FM3 - Auteur Theory

Auteur Theory

You can't really be an auteur until you've got your type!

Tim Burton's Dark Shadows may have received a kicking from critics, but one person has emerged from the dust-up unscathed: Eva Green, the French actress who plays the evil witch Angelique Bouchard. With her red-lacquered lips, her crazy-beautiful eyes and possessed-marionette limbs, Green's lolling vamp represents the perfection of a type Burton has long been trying to get right – from Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman Returns, to Lisa Marie Smith's bosomy Martian in Mars Attacks!, to Anne Hathaway's White Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

Critics may be tired of the rest of Burton's directorial signatures – the ornate production designs, the seventies kitsch, the collaboration with Johnny Depp – but he's finally perfected his vamps: peroxide-blonde, big-chested, cinch-waisted, eyes like Bambi's.

All film directors have their types. Everyone knows Steven Spielberg for his suburban settings, alien visitations, and Godlike shafts of light, but equally consistent is his taste for hot moms in long T-shirts, cut-off jeans and morning-sexy hair: Teri Garr and Mellinda Dillon in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist, and Dee Wallace in ET (dressed as Catwoman for Halloween, she even sends ET into a swoon).

Scorsese scholars find rich pickings in the director's Catholism, his taste for violence, his bruisers, misfits and loners, but less so the women in orbit around them, whether sexily-damaged like Rosanna Arquette in After Hours and Illeana Douglas in Cape Fear, or spitfires like Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas and Sharon Stone in Casino, giving as good as they get.

To which we could add Tarantino's foot fetish ("He gave her a foot massage!"), Fellini's breast-love, the lifelong connoisseurship Michaelangelo Antonioni brought to women's legs, David Lynch's thing for misapplied lipstick, Darren Aronofsky's taste for brainy brunettes and David Fincher's love of skinny Goth girls viewed from the rear. As New York film critic David Edelstein concluded recently: "Fincher is an undies-and-butt man." You could be forgiven for concluding that the most enduring definition of an auteur is a film-maker who populates his movies with women he wants to boff.

The big guns of auteur theory are strangely silent on the matter. In his seminal essay Notes on Auteur Theory in 1962, the influential American critic Andrew Sarris determined that auteur status was conferred by meeting the following benchmarks: technical competence, personal style and something called "interior meaning", which he variously defined as a director's "vision of the world", his "attitude to life", and "élan of the soul." He said nothing about sexual pecadilloes.

Even though the two film directors hoisted highest by the French and touted as auteurist poster boys – Howards Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock – are famous for their taste in women, bequeathing us, respectively, the Hawksian woman and the Hitchcock blonde.

In his groundbreaking 1953 Cahiers du cinema essay, The Genius of Howard Hawks, Jacques Rivette identified Hawks as "a bundle of dark forces and strange fascinations" – his "obsession with continuity", his "obsession with primitivism" and "bouts of ordered madness which give birth to an infinite chain of consequences" – but passed over his equally fervid obsession with insolent, self-possessed foxes, lounging against doorways in tailored suits like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not ("You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and … blow.")

Read more @ The Guardian Film Blog

Sample Annotated Catalogue

Here is another sample annotated catalogue. Use it as a guide for structure and the content required.

First draft deadline: 20/10/17

Baz Luhrmann films constantly re-interpret classic narratives; can this make him an auteur?

Item 1: Romeo and Juliet (Dir Baz Luhrmann, 1996). This source is useful as it is one of the main films  Luhrmann has created. It depicts an old tragedy transformed into a re-interpreted version of the original play, which is a regular theme of Luhrmann’s. Luhrmann uses the old English language that Shakespeare intended but uses the mise-en-scene of the 20th century lifestyle. Although the mise en scene is modern it also has religious aspects like the statue of Christ, this also gives an element of history. The costumes of the characters represent their status’ which allows the audience to interact with the visual context, making it an ideal example to refer to for my topic.

Item 2: Moulin Rouge (Dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2001). Very useful source, it shows how Luhrmann uses music from his adolescence this gives the film a sense of modernisation because the music is from the 80’s. The music allows the audience to relate to the narrative because they are familiar with the score. The film is a love story which is shown through music and poetry this gives a classic theme similar to that of Shakespeare. The mise-en-scene from the 1800’s interlinks with the music making it a modern re-interpretation of a classic love story.

