History MediaNotes / TheAuteurTheory

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Hitchcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller, Creator/RobertAldrich and even BMovie directors like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment. They felt that these critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked, driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once these critics started directing the edgy, avant-garde films of the UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave and gave many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as "the auteur theory" or "auteurism", and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors. This list tended to include lesser-known filmmakers, and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time (who knew these concepts), like Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg, and others like Creator/WoodyAllen, became directors in their own right. The culmination of this was the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, also known as "the age of the director", where film directors received ProtectionFromEditors and had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars in front of the camera. On one hand, this produced a creative explosion in American cinema in TheSeventies, with many films frequently cited on "greatest of all time" lists having been made in the '70s by auteur filmmakers. On the other hand, a backlash eventually emerged against the idea, with some believing it enables the PrimaDonnaDirector mindset; expensive flops like ''Film/HeavensGate'' and ''Film/OneFromTheHeart'' were often cited as showing what happened when this idea went too far. Some have even described the idea as creating a dictatorship run by the director. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent filmmakers in America and around the world, and the core idea of film as an art form capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured. In that respect, the idea was a success.

* The original auteurists likewise also took it for granted, on the part of their readers, and in their writings, that a film-maker who they classified as "auteur" [[RequiredSecondaryPowers are fundamentally competent technicians, good storytellers]] and that their films are genuinely very good. It's true that they championed film-makers like Hawks or Hitchcock who were seen as entertainers (in their time) but which they argued were great artists, but this has often led later writers to make claims that the likes of Creator/EdWood can be seen as an auteur, and especially in TheOughties to put forth ideas of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_auteurism vulgar auteurism]] by which any mass market product can be potentially seen as auteurist since some of them are made and codified by film-makers with a distinct visual and editing style. Film historians note that the original ''Cahiers'' writers were in an entirely different film-making era, a time when genre fiction like science-fiction and pulp narratives were low-budget BMovie, with little known, obscure B-Grade actors which really did require film-makers to use style and creativity to improvise and riff off of weak stories and technical limitations. This is different from UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood where such genre fiction receive astronomically high movie budgets, top of the line visual effects and production values, and A-List stars. When films like TheWestern or the suspense thriller, FilmNoir and others were more or less ordinary fare, as opposed to the late 20th-early 21st, when such genres are evoked as NostalgiaFilter GenreThrowback (as the Western is) or seen as prestigious (thrillers and Neo-Noir like ''Film/GoneGirl'' and ''Film/{{Zodiac|2007}}''). This is not to say of course that the idea of a mass-market auteur is no longer possible, in theory it is, but it's being defined in an entirely different context from the one in TheFifties, and a different period of mass entertainment, and as such claims of direct continuity are at best EntertaininglyWrong.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time (who knew these concepts), like Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg, and others like Creator/WoodyAllen, became directors in their own right. The culmination of this was the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, also known as "the age of the director", where film directors received ProtectionFromEditors and had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars in front of the camera. On one hand, this produced a creative explosion in American cinema in TheSeventies, with many films frequently cited on "greatest of all time" lists having been made in the '70s by auteur filmmakers. On the other hand, a backlash eventually emerged against the idea, with some believing it enables the PrimaDonnaDirector mindset; expensive flops like ''Film/HeavensGate'' and ''Film/OneFromTheHeart'' were often cited as showing what happened when this idea went too far. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent filmmakers in America and around the world, and the core idea of film as an art form capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured. In that respect, the idea was a success.

To begin with, there's the word, "auteur", French for "author". The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous French cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinéma'' titled ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'', which translates as "A Certain Tendency of French Cinema". The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, and as its name suggests, its original context was specific to French cinema in the '50s. At the time, the general claim against cinema being TrueArt was that it was "art by committee" and lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians, and architects to their mediums. The movies that had cultural cachet then were the French version of OscarBait -- films with prestigious literary pedigree, which the ''Cahiers'' critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique compared to, say, a film by Creator/AlfredHitchcock which abounded with invention.

