Theory of auteur cinema ( French Cinéma d'auteur , English Auteur theory ) - an influential doctrine that originated in France in the 1950s.
Since the author’s theory was voiced by Francois Truffaut in 1954 in the manifesto article “One Trend in French Cinema,” it has had a significant impact on film criticism worldwide. In the USA , Andrew Sarris was its main supporter and popularizer [1] . Among American directors, he singled out “authors” who developed a unique, feature-rich film style that can be seen in the films they shot. By 1968, he completed work on the fundamental study American Cinema: Directors and Performances. 1929-1968 ". According to David Bordwell, this book played an important role in the development of auteurism, as it included many directors in the Pantheon of Authors, whom “English-speaking intellectuals (formerly) despised as representatives of mass entertainment products” [2] . In 1961, "author's theory" was adopted by the American magazines New York Film Bulletin and Film Culture [3] .
At the conceptual level, the idea of cinema was first formed in France during the First World War and throughout the 1920s it served as the theoretical basis for the entire European avant-garde . French cinema theorist Leon Mussinak in his work “The Birth of Cinema” for 1926, analyzing European cinema of this period, wrote that technical and staging tools transform the material, subordinating it to the author’s interpretation. The entire subject environment - decorations, costumes, furnishings - are subordinate to the same task. He calls the uniting rhythm the unifying element [4] . Alfred Hitchcock, in an open letter published in the Evening News back in November 1927, stated that “truly artistic films are created by one person”, just as a symphony is composed by one composer [5] .
Before the advent of the author’s theory, the film was perceived as a product of the film industry - the combined work of the director, screenwriter, composer and actors. However, the theorists of Cahiers du cinéma drew attention to the fact that even within the framework of the Hollywood conveyor studio system, bright personalities successfully worked, genuine authors such as Alfred Hitchcock [6] and John Ford (as well as Fritz Lang and Orson Welles ). In the film-critical milieu they were nicknamed “Hitchcock-Hawksians” (according to Hitchcock and Hawks ), and their theory was called politique des auteurs - strategy or authorship policy [7] [ specify link ] .
Theorists of auteur cinema for the first time reasonably formulated that the director is a key figure in the entire film process and the author ( French auteur ) of the film (regarded as a work of art) [8] . Such a judgment is confirmed by the individual cinema language inherent in each master (director): you will never confuse the films of Charles Chaplin , Stanley Kubrick , Quentin Tarantino with pictures of other directors [9] . Despite the fact that a whole team is working on the film, adherents of the author’s cinema saw: all the activities of this team (film crew) are aimed only at the most adequate transfer of the director’s artistic intent, as in the artist’s painting or novel of the writer. Without the intent of the director, the activities of the team (film crew) are meaningless.
A separate direction of the author’s films is paintings made at a high professional level by a film crew consisting of a limited number of people, each of which simultaneously combines several cinematic professions. Sometimes a film crew consists of only one person.
Author's theory is associated with the French new wave . It was first formulated on the pages of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma by leading figures of a new wave ( Francois Truffaut , Jean-Luc Godard , Eric Romer , Claude Chabrol , Jacques Rivette , Andre Bazin ). As Federico Fellini pointed out: “As far as I remember, the term auteur in relation to the director was first used by the French critic Andre Bazin, speaking about my work in a review of Cabiria [10] . In terms of "auteur cinema" it was customary to consider the so-called. new German cinema of the 1970s ( Werner Herzog , Wim Wenders , Volker Schlöndorf , Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Alexander Kluge ).
In the modern film process
At the moment, the existence of auteur cinema is not in doubt either by viewers or critics. Films in which there is an individual look (handwriting) of the author, that is, the director of the film , are recognized as “copyright”. Although there is a large amount of collective work in such a high-tech art form as cinema, nevertheless, other participants in the process of cinema “fade” into the background.
According to the current realities of both “de jure” and “de facto”, the author of the film is the director , regardless of whether his film is later recognized as “copyright” or not recognized.
The contemporary Russian cinema community is characterized by a marginal opposition and even a confrontation between auteur cinema and producer cinema . There is an opinion that a priori films that are of artistic value belong to “copyright” films, and films that do not represent artistic value to “producer films”.
One of the directions of the copyright has become the cinema of non-profit or, in rare cases, budget-free implementation. What is possible only due to the cheaper technical means of filming and editing.
Objectively, it can only be argued that a number of filmmakers in the process of their creation form an individual, inherent in their own, authorial style, while a number of filmmakers do not form an authorial style, but both of them are the authors of their works. Such a phenomenon can be observed in any creative activity: literature, painting, architecture and so on.
On the basis of the author’s theory such concepts bordering on the author’s cinema as “ arthouse ”, “ independent American cinema ” and others were formed.
Notes
- ↑ Stephen Rebello. Hitchcock. The horror generated by Psycho . - Litres, 2017-01-12. - 304 p. - ISBN 5457253295 .
- ↑ Bordwell David, Thompson Kristin. Film history: An Introduction (2nd ed.). New York, etc .: McGraw-Hill, 2003.P. 437 ..
- ↑ Session Magazine What is art cinema? (English) , Session Magazine . Date of treatment August 7, 2017.
- ↑ Mussinak L. Birth of a movie. - L: Academia, 1966 .-- S. 24.
- ↑ Ackroyd, Peter. Alfred Hitchcock : [] . - readli.net.
- ↑ Peter Ackroyd. Alfred Hitchcock . - ABC-Atticus, 2016-08-02. - 272 p. - ISBN 9785389120600 .
- ↑ Vulgar Auteurism: film critic Richard Brodie on whether authorship is possible in contemporary genre films.
- ↑ Criticism of pure cinema: How François Truffaut rediscovered Alfred Hitchcock (Russian) , Life.ru. Date of treatment August 7, 2017.
- ↑ The evolution of elite and mass cinema | Lumiere Movie Magazine
- ↑ Fellini. I remember ... . booksonline.com.ua. Date of appeal May 14, 2017.
Literature
- Lursell J. Authors Encyclopedia of Films. T. I — II. - SPb.-M .: Rosebud Publishing, 2009. - ISBN 978-5-904175-02-3
- Mussinak L. Birth of a movie. / L. Mussinak. - L .: Academia, 1966 .-- 278 p.
- Dictionary of French cinema. Edited by Jean-Lou Passec. Translation from fr. language. - 1998, Minsk, Propylaea. - 270 p. - ISBN 985-6329-11-6
- Truffaut F. Hitchcock / Translation, filmography, notes by M. Yampolsky and N. Tsyrkun . - M .: Eisenstein Center for Film Culture Research, 1996. - 224 p.
- Truffaut about Truffaut. M .: Rainbow, 1987.456 s.