Robert Lapsley and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. Manchester, Manchester UP, 1998.
Part Two, Chapter Four (pp.105-128)
- Authorship
"Nothing in recent film theory has excited more controversy than its rulings on authorship."
Author is meaninful as a construct of the spectator
Announce the death of the author
(historical modes of thinking cinema)
(historical modes of thinking cinema)
Establish Cinema as art and comprehend its social functioning
Auteurism: cinema as an art of personal expression, directors as authors of their works, such as writers, painters, etc. (Romantic notion). Some film critics reacted to that position, such as Barthes.
Objectives: Trace the broad outlines of auteurism development. In "La politique des auteurs" ( 1948), Alexandre Astruct compared the camera with a pen. Six years later Francois Truffaut used the term auteur to contrast man of the cinema with metteurs-en-scene. Division between the "elected" and the "damned", those favoured by Auteurism critics tended to concentrate on spiritual insight and salvation.
Controversial when applied to American cinema. Auteurism, according to Andrew Sarris, made American Cinema look superior. In britain and France auteurism displaced the concept that films were judged according to how well they conveyed messages of ethical/philosophical/social content (the social effect of cinema). This means a textual utilitarianism to the detriment of aesthetical appreciation.
Auteurist critics associated with the journal Movie looked to a cinema that had style, imagination, personality and, because of this, meaning. (responding to the thematic criticism) Cahiers began to concentrate on the mise-en-scène (lighting, camera sets, aciting, things which are directorial choice). By taking a film script and imposing a directorial style, an auteur makes a film his own. Sarris: "how" instead of the sociological "what", but it was Movie who really concentrateed in the mise-en-scène.
"Despite its aesthetics orthodoxy auterism provoked opposition even among those commited to a romantic notion of the artist" (p.107). It was acceptable tha directors like Bergman (who had control over the production process) should be deemed an artist, but it was far from clear why directors inside the studio system should be regarded so. Auteurists invoked Mozart and Michelangelo who worked under institutional constrains and produced great art and had identity of style. Director as a source of unity in a film.
Conventions, formulaic plots close new meanings v. system of rules bring the possibility of transgression.
* Auteurism: "an aesthetic of consumption", "no more than a branch of taste, i.e., gastronomy" (Althusser)
* Withdrawn from public debate, des-engaged from concrete social issues (Habermas)
Lévi-Strauss (draws on Roman Jacobson and Suassure) Binary opposition features governs not only language but all human culture. Wollen applied the research method to films concentratating on the oeuvre (obra total do autor).
Master antimony: Nature x Culture, East x West, Book x Gun, for example, the element Indian (x Europe) may be alligned with savage in one film and civilised in the other. The meaning alters with the context altering all the meanings of other elements.
This position is then challenged by Brian Henderson, who points to the fact that myths have no centre, do not originate in a subject but rely on interchangeability of subjects to survive. The method is innaplicable, cannot be compared with a corpus of films whose distinctive signature is that of the author. Wollen revise this position thinking of the text as produced by the author and thinking of the author as produced by the act of reading (post-modern position).
