Wednesday, April 14, 2010

The Death of the Auteur?


Variety columnist, Peter Bart, tossed up this thought last week in an op-ed he wrote about director Christopher Nolan's new film, Inception, and all the secrecy in which the film has been shrouded within. In a nutshell, Bart got on a rant about Nolan being so secretive and treating himself as an auteur, when Bart was arguing that the auteur was a dying breed, in fact dead depending upon who you ask. He says the auteur theory has now been replaced by the studios desire for franchises. What I want to try figuring out is the central question, is the auteur dead, and if not, who are these modern day auteurs?

For those not in the know, the word auteur is derived from the French word meaning author. It was coined by French film critic and future filmmaker, Francois Truffaut in the late 1950s, when Truffaut compared a film director to the author of a novel. The director creates the world and space, so quintessentially, the director is the source of a film. This theory spun off into widespread popularity throughout the '60s overseas with folks like Jean Luc Godard and Truffaut himself, but it wasn't until the '70s, when American films started to prescribe by this theory, and what began was quite possibly the most fruitful decade of American cinema. The '70s saw the rise of young auteurs like: Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, and Robert Altman. But starting back in about the '80s, the designation of the auteur started to crumble away as some of these auteurs got richer than the others, and studio control became more and more prominent again. This basically pits us in modern day, with Bart and his comments. So is the auteur dead, or is he just in hiding?

I personally feel it shows ignorance on Bart's behalf to even assume that the auteur is dead in the first place. From the '70s scene we still have guys like: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and George Lucas, out there making films; regardless as to whether you like their current output, they still pursue personal filmmaking and deliver their films with an undeniable authorial license. Then, there is a new vanguard of filmmakers like: Christopher Nolan, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Kevin Smith, the Coen Brothers, James Cameron, Quentin Tarrantino, Danny Boyle, and many more, that can all fight for the right to be called auteurs. The films of Chris Nolan play like one long movie if you watch them back-to-back, same goes for the works of Kevin Smith or Tarrantino. If that is not an authorial stamp to where their style is recognizable in all of their works, then I don't know what is? If this is so, what has spurred Bart's comments against the auteur?

Once again, I think it's Bart showing ignorance. Since when did studios and the auteur become synonymous? They never have been. If a studio was an auteur, then why is there an auteur theory in the first place? The fact of the matter is, even when you look back to the great auteur works of the '70s, more than half of the great auteur films were made outside the studio system, just distributed by Hollywood, kind of like today's independent film market ( Apocalypse Now, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, etc.). While there were a few big films from the auteur generation of the '70s, like Star Wars, The Godfather, or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, I just have to say, look at the past two years of filmmaking with The Dark Knight, Inglourious Basterds, and Avatar, to name a few. All movies made by modern day auteurs, and you know what, all of those films made over $100 million to boot, two of which are in the top three highest grossing films of all-time.

So it has nothing to do with money, cause in the '70s you had just as many auteur films made for niche markets like today. I mean, seriously, Michel Gondry films don't appeal to everyone, but they have their niche, much like the works of Altman or Cassavettes from the '70s. And if you want to argue that franchise films are ruining cinema, just look at the disaster films of the '70s, that were made alongside the serious work of auteurs. There is room for both on the marketplace. So what made Bart think the auteur is dead?

I think Bart, like the rest of Hollywood, has been swept up within the maelstrom of the franchise. At the current moment, the studios have a touch more weight than your average filmmaker, which is why the auteur theory is kind of subdued at the moment. The studios are stable at the moment with stuff like 3-D and whatnot, but eventually the newness of 3-D will wear off, and when it does, the studios will have to revert back to storytelling to make some money. It goes in cycles, and we're just in the most frustrating part of that cycle right now. I think in many ways, the auteur has transformed from the Hollywood big shot, to more like a modern day playwright or novelist. They're still around, doing their thing, making quality work, and when the time is right, when the right talent has lined up, the auteur will rise again as a prominent force in the film industry, and until that happens, we just have to sit back and suck it up.

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