The Place of an Auteur Director in the Nigerian Video Film Industry

I will talk about how auteur theory can be applied to the study of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and vertigo.

An auteur is a director who personal creative vision and style is expressed through films. The term auteur is originated in France and is French for author. There are different ways in which a director can express their vision in films and show who they are. There are many directors that are considered to be a auteur such as: Quentin Tarintino, Tim Burton, Kathryn Bigelow, Stanley Kubrick and Woody Allen. The director I have chosen as an auteur is Spike Lee.

Bordwell, D. (1979). The art cinema as a mode of film practice. Film Criticism, 4(1), 56-64.

I never gave much thought into what it takes to shoot, direct, edit, and complete a motion picture. Sure, it may sound fun, but after this assignment, it felt like a lot of work. There are quite a few specialized groups that put together the films that we enjoy in our movie theatres. No wonder why it takes months and even years to edit a film, these folks are making sure things are done and synced correctly! The following essay will identify information pertaining to film and importance for their audience so the person or persons watching can have an understanding of what it is they are viewing. A story that has no meaning or becomes very confusing in the details that are presented does not make a good film.

In the film industry, there are directors who merely take someone else’s vision and express it in their own way on film, then there are those who take their own visions and use any means necessary to express their visions on film. The latter of these two types of directors are called auteurs. Not only do auteurs write the scripts from elements that they know and love in life, but they direct, produce, and sometimes act in their films as well. Three prime examples of these auteurs are: Kevin Smith, Spike Lee and Alfred Hitchcock.

During the 1940’s, the idea of the auteur theory arose. It was crafted by Andre Bazin, who was a French film critic, and Roger Leenhardt, a filmmaker. They stated that a film should represent the directors vision. Another French film critic, Alexandre Astruc, enhanced the auteur theory by expressing that directors with their camera should be like writers with their pen. This would make a director’s films all have the same type of aspects. Once a director makes a number of films, a certain “finger print” can be seen throughout his creations.

A film director controls a film's dramatic and artistic aspects, and over a number of their films, they produce recurrent themes or characteristics of style seen throughout their creations by the use of repeated subject matter, being referred to as their 'preoccupations'. When a director's style is recognizable, they are considered an ' auteur', denoting that they influence their films so strongly, to the extent that they are considered a kind of author of their movies. This is supported by the quote "Over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature.”, from Andrew Sarris, a Prevailing Film Critic of the Late 1900's, whom pioneered the auteur theory. Many directors were reviewed by Andrew Sarris, namely established and popular director Tim Burton, who is deemed as an auteur, particularly for his preoccupation with Gothic Horror literature, and its common elements. Some of his famous movies of the last fifty decades, include 'Alice In Wonderland', 'Edward Scissor Hands' and 'Big Fish'. Burton's preoccupations are prominent in all previously mentioned films.

    Film and literature are two media forms that are so closely related, that we often forget there is a distinction between them. We often just view the movie as an extension of the book because most movies are based on novels or short stories. Because we are accustomed to this sequence of production, first the novel, then the motion picture, we often find ourselves making value judgments about a movie, based upon our feelings on the novel. It is this overlapping of the creative processes that prevents us from seeing movies as distinct and separate art forms from the novels they are based on.

The term Auteur seems to bless a privileged group of filmmakers with an almost messiah-like legacy. Men such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Fritz Lange are believed to inhabit the ranks of the cinematic elite, and not surprisingly most critics are more than willing to bestow upon them the title of Auteur. By regarding filmmaking as yet another form of art, Auteur theory stipulates that a film is the direct result of its director's genius. With the emerging prominence of auteur based criticism in the 1950?s, the role of the director became increasingly integral to a film's success. However most would argue that this form of criticism didn't reach its apex until 1960s, when Andrew Sarris released his

‘There are…two kinds of film makers: one invents an imaginary reality; the other confronts an existing reality and attempts to understand it, criticise it…and finally, translate it into film’

The film industry has always been somewhat of a dichotomy. Grounded firmly in both the worlds of art and business the balance of artistic expression and commercialization has been an issue throughout the history of filmmaking. The distinction of these two differing goals and the fact that neither has truly won out over the other in the span of the industry's existence, demonstrates a lot of information about the nature of capitalism.

Auteur Theory is based on three premises, the first being technique, the second being personal style, and the third being interior meaning. Furthermore, there is no specific order in which these three aspects must be presented or weighted with regard to a film. An Auteur must give films a distinctive quality thus exerting a personal creative vision and interjecting it into the his or her films.

The romantic idea of the auteur is described by film theoretician, André Bazin, observing the film form as an idealistic phenomenon. Through the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard reference, Bazin primarily refers to an essential literary and romantic conception of the artist as central. He considers the relationship between film aesthetics and reality more important than the director itself and places cinema above paintings. He described paintings as a similar ethical creation to film stating a director ‘can be valued according to its measurements and the celebrity of the signature, the objective quality of the work itself was formerly held in much higher esteem.’ (Bazin, 1967: 250). Bazin contemplates the historical and social aspects that indeed hinder a director’s retribution to their own personalised film, thus en-companying their own ideological judgement upon the world ‘more so in cinema where the sociological and historical cross-currents are countless.’ (Bazin, 1967: 256)

When it comes to movies, many directors are good at their jobs. However, other directors are great in the art of film making. There is no doubt such statement is considered utterly subjective, but what would life be without subjectivity, for it is our differences that make us thrive against a monotonic existence. By the same token, Alfred Hitchcock and Christopher Nolan utilize their singularities to create films that for decades have impacted the movie making universe. In fact, it is their differences that provide us with a high contrast to compare and scrutinize their job and find what made them great at it.

Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" provides us with an outline of the history of the work of art and the historical changes, which have led to the transformation of experience from Erfahrung to Erlebnis. It is only in the post-modern or so called post-industrial age that the concept of autonomy handed down to us from Kant, among others, begins to reveal it ideological nature. Benjamin's analysis of autonomous art not only destroys our notions of the wholistic work, but also dispels the illusion of the artist as transcendental creator. Let us