Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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[such as film] which was collective, commercial, industrial and popular”. 36 While this
caused some problems, which were later addressed in different ways, in Caughie’s
view, it would be a mistake to think of the development of auteur theory - “the
installation in the cinema of a figure who had dominated the other arts for over a
century: the romantic artist, individual and self-expressive” – merely as a retrograde
step, although this could explain why auteurism was “easily assimilated into the
dominant aesthetic mode”. 37 Caughie argues that, “auteurism did in fact produce a
radical dislocation in the development of film theory, which has exposed it
progressively to the pressures of alternative aesthetics and ‘new criticisms’. This
dislocation cannot be attributed easily to a single cause, but can be associated with a
number of impulses, shifts of emphasis and contradictions which were central to auteur
criticism”. 38 It is worth tracing some of these nuances in order to identify the most
useful version of authorship to apply to Ward.
The term auteur was first used in the 1920s in the theoretical writings of French film
critics, and even earlier in Germany, where certain films were known as Autorenfilm,
but it was originally the writer of the script rather than the director who was regarded as
the auteur. Debates about authorship have occupied an important place in film theory
since the late 1940s, when Roger Leenhard and André Bazin, writing for the journal
Revue du cinéma (1946-49), claimed that the director rather than the writer was the
primary creative force in the film-making process. An important statement about the
role of the director was made by Alexandre Astruc’s 1948 essay, published in L’Écran
Français, “Naissance d’une nouvelle avant-garde: la caméra-stylo” (“Birth of a new
avant-garde: the camera-pen”), in which he argued that film had arrived at the maturity
of a serious art form through which artists could express their ideas and feelings. He
wrote: “L’auteur écrit avec sa caméra comme un écrivain écrit avec un stylo”. (“The
filmmaker-author writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen”.) 39 In the
1950s, contributors to the French film journal Cahiers du Cinéma, founded by Jacques
Doniol-Valcroze in 1951, developed this notion further by formulating la politique des
auteurs (later known in English-speaking countries as ‘auteur theory’). The journal
brought together the leading French critics and film enthusiasts of the time – André
36
John Caughie, ed., Theories of Authorship: A Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) 13.
37
Caughie, ed., Theories of Authorship: A Reader 10.
38
Caughie, ed., Theories of Authorship: A Reader 11.
39
Alexandre Astruc, Du Stylo À La Caméra - Et De La Caméra Stylo: Écrits 1942-1984 (Paris:
l'Archipel, 1992) 327.