The Modern Auteur
What the heck is an auteur? The term is thrown around a lot in film school classrooms, film buff discussions, and art house movie reviews. Don’t feel dumb if you don’t quite know what it is. Most people that use the word regularly don’t exactly know, either. All everyone seems to know for sure is that it’s a fancy ten-cent word used to try to impress folks and make them think you’re a true film connoisseur (a lot of French words seem to be used for that purpose).
That sounds too cynical. Let me start again.
During the French New Wave movement of the 1940’s, Francois Truffault coined the term “auteur” to describe a more involved, more visionary type of director. Since then, its definition has been argued, due to it’s somewhat vague nature and controversial implications.
In its classic sense, an auteur is a director whose complete control over every aspect of a production contributes to his overall style, giving the movie a specific feel that is associated with the director. Examples of directors considered auteurs are Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Federico Fellini, David Cronenberg, Robert Altman, Terry Gilliam, Luc Besson, Tim Burton, Michel Gondry, Orson Welles, John Waters, Quentin Tarantino, George Lucas, Stanley Kubrick, and Alfred Hitchcock.
It comes down to this: There’s no mistaking a Tim Burton film. There’s no mistaking a Charlie Chaplin film. There’s no mistaking a Terry Gilliam film. These directors weave themselves, their vision of the story, into every frame of each of their films.
“Control freak” you say? That’s a shortcut to thinking. Most directors are controlling on some level. They have to be. That’s what makes them directors. There are plenty of control freaks directing the D-level straight-to-Blockbuster gems. Control is not enough.
“Involved” is a better word. A director that is in love with the script, in love with the characters, in love with the settings, he cares about every tiny part of the story. This means that, yes, he’ll choose the right actors and work with them to nail their roles, but it also means paying attention to everything else, putting his hand in every pie.
Quentin Tarantino went so far as to design all the elaborate fight sequences in “Kill Bill” himself. He hired a professional fight choreographer to execute the fights and coach the actors, but Tarantino is the one that watched countless classic (and not so classic) kung-fu movies to put together his sequences. When asked why he didn’t just let the fight choreographer design the fights, as is usually the case, he replied “I’m not gonna sit back and let someone else direct my movie!”
The result is that he takes ownership of every nook and cranny of the movie that we see on the screen. However, it’s this very thinking that makes the auteur theory also controversial.
Film is a truly unique form of art, because it’s the combination of many arts: Writing. Cinematography. Acting. Music. Costumes. In some movies, add Dance and Singing.
Unlike other forms of art, filmmaking is not a one-man show. It takes a team of professionals (or amateurs striving to be professional) to make a movie. Even Robert Rodriguez, the “one-man film crew,” can’t do it alone. His name may appear all over the credits, from directing to cinematography to composing to editing, but he still has plenty of good people helping him.
At the independent level, “auteur” takes a slightly different meaning. By it’s very nature, an independent film production forces the director to wear many hats, forced to be an auteur. The next low-budget film you see will most likely be directed by, co-produced by, and written by the same person. On micro-budget films, add “edited by,” “cinematography by,” and often “starring…”
A more modern definition of an auteur seems to be a writer/director, which most of us are in the independent world. If someone directs a script that they have written, the vision of the story is more close to heart. The writer/director just spent several months creating the screenplay. You can bet that he has played out every scene in his head over and over, and can picture each character as if they were real people.
What I’m getting at is, in the world of independent film, you have no choice… you are an auteur.
Just don’t put that on your business cards. Please.
What can we learn from the Auteur Theory? Whether or not you choose to use this term, the lesson is to take ownership of your production. Yes, you need to trust your crew, but at the same time, care about every detail. Don’t phone your performance in as a director. Be involved, have open communications with all the keys.
Whether your film comes out magnificently brilliant or horribly awful, whether you’re considered an auteur or not, the greatest praise you can get is hearing someone say “There’s no mistaking a (insert your name here) film!”