Item 3: Australia (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2008). Very helpful, tells a historical story doesn’t have a modified re-interpretation to the film but does have the same strong romantic narrative which plays a big part in how the films are modernised. This source doesn’t represent the usual interpretations which Luhrmann normally uses: it is set in the past so we can see how society changes over time which helps the audience to relate to the film because of the diverse use of discrimination. The source makes the audience think how different it was then to how it is now.

Magazines

Item 4: Interview with cast of Moulin Rouge and Baz Luhrmann (Empire magazine, 2001). This was a good piece of research as it not only showed how the director transformed the films into a re-interpretation, but it explains why he chose to do so. A quote from the article says that he explores his younger years by using modern music from the 80’s. The article mentions Luhrmann using an ancient myth for the play within the film which gives it another re-interpretation from the past. This source is useful because it gives detailed explanation to why Luhrmann uses the re-interpretation of his childhood music and the ancient myth.

Item 5: Magazine article on Moulin Rouge (Total film, 2001). This source gives a variety of relevant information about the modern re-interpretation which Luhrmann uses within his films, a quote says to expect the unexpected. Luhrmann is said to have used elements of plots from the plays La Boheme, Tosca and La Traviata, which are very classic plays, he uses older elements as well as some modern ones too. This source shows the logic behind his re-interpretations, a quote from Luhrmann: musicals contain music which the audience already have a relationship with. It also refers to the use of music which is taken from Luhrmann’s younger year the 70’s.

Item 6: Magazine article on Moulin rouge (Sound and light article, 2001). This source is valuable because it explains the modern re-interpretation which Luhrmann uses in his films, a quote says; he uses a combination of pop culture references and sung dialogue; this is one of Luhrmann’s traits as a director. This could suggest that Luhrmann is an auteur because of his own unique style. The source also says that ‘the story of Moulin Rouge is as faithful as Pearl Harbour which is an historic classic; with these two elements combined it explains the modern re-interpretation which Luhrmann is known for. This states that Luhrmann could be an auteur because he modernises classic narratives.

Item 7: Review of Romeo and Juliet, Empire magazine. http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=3654. This source is good; it explains how the director re-interprets the well known text into a modern day film. It shows how Luhrmann uses the MTV style of film making and transforms the play. This source also mentions how Luhrmann is able to make genres that are out of date into modern styled films which appeal to the public today. The source shows that the film has been re-interpreted into a popular film that the new generation can relate too.

Internet Articles

Item 8: Interview with Baz Luhrmann about Moulin Rouge, the Hollywood Interview, 2001. http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2010/02/baz-luhrmann-moulin-rouge-hollywood.html. This source is very useful because it shows that Luhrmann has his own traits he is like an auteur, his films are described as heightened reality. The source explains the different elements that Luhrmann uses like theatre, opera; traditional cinema and pop culture which combined make a totally new genre. Quote from the article, it’s almost as if he took all the music videos, studio musicals, pop albums, and stage productions of the last 100 years and stuck them together to make Moulin Rouge.

Item 9: Interview with Baz Luhrmann, The guardian 2001. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/baz-luhrmann . This source is helpful because it shows why Luhrmann became a director and how he found his love for musicals. Even at a young age he created his first play, strictly ballroom, which was made in a heightened metaphorical style and became his first film. This interview also shows how Luhrmann was influence by his parents; his mother was a dancer and his father was a cinema owner. Luhrmann says that the story of Romeo and Juliet was modified by William Shakespeare from a Greek play which demonstrates that stories are just use over again just adapted to the time which it is recreated, this shows how William Shakespeare also re-interpreted others work. This can be used because it shows Luhrmann’s childhood influenced his style and career choice.

Small-scale Research Guidance

A few points to consider:

• Remove any quotes from annotations (save these for your presentation)
• Make a general comment on the content of each source - how does it relate to your topic?
• State how useful these will be in answering your question
• Try to focus your comments around the topic issue
• The question may require more focus - Really consider precisely what you want to discuss.
• Take a really good look at Ex-Student blogs for guidance
• E-mail any questions you may have to your teachers
• Watch the Films you are discussing!!!!!