Film Culture (Winter 1962/3)

now regard the auteur theory primarily as a critical device for recording the history of the American cinema, the only cinema in the world worth exploring in depth beneath the frosting of a few great directors at the top. These propositions remain to be proven and, I hope, debated. The proof will be difficult because direction in the cinema is a nebulous force in literary terms. In addition to its own jargon, the director’s craft often pulls in the related jargons of music, painting, sculpture, dance, literature, theatre, architecture, all in a generally futile attempt to describe the indescribable. What is it the old jazz man says of his art? If you gotta ask what it is, it ain’t? Well, the cinema is like that. Criticism can only attempt an approximation, a reasonable preponderance of accuracy over inaccuracy. I know the exceptions to the auteur theory as well as anyone. I can feel the human attraction of an audience going one way when I am going the other. The temptations of cynicism, common sense and facile culture-mongering are always very strong, but somehow I feel that the auteur theory is the only hope for extending the appreciation of personal qualities in the cinema. By grouping and evaluating films according to directors, the critic can rescue individual achievements from an unjustifiable anonymity. If medieval architects and African sculptors are anonymous today, it is not because they deserved to be. When Ingmar Bergman bemoans the alienation of the modern artist from the collective spirit which rebuilt the Cathedral at Chartres, he is only dramatizing his own individuality for an age which has rewarded him handsomely for the travail of his alienation. There is no justification for penalizing Hollywood directors for the sake of collective mythology. So invective aside, aimez-vous Cukor? II. WHAT IS THE AUTEUR THEORY? As far as I know, there is no definition of the auteur theory in the English language, that is, by any American or British critic. Truffaut has recently gone to great pains to emphasize that the auteur theory was merely a polemical weapon for a given time and a given place, and I am willing to take him at his word. But lest I be accused of misappropriating a theory no one wants anymore, I give the Cahiers critics full credit for the original formulation of an idea which reshaped my thinking on the cinema. First of all, how does the auteur theory differ from a straightforward theory of directors. lan Camer 6 FILM CULTURE on’s article, “Films, Directors and Critics” in Movie of September 1962, makes an interesting comment on this issue: “The assumption which underlies all the writing in Movie is that the director is the author of a film, the person who gives it any distinctive quality. There are quite large exceptions, with which I shall deal later.” So far, so good, at least for the auteur theory which even allows for exceptions. However, Cameron continues: “On the whole we accept the cinema of directors, although without going to the farthest-out extremes of the la politique des auteurs which makes it difficult to think of a bad director making a good film and almost impossible to think of a good director making a bad one.” We are back to Bazin again although Cameron naturally uses different examples. That three otherwise divergent critics like Bazin, Roud and Cameron make essentially the same point about the auteur theory suggests a common fear of its abuses. I believe there is a misunderstanding here about what the auteur theory actually claims, particularly since the theory itself is so vague at the present time. First of all, the auteur theory, at least as I understand it and now intend to express it, claims neither the gift of prophecy nor the option of extracinematic perception. Directors, even auteurs, do not always run true to form, and the critic can never assume that a bad director will always make a bad film. No, not always, but almost always, and that is the point. What is a bad director, but a director who has made many bad films? What is the problem then? Simply this: the badness of a director is not necessarily considered the badness of a film. If Joseph Pevney directed Garbo, Cherkassov, Olivier, Belmondo, and Harriet Andersson in The Cherry Orchard, the resulting spectacle might not be entirely devoid of merit with so many subsidiary auteurs to cover up for Joe. In fact, with this cast and this literary property, a Lumet might be safer than a Welles. The realities of casting apply to directors as well as actors, but the auteur theory would demand the gamble with Welles, if he were willing. Marlon Brando has shown us that a film can be made without a director. Indeed, One-Eyed Jacks is more entertaining than many films with directors. A director-conscious critic would find it difficult to say anything good or bad about direction which is non-existent. One can talk here about photography, editing, acting, but not di