The concept of the "auteur" had a great deal of vogue in the '60s and '70s, where it was used in magazines and the media as a catch-all shorthand of a "serious film-maker" or "great director". In America it was then, and remains in the Internet Age, a real controversial subject among movie geeks, because for some, it overestimates the importance of the film's director over his other collaborators, assigning him credit for a film over the writers who, in the majority of instances, come up with the story and characters, the actors who play the roles, the producers who fund the films, and the army of collaborators who play a role in shaping the product. There is, needless to say, much confusion about what "auteurism", or the "auteur theory", means and how its definitions shifted.

* The original auteurists likewise also took it for granted, on the part of their readers, and in their writings, that a film-maker who they classified as "auteur" [[RequiredSecondaryPowers are fundamentally competent technicians, good storytellers]] and that their films are genuinely very good. It's true that they championed film-makers like Hawks or Hitchcock who were seen as entertainers (in their time) but which they argued were great artists, but this has often led later writers to make claims that the likes of Creator/EdWood can be seen as an auteur, and especially in TheOughties to put forth ideas of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_auteurism vulgar auteurism]] by which any mass market product can be potentially seen as auteurist since some of them are made and codified by film-makers with a distinct visual and editing style. Film historians note that the original ''Cahiers'' writers were in an entirely different film-making era, a time when genre fiction like science-fiction and pulp narratives were low-budget BMovie, with little known, obscure B-Grade actors which really did require film-makers to use style and creativity to improvise and riff off of weak stories and technical limitations. This is different from UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood where such genre fiction receive astronomically high movie budgets, top of the line visual effects and production values, and A-List stars. When films like TheWestern or the suspense thriller, FilmNoir and others were more or less ordinary fare, as opposed to the late 20th-early 21st, when such genres are evoked as NostalgiaFilter GenreThrowback (as the Western is) or seen as prestigious (thrillers and Neo-Noir like ''Film/GoneGirl'' and ''Film/{{Zodiac|2007}}''). This is not to say of course that the idea of a mass-market auteur is no longer possible, in theory it is, but it's being defined in an entirely different context from the one in TheFifties, and a different period of mass entertainment, and as such claims of direct continuity are at best EntertaininglyWrong, at worst, CriticalResearchFailure.

Truffaut argued in favor of directors like the independent (for France, that is) Robert Bresson, who were driven by their strong identification with the material and shaped a film in the same way that authors shaped books. He and his friends argued that the director was the chief visionary of the film, and any good or great film was a matter of how the director expressed his style or personality on a film through their choice of camera set-ups, compositions, editing strategy, and direction of actors.

* The original auteurists likewise also took it for granted, on the part of their readers, and in their writings, that a film-maker who they classified as "auteur" [[RequiredSecondaryPowers are fundamentally competent technicians, good storytellers]] and that their films are genuinely very good. It's true that they championed film-makers like Hawks or Hitchcock who were seen as entertainers (in their time) but which they argued were great artists, but this has often led later writers to make claims that the likes of Creator/EdWood can be seen as an auteur, and especially in TheOughties to put forth ideas of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_auteurism vulgar auteurism]] by which any mass market product can be potentially seen as auteurist since some of them are made and codified by film-makers with a distinct visual and editing style. Film historians note that the original ''Cahiers'' writers were in an entirely different film-making era, a time when genre fiction like science-fiction and pulp narratives were low-budget BMovie, with little known, obscure B-Grade actors which really did require film-makers to use style and creativity to improvise and riff off of weak stories and technical limitations. This is different from UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood where such genre fiction receive astronomically high movie budgets, top of the line visual effects and production values, and A-List stars. When films like TheWestern or the suspense thriller, FilmNoir and others were more or less ordinary fare, as opposed to the late 20th-early 21st, when such genres are evoked as NostalgiaFilter GenreThrowback (as the Western is) or seen as prestigious (thrillers and Neo-Noir like ''Film/GoneGirl'' and ''Film/{{Zodiac}}''). This is not to say of course that the idea of a mass-market auteur is no longer possible, in theory it is, but it's being defined in an entirely different context from the one in TheFifties, and a different period of mass entertainment, and as such claims of direct continuity are at best EntertaininglyWrong, at worst, CriticalResearchFailure.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time (who knew these concepts), like Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg, and others like Creator/WoodyAllen, became directors in their own right. The culmination of this was the UsefulNotes/NewHollywood era, also known as "the age of the director", where film directors received ProtectionFromEditors and had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars in front of the camera. On one hand, this produced a creative explosion in American cinema in TheSeventies, with many films frequently cited on "greatest of all time" lists having been made in the '70s by auteur filmmakers. On the other hand, a backlash eventually emerged against the idea, with some believing it enables the PrimaDonnaDirector mindset; expensive flops like ''Film/HeavensGate'' and ''One from the Heart'' were often cited as showing what happened when this idea went too far. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent filmmakers in America and around the world, and the core idea of film as an art form capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured. In that respect, the idea was a success.

