Auteur Filmmakers

Once a film has been illuminated through a genre approach, you could try an auteur approach. A film-maker might produce a sequence of films that create a coherent message or understanding. For example, the Western director JOHN FORD made Stagecoach, The Searchers and Cheyenne Autumn, all of them dealing with ethnic Americans in some way. Another way of defining auteurism is where film-makers create a distinctive style for themselves. Their work perhaps defies easy generic classification although you can detect genre ingredients from time to time. Examples of this would be ALFRED HITCHCOCK*, THE COEN BROTHERS*, DAVID LYNCH*.

Actor as auteur

In film criticism, there is a case being made for the actor as auteur, where an actor/actress seems to play a similar kind of character from one film to another or has a distinctive style of acting. Perhaps Julia Roberts is an example of the former and Michael Madsen of the latter, however it could simply be their limited ability to act! Actress Kerry Fox recently suggested that US actors always want to be recognized in films whereas the UK way is to become your character. Again an example of this latter could be Daniel Day-Lewis. This tendency could be the result of Hollywood commodifying films, treating them too much as commercial star vehicles. A criticism of actor as auteur is that we do not know for sure, if at all, how free a rein an actor has to develop and control their own character in a film. Recently though we have become aware that a director might not have dominant control over the final product in film-making. A director is heavily reliant on the production team around him or her and once scenes are shot may hand rushes over to editors to put together the film. We still talk about films as if directors determine the final outcome, however.

*For films by these directors see www.imdb.com.

Other significant auteur directors