Recently my friend and colleague, Jo Urbinati, wrote this piece on “problematic art” and how we might go about separating the art from the artist. This dilemma has existed in criticism for decades as far back as the New Criticism literary movement of the 1930s and 1940s, if not longer. Back then people like Cleanth Brooks created such an approach as a means to focus solely on the literary work itself and not the particulars of the author’s biography, historical context, or anything else. The work, as it existed on the page, was all that mattered. These days our critical dilemma is quite different as we, culturally, attempt to reassess various works of cultural production, especially in light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.
The question of separating the art from the artist is a tricky one that I find myself confronting on a case-by-case basis. A few weeks ago, allegations resurfaced against Bill Murray alleging all manner of sexual and workplace misconduct and abuse. Do I purge my movie collection of Groundhog Day (1993) and Lost in Translation (2003)?
My reaction is no. But this complex relationship between the art and the artist is at the heart of what I want to say about auteur theory. Specifically, I want to suggest that the majority of modern western film criticism—professional and amateur, formal and casual—is incredibly beholden to long-held tenets of auteur theory. Furthermore, I suggest that such unflinching devotion to these ideas has numerous side effects such as perpetuating the “separate the art from the artist” dilemma and upholding typical (and exclusionary) conceptions of the film canon. It’s in film criticism’s best interest that we all attempt to move past this narrow perspective on film art.
So what is auteur theory?
In writing this I reviewed the seminal essays attempting to define the term—those by Truffaut (“A Certain Tendency of French Cinema” ), Andrew Sarris (“Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962”), and Robin Wood (“Ideology, Genre, Auteur”)—and found that none of their technical articulations of the particularities applied directly to the problem that auteur-ism poses today.
Auteur theory is the theory of film criticism that holds that the director is the chief central force of a film and that credit and blame for the film’s merits or problems should go back to them.
Here, instead, is my articulation of the concept:
I find this more ahistorical definition useful as many of the earlier formulators of auteur theory saw it as a relatively short-lived phase of film history, especially as a reaction to the Hollywood studio days of the 1940s and 1950s. As such, the names often cited as chief among the auteurs are directors of that era, like Hitchcock or Kubrick. The theorists expected that this idea would be supplanted by something new in the future. I would argue that, though we may not use the label auteur as much as they did then, such thinking has only grown in prominence. To take just one example, consider the prominence of Christopher Nolan’s name in the marketing for Tenet (2020) or Jordan Peele’s name for Nope (2022). Such marketing—and box office expectations—support the argument that even the casual moviegoing public thinks in auteurist terms.
At one level this is useful, inevitable, and harmless. It’s quite useful to talk about the director of a film as its “author.” Such a tendency is inevitable as one can’t be expected to remember and cite the name of every director, writer, and producer on a given project. It’s often harmless as I think it’s perfectly fine to set expectations on a movie based on its director. Many of the “awards movies” coming up soon, like White Noise (2022) or The Fablemans (2022), I have high hopes for based solely on their directors’ previous works (the great movies Marriage Story (2019) and many Spielberg movies respectively). Similarly, with something like Tenet, it’s useful, inevitable, and harmless to make comparisons to previous Nolan movies like Memento (2000) or Inception (2010).
“the flaw in auteur theory is not so much its assumption that the director’s role is of primary importance as its naïve and often arrogant corollary that it is only the director who matters and that even the most minor work by auteur X is automatically more interesting than the best film of non-auteur Y” (p.29).
All this is perfectly natural and totally fine. The problem comes when this mindset is taken to the extreme. Or, as Graham Petrie put it in Film Quarterly way back in 1973,
This quote from Petrie has two main components, the first being the idea of auteur theory that only the director matters. Such a mindset ignores the collaborative element of the film, and risks ignoring the contributions of actors, writers, editors, and more. In the case of something like Amsterdam (2022), I watched it because I like Christian Bale and Margot Robbie as actors despite being neutral on the merits of past David O. Russell films. This is also how many in the non-film criticism world approach such movies. Or, put another way, the middle-aged women who were at my screening of La La Land back in 2016 most likely weren’t there because of their intense love of Whiplash and desire to see what Chazelle had as a follow-up.
However, actors are often talked about as much as directors, so this discrepancy is a minor one related to the different ways moviegoing audiences relate to film. Far more consequential is how auteur theory minimizes the role of writers and editors. For example, though much has been made of the recent Marvel movies directed by women (like Captain Marvel (2019) and Eternals (2021)), I didn’t hear a single word of how Thor: Love and Thunder (2022) was co-written by a woman. This is an especially salient example because the reality of Jennifer Kaytin Robinson as a co-writer of Thor: Love and Thunder further shatters the “auteurist fantasy” that Taika Watiti did it all as writer and director.
