Word: films
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...doctrine that lifted directors to their new eminence first appeared in the pages of the resolutely avant-garde French magazine Cahiers du Cinema. In January 1954, Truffaut, then a critic and aspiring film maker, wrote a prophetic article entitled "Politique des Auteurs" ("The Mark of the Author"). Its purpose: to show that celluloid could be just as prestigious as paper. Movies were not group art, he argued. The scenario, camera work and acting were all under the unifying force of the director -the author of a body of film work...
...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...
...Focal Point. None of these problems invalidates the French theory. Film has all but replaced the novel as the chief topic of cultural talk on the campus and at many cocktail parties. Audiences as well as critics need someone to praise or blame for the total product. Given that need-and his new intellectual credentials-the director has become the focal point of film making. Henry Hathaway (True Grit), Howard Hawks (Red River) and John Ford (Cheyenne Autumn) have been reappraised as the prime movers of the west ern. Alfred Hitchcock has been called an eminent psychologist for his shrewd...
...seems to me," he says, "that the highest achievement in a film is for no technique to be visible...
...ultimate accolade to an artist's consistency-in any medium-is the suffix "esque" at the end of his name. To say a film is "Felliniesque," for example, is to suggest operatic and surrealistic fantasies, or the mixture of brio and disgust with which Fellini views society. "Godardesque" implies the nervous tics and mannerisms of an artist whose creative palsy can produce intriguing collages but never a totally complete vision. "Antonioniesque" suggests the world as a chessboard, full of malignant surfaces and doomed figures. "Pennesque," "Nicholsesque," "Kubrick-esque"-the labels refuse to stick. Yet the time...