Notes on the ‘Auteur Theory’
A rant about the distribution of attribution in collaborative mediums.
I can’t remember exactly when I wrote this but it was years ago, under the influence of coffee and rage; then quickly published on an old blog, only to be republished again on my relatively-newer-but-still-old-and-now-abandoned blog in 2013. Some of the references are dated, but the sentiments are still as valid and current. I’m re-posting this now on Medium after watching ‘Hollywood’s Greatest Trick’ and feeling that similar rage, though with considerably less coffee.
A curious coincidence, but the past few weeks have been riddled with serendipitous discussions on the ‘Auteur Theory’. The last straw was today, while I was at coffee with an ex-filmmaking colleague. We were engaged in a chat about the old hierarchal ways in which film is still made, and that led to the dreadful ‘Auteur Theory’.
His position was that directors are auteurs, and auteurs are artists; and like artists who work alone, deserve to be entrusted with all the credit comes from creating out of a collaborative product. I begged to differ.
I argued that the ‘Auteur Theory’ celebrates a creator’s ego, instead of the product; that it is borne from an unproductive, antiquated, & submissive mentality that directors are above and beyond a team, instead of being a fundamental part of one.
Let’s start from the beginning. The term ‘Auteur Theory’ came out of the critics who wrote for the Cahiers Du Cinema (It’s like the French McSweeney’s of film back in the 60s), during the French New Wave at a time when independent filmmaking, like pricey handbags, were becoming rapidly fashionable in Paris; and because film cameras were getting smaller and cheaper, some directors were doing a great deal more than just directing actors. They could also be the screenwriter and the director of photography; and some overachieving types were also the costume designer and the production designer and the whole shebang. The usage of this term led to a revolution in the way films were viewed. Suddenly, films from studio systems with massive crews seemed plodding and over-complicated; and it was fresh and exciting that a fantastic, poignant, albeit energetically-cut film could result from the minds and hands of a singular artist.
Fair enough and rightly so, many films, both in and out of the studio system continue to reflect the singular, creative voice of a single person. Goodness, the film student in me still champions some of the beautiful stuff from Rohmer and Godard. A strong vision is important for creative work! Vision and taste should only come and be led by one person. One should never design by committee. This is the backbone that underpins the Auteur Theory — that a collaborative work should be the result of the artistic vision of one person. That’s the whole point of a director, isn’t it? Teams need leaders, and good teams have good leaders with great vision.
It was also convenient for audiences — having one person’s name attached to a large production like film meant that we could associate marks of quality with a small line of text, easy to brand and commoditize. “Kurosawa’s films! Spielberg’s films! Ridley Scott’s films!” — shelves at the video rental store were suddenly far easier to categorize — “M. Night Shyamalan’s films!”
We forget that a collaborative environment such as filmmaking is intrinsically a collaborative environment. Yes, there is a director, and yes, s/he is in charge. But, as I’m sure M. Night might argue, if something sucks, it would most certainly be someone else’s fault.
Wait! If that’s true, wouldn’t the converse of THAT apply? If something’s amazing, surely the director isn’t the sole person responsible for all that credit?
Repeat after me: a collaborative medium is a collaborative effort.
Therein lies the problem with the ‘Auteur Theory’, and the biggest bugbear I have with the position of the film director; not as a figure of authority and taste (that’s important!!!), but as the figure that is collapsed with the weight of the film on hier shoulders. The ‘Auteur Theory’, through celebrating the creative vision of one person, inadvertently or otherwise advocates for the director getting full, complete, absolute credit for a film’s artistic and creative merits. In very few cases, the producer and director of photography share maybe a fraction of that credit. The screenwriter too, maybe. The actors, the people you actually see and watch in a film, are lucky if they were lauded for great performances, despite the possibility that they might have had a fairly strong hand in creating the role for themselves.
This is frankly, unsustainable, foolish, and dangerous. Consumers and audiences quickly forget (and have already forgotten) that there are hundreds of other people who have had a hand in creating the film you see at cinemas; and directors themselves, in good times and bad, will find themselves stuck with the pressure of meeting or breaking expectations.
Let me say again. I too believe that any creative product should be led by a strong vision from one person (unless you are one of the Coen Brothers). I am not trying to undermine the amazing work of those who have proved their mettle, whose work we now know and respect. However a strong director/team leader/creative-vision-thinker is independent of the ‘Auteur’. The difference is, a product can have a strong director/team leader/creative-vision-thinker without the sole, top billing credit going to said one person. So while it’s convenient, it shits me when I say Nolan’s Batman, or Reitman’s Ghostbusters, or even Speilberg’s ET; it’s not theirs per se. They might have directed it, and those movies might have been great, but it’s not ‘theirs’; not really. It’s directed by them, yes. It’s got their vision, yes. But it’s not theirs. Ghostbusters is Ivan Reitman’s, AND Harold Ramis’s AND Dan Ackyrod’s AND Laszlo Kovacs’, AND David E. Blewitt and Sheldon Kahn‘s, AND … I can go on.
So let me add to what I said a few paragraphs ago:
A collaborative medium is still a collaborative effort, IN SPITE of a strong vision and leadership.
The Auteur Theory shits me because it collapses and undermines the work of a large team of people. It shits me because I’m beginning to see the idea being transposed to places outside of film, where core designers, creative directors and team leaders are subsuming all the credit that come from a team of dedicated, supremely talented people. It shits me because I’ve seen it lead to submissive work environments where teams defeatedly disown a product mid-production, because they know that they won’t be getting much credit for their work anyway. Goodness knows I’ve been guilty of that.
I know, I know. I’m railing against an old practice that is unlikely to change. It’s much easier to associate a collaborative product with one name than a whole list of credits. It’s just easier that way. Just as it is easy remembering that M. Night Shyamalan wrote and produced Devil, and singlehandedly whitewashed and destroyed a beloved cartoon series. But if you’re reading this, and you recognize the problems I see, please maybe remind yourself the next time you see someone’s name before anything potentially collaborative, that there may well be hundreds of other names that go unnoticed, some of whom are as just as instrumental in creating the product as the director/team leader/vision-head-honcho.
David Shiyang Liu is an ex-filmmaker and designer now working in Virtual Reality. This article is part of a series of old blog-posts he’s trying to migrate over to Medium (because all the cool kids are doing it), and was originally published on June 5, 2013.
