Auteur theory
Encyclopedia
In film criticism
, auteur theory holds that a director
's film
reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French
word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process.
In law, the film is treated as a work of art, and the auteur, as the creator of the film, is the original copyright
holder. Under European Union
law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory.
Auteur theory has influenced film criticism since 1954, when it was advocated by film director and critic François Truffaut
. This method of film analysis was originally associated with the French New Wave
and the film critics who wrote for the French film review periodical Cahiers du Cinéma
. Auteur theory was developed a few years later in America through the writings of The Village Voice
critic Andrew Sarris
. Sarris used auteur theory as a way to further the analysis of what defines serious work through the study of respected directors and their films.
and argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision. They championed filmmakers such as Howard Hawks
, Alfred Hitchcock
, and Jean Renoir
as absolute 'auteurs' of their films. Although André Bazin
, co-founder of the Cahiers, provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he explained his concern about its excesses in his article "On the Auteur Theory" (Cahier # 70, 1957).
Another element of Auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc
's notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen," which encourages directors to wield cameras as writers use pens and to guard against the hindrances of traditional storytelling.
Truffaut and the members of the Cahiers recognized that movie-making was an industrial process. However, they proposed an ideal to strive for, encouraging the director to use the commercial apparatus as a writer uses a pen, and, through the mise en scène
, imprint his or her vision on the work (minimizing the role of the screenwriter
). Recognizing the difficulty of reaching this ideal, they valued the work of directors who came close.
coined the phrase "la politique des Auteurs", asserting that the worst of Jean Renoir's movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy
. "Politique" might very well be translated as "policy" or "program"; it involves a conscious decision to value and look at films in a certain way. Truffaut provocatively said: "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors".
Truffaut's article, by his own admission, dealt primarily with scenarists or screenwriters, precisely the screenwriting duo Jean Aurenche
and Pierre Bost, who, Truffaut believed, simplified and compromised many of the great works of French literature in order to support the political agenda of their day. In Truffaut's article, he references the director Claude Autant-Lara
's characterization of his adaptation of Raymond Radiguet
's Devil in the Flesh as an "anti-war" book, citing the problem that the book pre-dated the Second World War. Truffaut applied the term "auteur" to directors like Jean Renoir
, Max Ophuls
, Jacques Becker
, Jacques Tati
, and Robert Bresson
, who, aside from exerting their distinct style, wrote the screenplays or worked on the writing of screenplays of their films.
In its embryonic form, the auteur theory dealt with the nature of literary adaptations and Truffaut's discomfort with the screenwriters Aurenche's and Bost's maxim that any film adaptation of a novel should capture the spirit of the novel and deal only with its "filmable" aspects. Truffaut believed that film directors like Robert Bresson were able to use the film narrative to approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes. To support this assertion, he used the film version of Georges Bernanos
's Diary of a Country Priest
.
Much of the writing of Truffaut and his colleagues at the film criticism magazine Cahiers du cinéma was designed to lambaste not only the post-war French cinema
but especially the big production films of the cinéma de qualité ("quality films"). Truffaut's circle referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashioned cinéma de papa (or "Dad's cinema"). During the Nazi occupation
, the Vichy
government did not allow the exhibition of U.S. films such as The Maltese Falcon
and Citizen Kane
. In 1946, when French film critics were finally able to see the 1940s U.S. movies, they were enamoured with these films.
Truffaut's theory maintains that a good director (and many bad ones) exerts such a distinctive style or promotes such a consistent theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work. Truffaut himself was appreciative of directors whose work showed a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock) as well as those whose visual style was less pronounced but whose movies reflected a consistent theme (such as Jean Renoir's humanism). Truffaut et al. made the distinction between auteurs and 'metteurs en scene
', the latter not being described as inferior directors making inherently poor films, just lacking the authorial signature.
studio system
during the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made.
The "auteur" approach was adopted in English-language
film criticism in the 1960s. In the UK, Movie adopted Auteurism, while in the U.S., Andrew Sarris
introduced it in the essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962". This essay is where the term, "Auteur theory", originated. To be classified as an "auteur", according to Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning (although many of Sarris's auterist criteria were left vague). Later in the decade, Sarris published The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, which quickly became the unofficial bible of auteurism.
