The Auteur vs. “The Genius Of The System”

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE ASSIGNMENT: For Tuesday, February 3rd, you will read two quite different accounts of cinematic artistry and the person or persons responsible for it: Andrew Sarriss Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962 and Thomas Schatzs The Whole Equation of Pictures. You will also read a modern review (by David Sterritt) of The Awful Truth, written in 2018 when the film was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection.

Written Assignment

For this assignment, you will place Sterritts review in relation to Sarris and Schatz, showing how both Sarriss notion of the auteur and Schatzs of collaboration inform a contemporary critics perception of a great film. Another way to think about it is that you will use Sterrits review to illustrate the tension or argument between two opposing explanations of filmmaking as an art form.

First, summarize in a short paragraph Sarriss conception of the cinematic auteur: what is the definition of an auteur, according to Sarris, and what distinguishes them from just any film director? [Since Schatz offers his own summary of Sarris, you may draw on him, but your explanation of the auteur theory should mostly be in your own words.]

Second, summarize in another short paragraph how and why Schatz differs from Sarris in explaining filmmaking art. Specifically, explain the core of Schatzs disagreement with Sharits.

Finally, select two passages from Sterritts review that relate to these two opposing perspectives (you may also draw from the reviews of The Awful Truth in The New York Times and The Hollywood Reporter, and even from the PCA case file for The Awful Truth if you desire). The goal is to make connections between specific critical comments Sterritt makes about The Awful Truth and the general ideas about the source(s) of a films greatest offered by Sarris and Schatz.

You are writing a substantial paragraph each for Sarris and Schatz, and two paragraphs on how Sterrits review reflects or is in dialogue with their ideas. Expect the total length of this assignment to be about 400 words.

When you directly quote an author, place the passage in quotation marks and indicate the page number in parentheses at the end of the quote.

In evaluating this assignment, I will consider the following:

• The accuracy and clarity of your summary of Sarriss conception of the auteur, and of Schatzs alternative account of the collaborative nature of Hollywood filmmaking
• That the connections you make between Sterritts review and the other two readings are clear and specific (i.e., you make point-to-point links between Sterritts words and the ideas of Sarris and Schatz).
• That the assignment overall reflects an understanding of the auteur theory and the more collaborative theory of filmmaking.
• That the assignment is well written, showing evidence of care in the writing (including word choice, grammar, spelling, and punctuation) and proofreading.

This assignment is due on Canvas by the 10:00am on Tuesday, February 3.

Some Notes on Sarris

Sarris makes references to individuals and films with which you may not be familiar. Here is a little information about them, to help better orient you to Sarriss argument.

Franois Truffaut: a French film director who began his career as a critic in the 1950s, moving on to film directing in 1959 and becoming an auteur himself. As a young critic, Truffaut championed the idea of the director as film author over the more popular (at the time) idea of the importance of the scriptwriter and of the literary qualities of the stories films told.

Andr Bazin: a French film critic who founded a very influential journal of film criticism called Cahiers du Cinma (Cinema Notebooks) for which Truffaut, among many others, wrote. Cahiers was where auteur criticism began, though a little later Bazin would criticize the auteur theory (as Schatz notes in his essay).

Orson Welles: an American film director best known for Citizen Kane (1941), long considered the best film of all time. Welles was one of the first American directors to be identified as an auteur by French film critics.

Alexandre Astruc: another French film critic whose writing in the early 1950s lay the groundwork for the conception of the film director as author.

Jean Renoir: one of the greatest French film directors of all time, best known for La Rgle du Jeu

(The Rules of the Game, 1939). He also acted in some of his own films, which is what Sarris comments upon in his essay. Renoir was beloved by the later generation of French film critics like Bazin and Truffaut, and one of their auteurs.

metteur en scne

: this term was coined by Astruc and refers to a director who is technically talented but not at the same level of an auteur. It literally means scene setter, suggesting that the director knows what they are doing but has not risen to the status of auteur for lack of a distinctive artistic personality or vision.

Boccaccio 70 and The Seven Capital Sins: These are two long-forgotten omnibus films, meaning collections of short films by different directors. Sarris uses these two films, which contained episodes directed by both auteurs and metteurs en scne

, to better illustrate the differences between those two types of directors.

Link for the David Sterritt Review of The Awful Truth: https://www.cineaste.com/fall2018/the-awful-truth