Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

AUTEUR THEORY AND AUTHORSHIP
Translated from the French, auteur simply means
‘‘author,’’ but use of the term in relation to cinema—
since the 1950s at least—has caused much controversy
and critical debate. The frequent retention of the French
word, as auteur and in the somewhat ungainly ‘‘auteurism,’’
marks the prominent part played in those critical
debates by French film critics, especially those associated
with the journal Cahiers du Cinéma (literally: cinema
notebooks), in the 1950s and 1960s. Controversy arose
in part from the industrial and collaborative nature of
most film production: given that collaborative context,
who might be considered as, or who might claim to be,
the ‘‘author’’ of a film? If authorship is claimed, on what
basis of evidence might the claim be made? Claims were
made for the director to be considered the most likely
member of the filmmaking team—in industrially organized
commercial film production—to be the author of a
film. However, this did not mean that every film director
should be considered an auteur, or author, or the author
of a particular film. Indeed, in many ways it could be said
that the director as auteur should be considered the exception
rather than the rule.
Does a film need to have an author? Perhaps, to
qualify as ‘‘art,’’ a film needs an author, an artist. The
question of authorship is important in every art form,
whether for reasons of intellectual property rights and the
art market or for reasons of status and identification.
Painting and sculpture have usually offered reasonably
clear examples of the individual artist as author, as have
the novel and poetry. But other arts can pose considerable
problems for straightforward identification of
authorship. A playwright may be the undisputed author
of a play text, but who authors a play text in perfor-
mance? In the twentieth century, many theater directors
claimed authorship on a par with playwrights (although
television drama has usually preferred the writer as
author). A composer may be the undisputed author of a
musical score, but what about music in performance?
ASCERTAINING AUTHORSHIP IN CINEMA
Cinema poses its own problems. Commercial filmmaking,
which accounts for most of the films—European and
world as well as American—shown in cinemas and
reviewed in print, as well as most of the material made
for television, is justifiably seen as a collaborative activity,
involving the skills and talents of many different film
workers. At the same time, that mode of film production
is hierarchical as well as collaborative: not all the collaborators
count in the same way. In the sense that many
commercial film productions will include a ‘‘dominant
personality’’ influencing the shape and look of a film
more than others, the idea of the film auteur or author
is not necessarily very controversial. Although claims have
been made for the importance of producers, screenwriters,
and stars, either in general or in relation to
particular films, the director—usually with the final
say over the detailed realization of scenes (and hence
over the way they will look and sound on screen) and
often with crucial say over editing and other postproduction
processes, and even over scripting—has usually
been credited with having the dominant role in
most cases. This dominance seems implied by the
nature and place of the director’s credit on the film
itself, though dominance may not equate with
authorship.
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 141