Film Culture (Winter 1962/3)

cultural reference, he would probably have less contact with all things artistic. The Shakespearean scholar, by contrast, will always be driven to explore the surrounding terrain with the result that all the Elizabethan dramatists gain more rather than less recognition through the pre-eminence of one of their number. Therefore on balance, the politique as a figure of speech does more good than harm. Occasionally, some iconoclast will attempt to demonstrate the fallacy of this figure of speech. We will be solemnly informed that The Gambler was a potboiler for Dostoevski in the most literal sense of the word. In Jacques Rivette’s Paris nous appartient, Jean-Claude Brialy asks Betty Schneider if she would still admire Pericles if it were not signed by Shakespeare. Zealous musicologists have played Wellington’s Victory so often as an example of inferior Beethoven that I have grown fond of the piece, atrocious as it is. The trouble with such iconoclasm is that it presupposes an encyclopedic awareness of the auteur in question. If one is familiar with every Beethoven composition, Wellington’s Victory, in itself, will hardly tip the scale toward Mozart, Bach or Schubert. Yet, that is the issue raised by the auteur theory. If not Beethoven, who? And why? Let us say that the politique for composers went Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Schubert. Each composer would represent a task force of compositions, arrayed by type and quality with the mighty battleships and aircraft carriers flanked by flotillas of cruisers, destroyers and minesweepers. When the Mozart task force collides with the Beethoven task force, symphonies roar against symphonies, quartets maneuver against quartets, and it is simply no contest with the operas. As a single force, Beethoven’s nine symphonies outgun any nine of Mozart’s forty-one symphonies, both sets of quartets are almost on a par with Schubert’s, but The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni will blow poor Fidelio out of the water. Then, of course, there is Bach with an entirely different deployment of composition and instrumentation. The Haydn and Handel cultists are moored in their inlets ready to join the fray, and the moderns with their nuclear noises are still mobilizing their forces. It can be argued that any exact ranking of artists is arbitrary and pointless. Arbitrary up to a point, perhaps, but pointless, no. Even Bazin concedes the polemical value of the politique. Many film critics would rather not commit them 2 FILM CULTURE selves to specific rankings ostensibly because every film should be judged on its own merits. In many instances, this reticence masks the critic’s condescension to the medium. Since it has not been firmly established that the cinema is an art at all, it requires cultural audacity to establish a pantheon for film directors. Without such audacity, I see little point in being a film critic. Anyway, is it possible to honor a work of art without honoring the artist involved? I think not. Of course, any idiot can erect a pantheon out of hearsay and gossip. Without specifying any work, the Saganesque seducer will ask quite cynically, “Aimez-vous Brahms?” The fact that Brahms is included in the pantheon of high-brow pick-ups does not invalidate the industrious criticism which justifies the composer as a figure of speech. Unfortunately, some critics have embraced the auteur theory as a short-cut to film scholarship. With a “you-see-it-or-you-don’t” attitude toward the reader, the particularly lazy auteur critic can save himself the drudgery of communication and explanation. Indeed, at their worst, auteur critiques are less meaningful than the straightforward plot reviews which pass for criticism in America. Without the necessary research and analysis, the auteur theory can degenerate into the kind of snobbish racket which is associated with the merchandising of paintings. It was largely against the inadequate theoretical formulation of la politique des auteurs that Bazin was reacting in his friendly critique. (Henceforth, I will abbreviate la politique des auteurs as the auteur theory to avoid confusion.) Bazin introduces his arguments within the context of a family quarrel over the editorial policies of Cahiers. He fears that by assigning reviews to admirers of given directors, notably Alfred Hitchcock, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Fritz Lang, Howard Hawks and Nicholas Ray, every work, major and minor, of these exalted figures is made to radiate the same beauties of style and meaning. Specifically, Bazin notes a distortion when the kindly indulgence accorded the imperfect work of a Minnelli is coldly withheld from the imperfect work of Huston. The inherent bias of the auteur theory magnifies the gap between the two films. I would make two points here. First, Bazin’s greatness as a critic, (and I believe strongly that he was the greatest film critic who ever lived,) rested in his disinterested conception of the cinema as a universal entity. It follows that he would react against a theory which cultivated