LA POLITIQUE DES AUTEURS/THE “AUTEUR” THEORY

The WWII Experience in France

From Famine to Feast (flood of withheld

films)

1951 Cahiers du Cinema (Cinema Journal)

André Bazin

Alexandre Astruc – Le Caméra-Stylo (The Camera Pen)

François Truffaut

Jean-Luc Godard

Claude Chabrol

Eric Roehmer

Jacques Rivette

Admired Directors:

Hitchcock

John Ford

Howard Hawks

Jean Renoir (rare French exception)

1954 Truffaut Critiques “The Tradition of Quality” and calls for “La Politique des Auteurs” (the Auteur Policy/Strategy) in “Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Française”

The Chief Tenets of the Auteur Strategy:

Film as an Expressive Medium

Style as World View

Theme and World-View

The “Curve” of a Body of Work

The Intersection of Auteur and Genre

1959: La Nouvelle Vague/The New Wave

The 400 Blows (Truffaut)

Breathless (Godard)

Le Beau Serge (Chabrol)

Paris Belongs to Us (Rivette) 

Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, Marguerite Duras)

U.S. IN THE SIXTIES

Andrew Sarris: “The Auteur Theory”

The American Cinema – The Pantheon

John Ford

Howard Hawks

Alfred Hitchcock

Orson Welles

The New American Cinema

Cassavetes

Coppola

Scorsese

Altman

Spielberg

Lucas

Reactions Against the Auteur Theory

• Counter "The Great Man"
• It's Not Just the Director

RETURN to ENG196 Page.