As we come to a close for the semester, we end with auteur theory and a taste of art cinema. And yes, the journals have been read already (which is why the post is late).
because of many individual contributions, i.e. music, writing; the idea of auteur becomes the combining force & the catalysts for the individual parts leaves room for auteur as individual (final determining creative force) & as combining force in “new” Hollywood, defining auteur is difficult if even possible – auteur names are thrown around as labeling for cataloging & marketing (a film by James Cameron) other kinds of auteurs
- studios – a particular house style | Warner Bros. in 1930’s
- producer – certain visions in each work | Jerry Bruckheimer
- star – takes over film, a “star” signature | Kevin Costner, Johnny Depp
- spectator – meaning is only created in act of reading – an encoded message (text)
- remains only as potential meaning until it’s decoded by a reader (or spectator) different readers come to a text with own specific social, cultural, & psychological formations as individuals
- text is “authored” by the reader rather than by text’s originator
auteur based critical approach
- auteur director regarded as “persona”
- his role must be excavated through critical analysis
- emphasis on biographical is common
- need to have available generic structure of auteur to evaluate film to
- even if spectator ignorant of auteur structure, simple power of naming remains significant
- power of name recognition
- name as trademark or guarantee
- name-tag commodity (Spielberg)
- auteur study attempts to establish set of thematic & stylistic features (a signified) for the auteur name (the signifier)
- more so done by auteur who quite consciously puts in place components of an identity which his name can then be said to signify
- today, director of strives self-consciously to construct recognizable auteur identity to confirm commercial & critical existence of name they bear
real challenge is examining work of directors whose work is so varied we are tempted to artificially limit range & scope of work for purpose of critical neatness
- such as developing a check list to apply to all films of specific director
auteur structure doesn’t offer itself as schema for audience to work with although additional layers of meaning & response can emerge when a body of films which have shared auteur origins
Remember that we have a make-up class on Monday! Any suggestions for a topic of interest or anything you would want to discuss more from class? We will also review for the final exam.
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