Even more significant, however, is how auteur theory erases the contributions of editors. The past few years have brought many amazing women-directed movies, though this has been a long time coming. It’s no secret that women directors through the years have been largely minimized and edited out of film history. However, shifting attention away from the director as the end-all-be-all helps to address the problem of film canonization as many classics had women editors. Viola Lawrence did Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Barbara McLean did All About Eve (1950), and Anne V. Coates did Lawrence of Arabia (1963). Continuing forward in time, Thelma Schoonmaker edited many Scorsese movies including Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990) and Sally Menke did Pulp Fiction (1994).
The directors of these films—Hawks, Mankiewicz, Lean, Scorsese, and Tarantino—are all household names synonymous with the concept of the auteur director. Yet none of these women are anywhere near as well-known as their director counterparts, despite the fact that the Academy Award for Editing has been given to a woman 15 times and despite the fact that editing is often viewed as central to filmmaking art. I would encourage you to look over the list of women to receive Oscar nominations for editing as it paints an even more comprehensive picture of just how integral women editors have been to film history.
Returning to Petrie, the second major component of the quote concerns the idea that under auteur theory even the most minor film of an auteur director is seen as more interesting and worthwhile than the best work of a non-auteur director. As one may expect, this reality carries with it enormous gender bias as well as women, even until quite recently, tend to get fewer opportunities to make movies. Consider the relatively short filmographies of Jane Campion, Lynne Ramsay, and Sofia Coppola. Since 1990—that’s over 30 years—they’ve combined to make 18 films. Ramsay has made only 4 (all of them excellent), and Campion has made only three since 2000.
And now I ask you: are Campion, Ramsay, and Sofia Coppola auteur directors?
They have impeccable filmographies full of incredible movies, widespread critical regard, and a myriad of Oscar wins and nominations between them. They also each have at least one film canonized in the Criterion Collection. In short, they’re good candidates for auteur status, and yet, in my experience, they are never treated as such. Part of this is because they’ve made fewer movies than their male counterparts, but a bigger part, I would argue, is that they are women, and women inherently will not be seen and respected as auteurs the same way that men have been regarded under the label. I would suggest that only Agnes Varda MAYBE is a woman that might be classified as an auteur. However, this designation has only come about quite recently and, I would argue, is mostly a result of her proximity to the French New Wave. In other words, Truffaut literally wrote the book on auteur theory, Godard became an instant poster child for it, and Varda got included 50 years later (and then largely because Criterion made it easier to access her work).
This brings us back, at last, to Petrie’s idea because, if women are rarely if ever seen as auteurs, how will their works ever be regarded alongside those of the auteur men?
In short, they won’t, unless we can loosen our hold on auteurism as the dominant film approach. For example, Deniz Gamze Ergüven made a phenomenal Turkish film called Mustang (2015). It received an Oscar nomination for a best international feature and is generally, in my opinion, one of the finest films of the last decade. This movie is an absolutely incredible look at girlhood and the pressures of a patriarchal society. Yet even in film circles, it’s relatively obscure.
What chance does it have of serious regard or canonization against something like Linklater’s Boyhood (2014)?
None. Though it’s useful and necessary to think about films in terms of the directors, we very often overstate this fact with real consequences. The most significant of these consequences is that an auteurist-minded canon will always privilege the films of famous men over those of women. I think this is true even as women make strides as directors. Will Greta Gerwig ever be seen as an auteur like Jordan Peele seems destined to be? (Doubtful) And the fierce backlash to Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling (2022) only underscores how, still, women are not given as long a leash in Hollywood, their “failures” magnified and scrutinized more than their male counterparts. Thinking this way also forgets the achievements of women throughout film history as editors, writers, and more. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but I think we would all be better off thinking about and mentioning editors more when talking about the film.
And finally, I return to the original dilemma and debate of separating the art from the artist. Though never easy, I think an auteur mindset is really hindering our ability to do this. Quentin Tarantino has made a lot of problematic movies. Pulp Fiction (1994) is racist and homophobic, Kill Bill (2003) is sexist, and every one of them features substantial violence against women as part of this sexism. There may still be merit to his films, but his status as an auteur is largely insulating him from such criticism.
It sounds silly to suggest that Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) is superior to Pulp Fiction, and the reason this seems silly has nothing to do with the films themselves and everything to do with our perceptions of their directors and how an auteur mindset has solidified some works as unshakeable in terms of their place in the canon.
I’m not optimistic that an auteur-based approach to film is going anywhere soon. In the past several years I’ve seen it only grow stronger as “filmbros” latch onto the likes of Villeneuve, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Nolan with unwavering—and often uncritical—devotion. But hopefully this post, at the very least, makes you more aware of auteur theory’s continuing power in film discourse and more cognizant of the people such an approach leaves out.