To begin with, there's the word, "auteur", French for "author". The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous French cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinema'' titled ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'', which translates as "A Certain Tendancy of French Cinema". The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, and as its name suggests, its original context was specific to French cinema in the '50s. At the time, the general claim against cinema being TrueArt was that it was "art by committee" and lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians, and architects to their mediums. The movies that had cultural cachet then were the French version of OscarBait -- films with prestigious literary pedigree, which the ''Cahiers'' critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique compared to, say, a film by Creator/AlfredHitchcock which abounded with invention.

* The original auteurists likewise also took it for granted, on the part of their readers, and in their writings, that a film-maker who they classified as "auteur" [[RequiredSecondaryPowers are fundamentally competent technicians, good storytellers]] and that their films are genuinely very good. It's true that they championed film-makers like Hawks or Hitchcock who were seen as entertainers (in their time) but which they argued were great artists, but this has often led later writers to make claims that the likes of Creator/EdWood can be seen as an auteur, and especially in TheOughties to put forth ideas of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_auteurism vulgar auteurism]] by which any mass market product can be potentially seen as auteurist since some of them are made and codified by film-makers with a distinct visual and editing style. Film historians note that the original Cahiers writers were in an entirely different film-making era, a time when genre fiction like science-fiction and pulp narratives were low-budget BMovie, with little known, obscure B-Grade actors which really did require film-makers to use style and creativity to improvise and riff off of weak stories and technical limitations. This is different from UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood where such genre fiction receive astronomically high movie budgets, top of the line visual effects and production values, and A-List stars. When films like TheWestern or the suspense thriller, FilmNoir and others were more or less ordinary fare, as opposed to the late 20th-early 21st, when such genres are evoked as NostalgiaFilter GenreThrowback (as the Western is) or seen as prestigious (thrillers and Neo-Noir like ''Film/GoneGirl'' and ''Film/{{Zodiac}}''). This is not to say of course that the idea of a mass-market auteur is no longer possible, in theory it is, but it's being defined in an entirely different context from the one in TheFifties, and a different period of mass entertainment, and as such claims of direct continuity are at best EntertaininglyWrong, at worst, CriticalResearchFailure.

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Hitchcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller, and even BMovie directors like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment. They felt that these critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked, driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once these critics started directing the edgy, avant-garde films of the UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave and gave many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as "the auteur theory" or "auteurism", and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors. This list tended to include lesser-known filmmakers, and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

* Auteurism subsequently had its fruit in Europe, where directors hold copyright over their films and the law is called "Les droits d'auteur". In America, directors don't hold copyright unless they are also producers and depend on contract or goodwill for the privilege of "final cut". Even now, ExecutiveMeddling is a risk on any studio project, or even on independent films with producers with vested interests.

