Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

journalism, relatively untroubled by later debates about
the theoretical basis of authorship. In serious and even
popular film journalism it is now generally and quite
routinely taken for granted that directors are primarily
responsible for films, no matter what country or system
they might originate from. The period since the 1960s
has been, effectively, the age of the director as superstar.
In part, this reflects the triumph of the concept of the
‘‘director as auteur’’ not only in Europe and world cinema,
but in commercial cinema—and not least Hollywood—as
well. And this is a concept that the film industries themselves—including
post-studio Hollywood, with agents
putting together star-director-writer packages—have also
bought into. The earlier, relatively neutral credit,
‘‘Directed by Joe Doakes,’’ is now routinely replaced by
‘‘A film by Joe Doakes’’ or ‘‘A Joe Doakes film’’—even
when this might be Joe Doakes’s first film—with legal
copyright and ‘‘authorship’’ implications. In some senses,
director-auteurs have taken the place of—or become the
equal of—stars, cultivating auteur ‘‘brands.’’ One has
only to think of the ease with which we are invited to
consider not only the Pedro Almodóvar or Michael
Haneke or François Ozon ‘‘brands’’ but also, in different
registers, the Spike Lee, David Lynch, Woody Allen,
Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, John Sayles,
Ridley Scott, or Steven Soderbergh ‘‘brands.’’
SEE ALSO Criticism; Direction; France; Genre; Great
Britain; Journals and Magazines; Mise-en-scène; New
Wave
FURTHER READING
Cameron, Ian. ‘‘Films, Directors and Critics,’’ Movie 2
(September 1962): 4–7; reprinted in Movie Reader, edited by
Ian Cameron, 12–15. London: November Books; New York:
Praeger, 1972.
Auteur Theory and Authorship
Caughie, John, ed. Theories of Authorship: A Reader. London and
Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.
Editors of Cahiers du Cinéma. ‘‘John Ford’s Young Mr Lincoln.’’
In Movies and Methods: An Anthology, edited by Bill Nichols,
vol. 1. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.
Gerstner, David A., and Janet Staiger, eds. Authorship and
Cinema. New York and London: Routledge, 2003.
Graham, Peter, ed. The New Wave. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1968; and London: Secker and Warburg, 1968.
Hillier, Jim, ed. Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1950s: Neo-Realism,
Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1985.
———, ed. Cahiers du Cinéma: 1960–1968: New Wave, New
Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood . Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1986.
Houston, Penelope. ‘‘The Critical Question.’’ Sight & Sound 29,
no. 4: (Autumn 1960).
Mast, Gerald, and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and
Criticism. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Perkins, V. F. Film as Film. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1972.
Sarris, Andrew. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions,
1929–1968. New York: Dutton, 1968.
Stam, Robert, and Toby Miller, eds. Film and Theory: An
Anthology. Malden, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2000.
Truffaut, François. ‘‘A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema.’’
In Movies and Methods: An Anthology, edited by Bill Nichols,
vol. 1, 224–237. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1975.
Wexman, Virginia Wright, ed. Film and Authorship. New
Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2003.
Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. 1969. 2nd ed.
London: Secker and Warburg, and Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1972.
Jim Hillier
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