Word: auteurism
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...auteur theory of film criticism has gone through many transformations since its initial conception. For Andre Bazin and his Cahiers du Cinema scions in the 40's and 50's, approaching a film as if it were creatively guided by a single intelligence-preferably that of the director-provided opportunities for scholarly, disciplined film thought. Just as a modern writer is judged more by an oeuvre, his body of work, than by a single masterpiece, the Cahiers critics traced continual directorial themes and motifs, evaluating the creator's relationship to his subject by the manner in which it was visually...
Among the "classics" canonized in Confessions of a Cultist are Aldrich's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns, Hitchcock's The Birds, Preminger's Advise and Consent. All are auteur genre items; Sarris rarely has the flexibility of such British auteurists as Raymond Durgnat to admit that non-auteurs can produce great films. Each has raw narrative material of questionable significance, and a blatant commercial bent which made the few respectable critics feel rotten and cheated the morning after, unless trash was all they expected...
Despite its persuasive power, the auteur theory suffered from one serious flaw. Though the Cahiers critics had an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, they understood little of the Hollywood System. From the '30s onward, American directors have often been mere foremen, called in for the job after the laborers -including the actors-were hired by the studio. Some, like John Huston, are capable of severe impressive films (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre). Others are erratic job-by-job film makers whose unifying philosophy seems to be a healthy respect for the box-office receipts...
...prime movers of the west ern. Alfred Hitchcock has been called an eminent psychologist for his shrewd manipulation of audiences as well as actors. Some of the praise seems fulsome: Jerry Lewis has been compared favorably with Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles. Still, general acceptance of the auteur theory has given American directors new power with major studios and fresh rapport with audiences. Though no American film maker has yet achieved the stature of Italy's Visconti or Britain's David Lean, a handful seem to be well on their way: ∙ ARTHUR PENN. A product of television...
...Reisz. But for The Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger achieved total freedom. "United Artists didn't come near me," he boasts. And Paramount Pictures has granted Mike Nichols final authority over Catch-22. It is happily in the French tradition that the facts are finally catching up with the auteur theory...