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Hitchcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller, and even BMovie directors like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment. They felt that these critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked, driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once these critics started directing the edgy, avant-garde films of the FrenchNewWave and gave many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as "the auteur theory" or "auteurism", and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors. This list tended to include lesser-known filmmakers, and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

* The original auteurists likewise also took it for granted, on the part of their readers, and in their writings, that a film-maker who they classified as "auteur" [[RequiredSecondaryPowers are fundamentally competent technicians, good storytellers]] and that their films are genuinely very good. It's true that they championed film-makers like Hawks or Hitchcock who were seen as entertainers (in their time) but which they argued were great artists, but this has often led later writers to make claims that the likes of Creator/EdWood can be seen as an auteur, and especially in TheOughties to put forth ideas of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_auteurism vulgar auteurism]] by which any mass market product can be potentially seen as auteurist since some of them are made and codified by film-makers with a distinct visual and editing style. Film historians note that the original Cahiers writers were in an entirely different film-making era, a time when genre fiction like science-fiction and pulp narratives were low-budget BMovie as opposed to UsefulNotes/TheBlockbusterAgeOfHollywood where such genre fiction while no longer prestigious receive astronomically high movie budgets and high production values. When films like TheWestern or the suspense thriller, FilmNoir and others were more or less ordinary fare, as opposed to the late 20th-early 21st, when such genres are usually rare (as the Western is) or now seen as prestigious (thrillers and NeoNoir like ''Film/GoneGirl'' and ''Film/{{Zodiac}}''). This is not to say of course that the idea of a mass-market auteur is no longer possible, in theory it is, but it's being defined in an entirely different context from the one in TheFifties, and a different period of mass entertainment, and as such claims of direct continuity are at best EntertaininglyWrong, at worst, WishFulfillment.

-> ''"People are incorrect to compare a director to an author. If he's a creator, he's more like an architect. And an architect conceives his plans according to precise circumstances.''

The concept of the "auteur" had a great deal of vogue in the '60s and '70s, where it was used in magazines and the media as a catch-all shorthand of a "serious film-maker" or "great director". In America it was then, and remains in the Internet Age, a real BaseBreaker among movie geeks, because for some, it overestimates the importance of the film's director over his other collaborators, assigning him credit for a film over the writers who, in the majority of instances, come up with the story and characters, the actors who play the roles, the producers who fund the films, and the army of collaborators who play a role in shaping the product. There is, needless to say, much confusion about what "auteurism", or the "auteur theory", means and how its definitions shifted.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time (who knew these concepts), like Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg, and others like Creator/WoodyAllen, became directors in their own right. The culmination of this was the NewHollywood era, also known as "the age of the director", where film directors received ProtectionFromEditors and had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars in front of the camera. On one hand, this produced a creative explosion in American cinema in TheSeventies, with many films frequently cited on "greatest of all time" lists having been made in the '70s by auteur filmmakers. On the other hand, a backlash eventually emerged against the idea, with some believing it enables the PrimaDonnaDirector mindset; expensive flops like ''Film/HeavensGate'' and ''One from the Heart'' were often cited as showing what happened when this idea went too far. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent filmmakers in America and around the world, and the core idea of film as an art form capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured. In that respect, the idea was a success.

To begin with, there's the word, "auteur", French for "author". The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous French cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinema'' titled ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'', which translates as "A Certain Tendancy of French Cinema". The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, and as its name suggests, its original context was specific to French cinema in the '50s. At the time, the general claim against cinema being TrueArt was that it was "art by committee" and lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians, and architects to their mediums. The movies that had cultural cache then were the French version of OscarBait -- films with prestigious literary pedigree, which the ''Cahiers'' critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique compared to, say, a film by Creator/AlfredHitchcock which abounded with invention.

To begin with, there's the word. The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous French cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinema'' titled ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'', which translates as "A Certain Tendancy of French Cinema". The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut, and as its name suggests, its original context was specific to French cinema in the '50s. At the time, the general claim against cinema being TrueArt was that it was "art by committee" and lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians, and architects to their mediums. The movies that had cultural cache then were the French version of OscarBait -- films with prestigious literary pedigree, which the ''Cahiers'' critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique compared to, say, a film by Creator/AlfredHitchcock which abounded with invention.

