven, Too, Anatole Litvak Casablanca, without film history being altered all that much. Both films as they are feel, to an experienced viewer, more Warners than Curtiz or Litvak.
It was much the same at MGM, with somewhat more specialization and, especially, more first rate directors under long term (in some cases very long, as in decades) contracts. It would be difficult to confuse a Cukor for a Fleming, however where the latter was concerned I could see mixing up a lesser Fleming with a Sam Wood or a Jack Conway. Vincente Minnelli was a rare case of a true MGM auteur.
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