The auteurist critics—Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard
, Claude Chabrol
, Éric Rohmer
—wrote mostly about directors (as they were directors themselves), although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. Later writers of the same general school have emphasised the contributions of star personalities such as Mae West
. However, the stress was on directors; and screenwriters, producers and others have reacted with a good deal of hostility. Writer William Goldman
has said that, on first hearing the Auteur theory, his reaction was, "What's the punchline?"
and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker
and various film magazines. One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane
, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz
and cinematographer Gregg Toland
.
Notable screenwriters such as Ernest Lehman
, Nicholas Kazan
, Robert Riskin
and William Goldman
have publicly balked at the idea that directors are more authorial than screenwriters, while film historian Aljean Harmetz
, referring to the creative input of producers and studio executives in classical Hollywood, argues that the auteur theory "collapses against the reality of the studio system".
The auteur theory was also challenged by the influence of New Criticism
, a school of literary criticism
. The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy
" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. New Critics argued that that information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature.
In 2006, David Kippen coined the term Schreiber theory
to refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal author of a film.
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
, auteur theory holds that a director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
's film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
reflects the director's personal creative vision, as if they were the primary "auteur" (the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
word for "author"). In spite of—and sometimes even because of—the production of the film as part of an industrial process, the auteur's creative voice is distinct enough to shine through all kinds of studio interference and through the collective process.
In law, the film is treated as a work of art, and the auteur, as the creator of the film, is the original copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
holder. Under European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
law, the film director is considered the author or one of the authors of a film, largely as a result of the influence of auteur theory.
Auteur theory has influenced film criticism since 1954, when it was advocated by film director and critic François Truffaut
François Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
. This method of film analysis was originally associated with the French New Wave
French New Wave
The New Wave was a blanket term coined by critics for a group of French filmmakers of the late 1950s and 1960s, influenced by Italian Neorealism and classical Hollywood cinema. Although never a formally organized movement, the New Wave filmmakers were linked by their self-conscious rejection of...
and the film critics who wrote for the French film review periodical Cahiers du Cinéma
Cahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
. Auteur theory was developed a few years later in America through the writings of The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
critic Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
. Sarris used auteur theory as a way to further the analysis of what defines serious work through the study of respected directors and their films.
Origin
Auteur theory draws on the work of a group of cinema enthusiasts who wrote for Cahiers du CinémaCahiers du cinéma
Cahiers du Cinéma is an influential French film magazine founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca. It developed from the earlier magazine Revue du Cinéma involving members of two Paris film clubs — Objectif 49 and...
and argued that films should reflect a director's personal vision. They championed filmmakers such as Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
, Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, and Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
as absolute 'auteurs' of their films. Although André Bazin
André Bazin
André Bazin was a renowned and influential French film critic and film theorist.-Life:Bazin was born in Angers, France, in 1918...
, co-founder of the Cahiers, provided a forum for Auteurism to flourish, he explained his concern about its excesses in his article "On the Auteur Theory" (Cahier # 70, 1957).
Another element of Auteur theory comes from Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc
Alexandre Astruc is a French film critic and film director born 13 July 1923, in Paris .Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic...
's notion of the caméra-stylo or "camera-pen," which encourages directors to wield cameras as writers use pens and to guard against the hindrances of traditional storytelling.
Truffaut and the members of the Cahiers recognized that movie-making was an industrial process. However, they proposed an ideal to strive for, encouraging the director to use the commercial apparatus as a writer uses a pen, and, through the mise en scène
Mise en scène
Mise-en-scène is an expression used to describe the design aspects of a theatre or film production, which essentially means "visual theme" or "telling a story"—both in visually artful ways through storyboarding, cinematography and stage design, and in poetically artful ways through direction...
, imprint his or her vision on the work (minimizing the role of the screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
). Recognizing the difficulty of reaching this ideal, they valued the work of directors who came close.
Truffaut's development
In his 1954 essay "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" ("A certain tendency in French cinema"), François TruffautFrançois Truffaut
François Roland Truffaut was an influential film critic and filmmaker and one of the founders of the French New Wave. In a film career lasting over a quarter of a century, he remains an icon of the French film industry. He was also a screenwriter, producer, and actor working on over twenty-five...
coined the phrase "la politique des Auteurs", asserting that the worst of Jean Renoir's movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy
Jean Delannoy was a French actor, film editor, screenwriter and film director.Although Delannoy was born in a Paris suburb, his family is from Haute-Normandie in the north of France...