For the French, their argument was important in getting cinema itself OutOfTheGhetto of not being TrueArt, and in making a case for "genre" directors in [[TheMusical musicals]], [[TheWestern Westerns]], {{film noir}}, and {{screwball comedy}} to be taken as seriously as arthouse directors as Creator/IngmarBergman, Creator/FedericoFellini, and Creator/JeanRenoir. To their SophisticatedAsHell tastes, there was no difference between liking a commercial film like ''Film/RearWindow'' and a serious film by Creator/SergeiEisenstein because, for them, both directors were just as rich in invention and technique. In their view, "genre" filmmakers were underrated because critics dismissed the content or the plot itself out of hand without looking at the {{subtext}}, the {{Meaningful Background Event}}s, and other {{Genius Bonus}}es these films were filled with, whereas someone like Eisenstein declared his artistic ambitions openly in his movies and so allowed people to admire him for [[RightForTheWrongReasons the wrong reasons]].

-->-- '''Creator/John Ford'''

The concept of the "auteur" had a great deal of vogue in the 60s and 70s where it was used in magazines and the media as a catch-all shorthand of a quote unquote "serious film-maker" or "great director". In America it was then, and remains in the Internet Age, a real BaseBreaker because for some it overestimates the film director over his other collaborators, assigning him credit for a film over the writers who, in the majority of instances, come up with the story and characters, the actors who play the roles, the producers who fund the films and the army of collaborators who play a role in shaping the product. There is needles to say much confusion about what ''auteurism'' or the ''auteur theory'' means and how its definitions shifted.

To begin with, there's the word. The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinema'' called ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'' which means ''A Certain Tendancy of French Cinema'. The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut. Its original context was specific to the French cinema of the 50s. The general claim against cinema being TrueArt, at that time, was that it was art by committee and it lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians and architects to their mediums. The movies that had cultural cache then were the French version of OscarBait that is films with prestigious literary pedigree which the Cahiers critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique compared to say, a film by Hitchcock which abounded with invention.

Truffaut argued in favor of directors like the independent(for France that is) Robert Bresson who were driven by their strong identification with the material and shaped a film in the same way that authors shaped books. He and his friends argued that the director was the chief visionary of the film and any good or great film was a matter of how the director expressed his style or personality on a film through their choice of camera set-ups, compositions, editing strategy and direction of actors.

For the French, their argument was important in getting cinema itself OutOfTheGhetto of not being TrueArt and making a case for genre directors in Musicals, TheWestern, FilmNoir, ScrewballComedy to be as serious as arthouse directors as Creator/IngmarBergman, Creator/FedericoFellini and Creator/JeanRenoir. To their SophisticatedAsHell tastes, there was no difference between liking a commercial film like Film/RearWindow and a serious film by Creator/SergeiEisenstein because for them both directors were just as rich in invention and technique but someone like Hitchcock is underrated because critics dismiss the content or the plot itself as boring not looking at the subtext, the MeaningfulBackgroundEvent and other GeniusBonus these films were filled with whereas someone like Eisenstein declared his artistic ambitions openly in his movies and so allowed people to admire him for [[RightForTheWrongReasons the wrong reasons]].

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Creator/AlfredHitchcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller or even directors of B-Movies like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment who felt that the critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once the critics started directing edgy, avant-garde films and became the FrenchNewWave and put many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as ''the auteur theory'' or ''auteurism'' and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors which tended to include lesser known film-makers and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time(who knew these concepts), namely Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg and others like Creator/WoodyAllen formed the NewHollywood that defined it as "the age of the director" where film-makers recieved ProtectionFromEditors and directors had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars before their camera. This led a backlash in America against the idea with some believing it enables the PrimaDonnaDirector mindset and they later cited expensive flops lie Film/HeavensGate as showing what happened when this idea went too far. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent film-makers in America and around the world and the core idea of film as an artform capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured and in that respect, the idea was a success.

