what is auteur? questions of auteurism case study of peter weir
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What is auteur?
Questions of AuteurismCase Study of Peter Weir
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What Is Auteur?1 A director who has made films which reflect his/her personal vision and preoccupations.2 A director who has a distinct style and consistent themes.
François Truffaut, ‘Une Certaine tendence du cinéma française’ (A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema) 1954
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What Is Auteur?
Directors oversee all visual and audio elements of motion pictures.
Better consider a director as the author of a film rather than its writer.
“The filmmaker/author writes with his cameraas a writer writes with his pen."
‘Caméra Stylo’ (camera-pen) Alexander Astruc
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What Is Auteur?
‘Auteur Theory’ in English language film criticism
To be qualified as an auteur - technical competence; personal style in feel and looks; interior meaning
Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory’, 1964
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Who Are Auteurs?Directors who have a distinct visual style
… Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells …Stanley Kubrick, Wang Kar-wai
Directors who have a consistent theme … Jean Renoir (humanism), Douglas Sirk (melodrama) … Theo Angelopoulos (modern Greek history), Ken Loach (socialist conscience)
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What is ‘auteurism’ or auteur theory?
To analyse a film as a work of a single author (auteur)
→ auteurism / politique des autteurs
To identify the characteristics of a director’s work which makes him a auteur
→ auteurism / politique des autteurs
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
Filmmaking as collaborative and collectiveActions.
Making a film involves many other creativetalents than director.
scriptwriter, photographer, editor, art director, actor, etc.
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Criticism against Auteur TheoryCesare Zavattini (1902-1
989)
Screenwriter for Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti
Shoeshines, Bicycle Thieves, Umberto D, Bellisima, etc.
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Ruth Prower Jhabvala (1927 - )
Screenwriter for James IvoryRoom with a View, Howard’s End, Remains of the Day
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Gordon WillsMost important cinematographer in the 70s and 80sThe Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, All the President’s Men
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Criticism against Auteur Theory• Miyagawa Kazuo (1908-199
9)
Greatest Japanese photographer, operated the camera and shot for Mizoguchi Kenji, Kurosawa Akira, Ichikawa Kon and Shinoda Masahiro
Rashomon, Ugetsu, Yojinbo, Tokyo Olympiad, McArthur’s Children
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• David Lean (1908-1991)
British film director
Established the classic editing techniquesEdited for film directors such as Anthony Asquith and Michael Powell Pygmalion, Major Barbara, 49th Parallel
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Alexandre Trauner (1906-1993)
French art and production designer
Le Jour se léve, Les Enfants du paradis, Le Portes de la nuit, Kiss Me Stupid, Don Giovanni, Round Midnight, Subway
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Credit for Round Midnight (1986)
Producer: Irwin Winkler Director: Bertrand Tavernier Writer: David Rayfiel, Bertrand Tavernier Music: Harbie Hancock Editor: Harmand Psenny Production Design: Alexandre Trauner
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Positif, founded one after Cahiers du cinema in 1952
Firm opposition to author theoryA signed article naming the most overrated directors: Fritz Lang, Nicholas Ray, Howard Hawkes and Alfred Hitchcock
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Criticism against Auteur Theory
• Legitimacy of privileging a director - can a director be more important than his film?
• ‘There are no good or bad films, but there are only good or bad directors.’ Truffaut
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In the Case of Peter Weir• Peter Weir (1944 - )
Australian born and now working in Hollywood
Worked in ATN-7 (a TV company in Sydney)
Made documentaries for CFU
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In the Case of Peter Weir
• Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
• A tale of private-school girls who mysteriously disappear in the Australian outback.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
• Gallipoli (1981) Rural Australian boys are caught in the slaughter of WWI in Turkey.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
• The Year of Living Dangerously (1983),
Two Western journalists fall in love while a third-world capital collapses.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
Witness (1985)
It brings a city detective into the unfamiliar world of Pennsylvania’s Amish community.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
An American with his family trying to establish civilization in a remote jungle and ending in a disaster.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
• Green Card (1990)
A comedy in which a Frenchman tries to obtain a green card on bogus marriage with an American woman.
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In the Case of Peter Weir
• Truman Show (1998)
• A story of one man’s life not knowing that he is a star of a 24 hour TV series.
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Weir as an auteur
Juxtaposition of :civilization and ‘primitiveness’; the knowab
le and the unknowable; culture and nature
‘Clashes’ of civilizations and cultures
Erosion of humanity by civilization