. "Politique" might very well be translated as "policy" or "program"; it involves a conscious decision to value and look at films in a certain way. Truffaut provocatively said: "(t)here are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors".
Truffaut's article, by his own admission, dealt primarily with scenarists or screenwriters, precisely the screenwriting duo Jean Aurenche
Jean Aurenche
Jean Aurenche was a French screenwriter. During his career, he wrote 80 films for directors such as René Clément, Bertrand Tavernier, Marcel Carné, Jean Delannoy, Sidney Lumet or Claude Autant Lara...
and Pierre Bost, who, Truffaut believed, simplified and compromised many of the great works of French literature in order to support the political agenda of their day. In Truffaut's article, he references the director Claude Autant-Lara
Claude Autant-Lara
Claude Autant-Lara , was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament .-Biography:...
's characterization of his adaptation of Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet
Raymond Radiguet was a French author whose two novels were noted for their explicit themes and writing style and tone.-Early life:...
's Devil in the Flesh as an "anti-war" book, citing the problem that the book pre-dated the Second World War. Truffaut applied the term "auteur" to directors like Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir
Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...
, Max Ophuls
Max Ophüls
Maximillian Oppenheimer — known as Max Ophüls — was an influential German-born film director who worked in Germany , France , the United States , and France again...
, Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker
Jacques Becker was a French screenwriter and film director.Becker was born in Paris, in an upper class background. During the 1930s he worked as an assistant to director Jean Renoir during his peak period, which produced such cinematic masterpieces as Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game...
, Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati
Jacques Tati was a French filmmaker, working as a comedic actor, writer and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time...
, and Robert Bresson
Robert Bresson
-Life and career:Bresson was born at Bromont-Lamothe, Puy-de-Dôme, the son of Marie-Élisabeth and Léon Bresson. Little is known of his early life and the year of his birth, 1901 or 1907, varies depending on the source. He was educated at Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, close to Paris, and...
, who, aside from exerting their distinct style, wrote the screenplays or worked on the writing of screenplays of their films.
In its embryonic form, the auteur theory dealt with the nature of literary adaptations and Truffaut's discomfort with the screenwriters Aurenche's and Bost's maxim that any film adaptation of a novel should capture the spirit of the novel and deal only with its "filmable" aspects. Truffaut believed that film directors like Robert Bresson were able to use the film narrative to approach even the so-called "unfilmable" scenes. To support this assertion, he used the film version of Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...
's Diary of a Country Priest
Diary of a Country Priest
Diary of a Country Priest is a 1951 French film directed by Robert Bresson, and starring Claude Laydu. It was closely based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. Published in 1937, the novel received the Grand prix du roman de l'Académie française...
.
Much of the writing of Truffaut and his colleagues at the film criticism magazine Cahiers du cinéma was designed to lambaste not only the post-war French cinema
Cinema of France
The Cinema of France comprises the art of film and creative movies made within the nation of France or by French filmmakers abroad.France is the birthplace of cinema and was responsible for many of its early significant contributions. Several important cinematic movements, including the Nouvelle...
but especially the big production films of the cinéma de qualité ("quality films"). Truffaut's circle referred to these films with disdain as sterile, old-fashioned cinéma de papa (or "Dad's cinema"). During the Nazi occupation
Vichy France
Vichy France, Vichy Regime, or Vichy Government, are common terms used to describe the government of France that collaborated with the Axis powers from July 1940 to August 1944. This government succeeded the Third Republic and preceded the Provisional Government of the French Republic...
, the Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
government did not allow the exhibition of U.S. films such as The Maltese Falcon
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film)
The Maltese Falcon is a 1941 Warner Bros. film based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and a remake of the 1931 film of the same name...
and Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
. In 1946, when French film critics were finally able to see the 1940s U.S. movies, they were enamoured with these films.
Truffaut's theory maintains that a good director (and many bad ones) exerts such a distinctive style or promotes such a consistent theme that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her work. Truffaut himself was appreciative of directors whose work showed a marked visual style (such as Alfred Hitchcock) as well as those whose visual style was less pronounced but whose movies reflected a consistent theme (such as Jean Renoir's humanism). Truffaut et al. made the distinction between auteurs and 'metteurs en scene
Metteur en scène
Metteur en scène is a phrase that refers to the mise en scène of a particular film director. It suggests that the director has an original aesthetic style that can be detected while watching his or her films....
', the latter not being described as inferior directors making inherently poor films, just lacking the authorial signature.
