Auteur Theory

What is Auteur Theory:

Auteur theory is a theory of filmmaking in which the director is viewed as the major creative force in a motion picture. With the theory arising in France in the late 1940s, the auteur theory—as it was dubbed by the American film critic Andrew Sarris—was an outgrowth of the cinematic theories of André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc.

When Andrew Sarris took the auteur theory to the next level, he laid out three basic rules:

• Basic Competency. "A great director has to at least be a good director." Which is to say that the director's movies must be technically competent.

• Signature Style. 

• Interior Meaning.

Who developed the theory?

Director François Truffaut, writing as a critic in the influential French journal Cahiers du Cinéma (Cinema Notebook), developed the concept of the auteur in his 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français” (“A certain trend in French cinema”).

Key Words: 

Cinephile = people who love film

 

Camera stylo = camera pen = how the lens moves around on the screen 

Directors who managed to imprint a personal style into their work are called an auteur de cinema. 

The French New Wave - a film movement that rose to popularity in the late 1950s in Paris, France. The movement aimed to give directors full creative control over their work, allowing them to eschew overwrought narrative in favour of improvisational, existential storytelling.