In course of time, the idea of the auteur would spread to other fields which argued for medium specificity and its status as "serious art", namely the field of Comic Books and Video Games.

* Auteurism subsequently had its fruit in Europe where, directors hold copyright over their films and the law is called "Les droits d'auteur". In America, directors don't hold copyright unless they are also producers and depend on contract or goodwill for the privilege of "Final Cut" with ExecutiveMeddling even now a risk on any studio project or even independent films with producers with vested interests.
* Since the argument of the French and American auteur critics rested on overall development of style rather than one or two official classics, they believed in going on an ArchiveBinge and watching the whole filmography of film-makers to better understand how a style and technique evolved, and this in turn inspired film studies and later brought to light neglected films which later became VindicatedByHistory and played no small role in the later movements for film restoration.
* Even in its initial stage, auteurism was sophisticated enough to note that every major film-maker had their own ProductionPosse and regular crew who played a great role in maintaining and developing the director's style. The overall shift in attention from the content to the visual style of the film made technicians like cinematographers, art directors and even lesser known supporting actors and bit players into prominence, since the director is the best placed to collaborate and interact with every known person on the set and how to best use their energy.

For the French, their argument was important in getting cinema itself OutOfTheGhetto of not being TrueArt and making a case for genre directors in Musicals, TheWestern, FilmNoir, ScrewballComedy to be as serious as arthouse directors as Creator/IngmarBergman, Creator/FedericoFellini and Creator/JeanRenoir. To their SophisticatedAsHell tastes, there was no difference between liking a commercial film like Film/RearWindow and a serious film by Creator/SergeiEisenstein because for them both directors were just as rich in invention and technique but someone like Hitchcock is underrated because critics dismiss the content or the plot itself as boring not looking at the subtext, the MeaningfulBackgroundMovement and other GeniusBonus these films were filled with whereas someone like Eisenstein declared his artistic ambitions openly in his movies and so allowed people to admire him for [[RightForTheWrongReasons the wrong reasons]].

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Creator/AlfredHtichcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller or even directors of B-Movies like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment who felt that the critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once the critics started directing edgy, avant-garde films and became the FrenchNewWave and put many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as ''the auteur theory'' or ''auteurism'' and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors which tended to included lesser known film-makers and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

This idea was defined by the French as ''la politique des auteurs'' and the principle idea that Hollywood directors like Creator/Alfred Htichcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/SamuelFuller or even directors of B-Movies like Joseph H. Lewis (''Gun Crazy'') or Edgar G. Ulmer (''Detour'') were great artists was considered ridiculous by the Anglo-American cultural establishment who felt that the critics were RunningTheAsylum and made EntertaininglyWrong conclusions about how Hollywood worked driven by their youthful ForeignCultureFetish. However, once the critics started directing edgy, avant-garde films and became the FrenchNewWave and put many a ShoutOut to the same films they talked about in their writings, their arguments started being taken more seriously. In America, the critic Andrew Sarris introduced his translation of the French philosophy as ''the auteur theory'' or ''auteurism'' and he published a famous issue in ''Film Comment'' magazine that listed the best American directors which tended to included lesser known film-makers and made the same daring claims in English as his inspirations did in French.

This idea didn't spread into the mainstream until the film school students at the time(who knew these concepts), namely Creator/MartinScorsese, Creator/FrancisFordCoppola, Creator/StevenSpielberg and others like Creator/WoodyAllen formed the NewHollywood that defined it as "the age of the director" where film-makers recieved ProtectionFromEditors and directors had celebrity status comparable to the movie stars before their camera. This led a backlash in America against the idea with some believing it enables the idea of PrimaDonnaDirector and they later cited expensive flops lie Film/HeavensGate as showing what happened when this idea went too far. But the concept endures as an ideal for independent film-makers in America and around the world and the core idea of film as an artform capable of individual expression despite its collective discipline has endured and in that respect, the idea was a success.