Impact
The auteur theory was used by the directors of the nouvelle vague (New Wave) movement of French cinema in the 1960s (many of whom were also critics at the Cahiers du Cinéma) as justification for their intensely personal and idiosyncratic films. One of the ironies of the Auteur theory is that, at the very moment Truffaut was writing, the break-up of the HollywoodCinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
studio system
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
during the 1950s was ushering in a period of uncertainty and conservatism in American cinema, with the result that fewer of the sort of films Truffaut admired were actually being made.
The "auteur" approach was adopted in English-language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
film criticism in the 1960s. In the UK, Movie adopted Auteurism, while in the U.S., Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
introduced it in the essay, "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962". This essay is where the term, "Auteur theory", originated. To be classified as an "auteur", according to Sarris, a director must accomplish technical competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning (although many of Sarris's auterist criteria were left vague). Later in the decade, Sarris published The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929–1968, which quickly became the unofficial bible of auteurism.
The auteurist critics—Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol
Claude Chabrol was a French film director, a member of the French New Wave group of filmmakers who first came to prominence at the end of the 1950s...
, Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
—wrote mostly about directors (as they were directors themselves), although they also produced some shrewd appreciations of actors. Later writers of the same general school have emphasised the contributions of star personalities such as Mae West
Mae West
Mae West was an American actress, playwright, screenwriter and sex symbol whose entertainment career spanned seven decades....
. However, the stress was on directors; and screenwriters, producers and others have reacted with a good deal of hostility. Writer William Goldman
William Goldman
William Goldman is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
has said that, on first hearing the Auteur theory, his reaction was, "What's the punchline?"
Criticism
Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director. Pauline KaelPauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and various film magazines. One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Herman Jacob Mankiewicz was an American screenwriter, who, with Orson Welles, wrote the screenplay for Citizen Kane . Earlier, he was the Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the drama critic for The New York Times and The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott, said that Herman Mankiewicz was...
and cinematographer Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland
Gregg Toland, A.S.C. was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, an example of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.-Career:...
.
Notable screenwriters such as Ernest Lehman
Ernest Lehman
Ernest Lehman was an American screenwriter. He received 6 Academy Award nominations during his screenwriting career...
, Nicholas Kazan
Nicholas Kazan
Nicholas Kazan is an American writer, producer and director. He is the son of director Elia Kazan and his first wife, playwright Mary Day Thacher Kazan. He married Robin Swicord, a writer, producer, actress, and director in 1984. His daughter is the actress Zoe Kazan.Kazan, also a noted...
, Robert Riskin
Robert Riskin
Robert Riskin was an American screenwriter and playwright, best known for his collaborations with director-producer Frank Capra.-Career:...
and William Goldman
William Goldman
William Goldman is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
have publicly balked at the idea that directors are more authorial than screenwriters, while film historian Aljean Harmetz
Aljean Harmetz
Aljean Harmetz is a Hollywood journalist and film historian. She has written as a Hollywood film correspondent for The New York Times since 1981....
, referring to the creative input of producers and studio executives in classical Hollywood, argues that the auteur theory "collapses against the reality of the studio system".
The auteur theory was also challenged by the influence of New Criticism
New Criticism
New Criticism was a movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic...
, a school of literary criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
. The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy
Intentional fallacy
Intentional fallacy, in literary criticism, addresses the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance. By characterizing this assumption as a "fallacy", a critic suggests that the author's intention is not important. The term is an important...
" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. New Critics argued that that information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature.
In 2006, David Kippen coined the term Schreiber theory
Schreiber theory
The Schreiber theory is a writer-centred approach to film criticism which holds that the principal author of a film is generally the screenwriter rather than the director...
to refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal author of a film.
See also
- Film criticismFilm criticismFilm criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
- List of motion picture-related topics
- Philosophy of filmPhilosophy of filmThe philosophy of film is a branch of aesthetics within the discipline of philosophy that seeks to understand the most basic questions regarding film.- History :...
External links
- BBC guide Auteur Theory in Film Criticism
- Teachers guide to autuer theory pdf
- acu.edu course guide to autuer theory
- Film journal article on Saris and Kael
- Auteur Theory History/Criticism
- 16+ source guides: Auteur Theory/Auteurs at the British Film Institute
- Authorship and The Films of David Lynch - a critical essay from The British Film Resource
- Criticisms of autuer theory at scribd