Cinema Canada (Feb 1976)

BOOK REVIEWS Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema, by Richard Corliss (New York, Penguin Books Inc., pages, paper, $5.50 1975), 398 The auteur theory dies hard. Hatched in the nest of Cahiers du Cinéma in Paris in the early ’50s, it boldly asserted that the film director is the person chiefly responsible for the artistic quality of a film. It even argued that an indifferent film by a genuine auteur like Alfred Hitchcock or Jean Renoir will be of greater interest stylistically than a fine film directed by a mere metteur-en-scéne — by directors like John Huston or René Clément. It was thus never meant to be academically responsible. It gained energy from its own excess. It was intended to be a polemic, a ‘politique’ — a critical policy that would clear the ground for action. And this is what happened. By the late 50s, its most passionate champions — Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol — were all making films — films that were simultaneously exciting and extremely personal. In North America, the chief guru of this politique des auteurs is Andrew Sarris. His special edition of Film Culture on the American cinema in 1963 was an inspired defense of artistic quality within the Hollywood product, a quality that was supremely the achievement of Sarris’s ‘Pantheon’ directors -— of men like Chaplin, Ford, Hawks, Hitchcock, and Welles. This defense was followed in 1967 by his Interviews with Film Directors, with material culled from a _ good many sources but a lot from the pages of Cahiers du Cinéma. In spite of loud protests from ‘socially conscious’ critics like John Simon and Pauline Kael, the auteur theory was securely launched. And about the same time, out on the West Coast, enthusiastic young film buffs like Peter Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Copolla began to make films. In Talking Pictures, Richard Corliss sets out less to refine this theory than to subvert it. I don’t think he succeeds. While it is one thing to introduce the importance of the screenwriter, especially for the American product, it is another thing altogether to attempt to elevate him into a position of prominence. “Realizing a 42 / cinema canada screenplay is the director’s job,” as Corliss explains, ‘“‘transcending it is his glory.” It is when the play is transcended, however, that we have a film really worth talking about — that we have an auteur film. Corliss has obviously been influenced by Andrew Sarris, not only in the format of his book but also in the epigrammatic terseness that Corliss strives for. But on a theoretical level, his project is a lost cause. For one thing, so many of the writers he regards as auteurs actually became directors. The case he makes for Preston Sturges, Frank Tashlin, George Axelrod, Abraham Polonsky, and Billy Wilder could scarcely be made on their writing alone. For another, Corliss is not that enthusiastic even about the writers which he wants to include in his particular Pantheon. It is as if he cannot fully believe his own thesis. When Sarris writes about Hitchcock, or Welles, or von Sternberg, while we might feel that his claims are excessive and his ignoring of their collaborators misleading, part of what we enjoy is Sarris’s own enthusiasm, the insights that accompany his own delight. If Sarris caught on, it wasn’t just because his theory was helpful but because his enthusiasm was infectious. The tone of Corliss’s book is very different from this. While Ben Hecht ~ ALL YOUR EDITING NEEDS takes pride of place as Hollywood’s most important writer, listen to how Corliss presents him to us: “'..it can be said without exaggeration that Hecht personifies Hollywood itself: a jumble of talent, cynical and overpaid; most successful when he was least ambitious; often failing when he mistook sentimentality for seriousness; racy, superficial, vital, and American.”’ If this is true and Hecht is among the best of Hollywood writers, then why should we care about them? In contrast, listen to Sarris on Howard Hawks: “Tf Ford’s heroes are sustained by tradition, the Hawksian hero is up held by an instinctive professionalism. Even during the Depression, Hawksian characters were always gainfully employed. The idea that a man is measured by his work rather than by his ability to communicate with women is the key to Hawksian masculinity, as the converse is the key to Antonioni’s femininity. Whereas Ford’s attitude to his women can be defined in terms of chivalry, the Hawksian woman is a manifestation of thedirector’s gal lantry.” Whatever one takes away from such antithetical brevity, it seems packed with challenging perceptions which might help us organize our experience of the films. The point of such criti Steenbeck Tables e Editors /Neg. Cutters « Studio Facilities PRODUCTIONS = a division of light images Itd. 100 richmond st. east suite 207 toronto m5c:1p4 362-7530 bring this coupon or just yourself to us now, phone or write for our catalogue. A PSPS $ PNAS ee & ~ 14 ea . ~ e3\ fir ve. << DISCOUNT COUPON \~/=) ' ; Bato e armed a CM ad aS ie, CR han |