To begin with, there's the word. The beginning of the movement is an innocuous enough article in the famous cultural journal ''Cahiers du Cinema'' called ''Une certaine tendance du cinéma français'' which means ''A Certain Tendancy of French Cinema'. The article was written by none other than Creator/FrancoisTruffaut. Its original context was specific to the French cinema of the 50s, namely that a good deal of the films tended to be prestigious literary adaptations that were publicized as the works of the screenwriting team Jean Aurenche and Pierre Bost but which Truffaut felt tended to depart from the books it adapted and which furthermore led to unimaginative films which were little more than stagey dramas that did neither the books or the medium's potential justice.

Truffaut argued in favor of directors like the independent(for France that is) Robert Bresson's whose adaptation of author Georges Bernanos ''Diary of a Country Priest'' was true to the book and the medium's potential, driven partly by the director's strong identification with the material. He argued for directors who managed to be ''auteurs'' that is have such a decisive vision as to shape a film the way authors shaped books. Even in France, this article was controversial, with some such as future director Bertrand Tavernier arguing that Truffaut {{Misblamed}} the original screenwriters who had written many great films.

But however vague its application of theory to example, the core idea remained and it was broadly applied in the magazine as ''la politique des auteurs'' or ''a policy of auteurs''. The critics argued that the director was the chief visionary of the film and any good or great film was a matter of how the director expressed his style or personality on a film. This was related in their view as central to the claim for cinema as an art. The general claim against cinema being TrueArt, at that time, was that it was art by committee and it lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians and architects. The movies that had cultural cache then were the French version of OscarBait that is films with prestigious literary pedigree and other TrueArt cache which the Cahiers critics noted were often flat as cinema, with little creativity in camera and editing technique.

The critics at Cahiers du Cinema argued that directors, or great directors at least, shaped films by development and application of style, their choice of camera set-ups, compositions, editing strategy and direction of actors. To better bolster their claim for cinema ''as style'' instead of cinema ''as content'', they argued that Hollywood directors in the Studio System, even directors of genre films like Creator/AlfredHitchcock or Creator/HowardHawks who were dismissed at the time as hacks who made pop-corn films purely on the basis of the ''content'' of their films. The critics argued that these directors approached cinema with a style that gave characters greater complexity than a boring flat Shakespeare adaptation which merely recited words on camera with no emotional feeling. For them, even in Hollywood which worked under UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode, true directors or auteurs like Creator/JohnFord, Creator/HowardHawks, Creator/AlfredHitchcock, Creator/NicholasRay, Creator/SamuelFuller and Creator/DouglasSirk were able to create personal works through their command of film technique on their own which made their films richer and more meaningful on second viewing than the OscarBait of the time.

For the French, their argument was important in getting cinema itself OutOfTheGhetto of not being TrueArt and making a case for genre directors in Musicals, TheWestern, FilmNoir, ScrewballComedy to be as serious as arthouse directors as Creator/IngmarBergman, Creator/FedericoFellini and Creator/JeanRenoir and for some like Truffaut to be taken to the SeriousBusiness of making Hitchcock as resonant an artist as Dostoevsky and Poe. To their SophisticatedAsHell tastes, there was no difference between liking a commercial film like Film/RearWindow and a serious film by Creator/SergeiEisenstein because for them both directors were just as rich in invention and technique but someone like Hitchcock is underrated because critics dismiss the content or the plot itself as boring.

But however vague its application of theory to example, the core idea remained and it was broadly applied in the magazine as ''la politique des auteurs''. The critics argued that the director was the chief visionary of the film and any good or great film was a matter of how the director expressed his style or personality on a film. This was related in their view to the claim of cinema as an art. The general claim against cinema being TrueArt, at that time, was that it was art by committee and it lacked the individual expression of writers, poets, painters, musicians and architects.