The Auteur Theory &

The French New Wave

Film Theory
Chinese International School
IB Film Studies
2011-2012
Task - Storyboard / Shot list the
following scene:
 Michel steals a car to drive to Paris.
However, two policemen on motorcycles
chase him. Michel runs into engine
trouble. He turns off the road and
attempts to fix his car, but is followed by
one of the policemen. Michel shoots the
policeman and runs off.
“The Director is both the least necessary
and the most important component of film-
making.”

- Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema,

p.37
Recap: What is the Auteur
Theory?
Recap: What is the Auteur
Theory?
A theory that proposes that a director is
the author of the film.

 The term ‘author’ implies that the director

is the primary creative source and,
 The director’s films express their own
distinctive vision of the world.
Recap: What do Auteur critics
study?
Recap: What do Auteur critics
study?
 The style and themes of a director’s films
and assign to them the title of Art if they
show consistency.
Manifesto of Auteur Theory
 Francois Truffaut’s 1954 essay ‘A Certain
Tendency of French Cinema’
Manifesto of French New Wave
 Jean Luc Godard’s 1960 film, ‘A Bout de
Souffle’ (‘Breathless’)
Francois Truffaut & Cahiers du
Cinema
 Auteur theory emerged from a group of critics in
1950s France, who went on to become
filmmakers of the French New Wave of the 1960s.

 Truffaut criticizes the dominant tendency in

French cinema: Tradition of Quality.

 Projects bourgeois image of good taste and high

culture.
‘Tradition of Quality’ Films
 ‘La Symphonie Pastorale’ (Jean Delannoy,
1946)
 ‘Douce’ (Claude Autant-Lara, 1943)
 ‘Jeux Interdits’ (Rene Clement, 1952)
 ‘La Ronde’ (Max Ophuls, 1950)
 ‘Minne, L’Ingenue’ (Jacques Audry, 1950)
 ‘French Cancan’ (Jean Renoir, 1955)
 ‘Les Grandes Manoeuvres’ (Rene Clair, 1955)
‘Tradition of Quality’ Films
 Image of Frenchness tied to good taste
and high culture achieved through:

1) High production values;

2) Reliance on stars;
3) Genre conventions;
4) Privileging the script.
‘Tradition of Quality’ Films
 Mechanically transferring scripts to screen.
 Success or failure depends entirely on quality of
script.
 Jean Aurenche & Pierre Bost
 “Aurenche and Bost are essentially literary men
and I reproach them here for being
contemptuous of the cinema by underestimating
it”
– A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema, p.
229
‘Tradition of Quality’ Films
 Privileging of script deflected attention away
from filmmaking process and director.
 Cahiers critics and the French New Wave
filmmakers defined themselves AGAINST the
literary script and PROMOTED filmmaking.
 Tradition of Quality: Best technique is one that
is not seen;
 French New Wave: Style draws deliberate
attention to itself.
Hollywood Era Auteurs
 Cahiers critics respected work of Hollywood
directors who worked against the scripts
imposed upon them:
 Alfred Hitchcock
 Howard Hawks
 Orson Welles
 Fritz Lang
 John Ford
 Douglas Sirk
Hollywood Era Auteurs
 “When you talk about Minnelli, the first thing
you do is talk about the screenplay, because
he always subordinates his talent to something
else. Whereas when you talk about Fritz Lang,
the first thing is to talk about Fritz Lang, then
about the screenplay”.
- Jacques Rivette, Cahiers du Cinema: the
1960s, p.3
How do Hollywood directors
impose own vision?
 Mise en Scene
 Cinematography
 “The director’s most significant area of control is
over what happens within the image. His control
over the action, in detail, organization and
emphasis, enables him to produce a personal
treatment of the script situation. On occasion the
treatment can be so personal as to constitute a
reversal of attitudes contained in the script.”
- Victor Perkins, Film as Film, p. 74
The French New Wave
 The script merely served as the pretext to
the activity of filmmaking.
 A filmmaking practice that rejects classical
Hollywood cinema’s dominance by
producers in favour of a mode of
production that favours the director.
 Supported the idea of filming unimportant
stories.
The French New Wave
1) FNW: One of the major movements of
European Art Cinema.
2) Features of EAC:
3) A slower editing and narrative pace
4) A strong ‘authorial voice’
5) An investment in realism and ambiguity
6) The desire to provoke thought and sometimes
shock
7) A taste for unhappy endings.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
1) Created most of these aesthetic features
using the following techniques
(innovative at the time):
2) Location shooting
3) Hand held camera
4) Natural lighting
5) Subversion of rules of classical editing.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
 All these techniques turn the films into
spontaneous and improvised
performances rather than a mere
recreation of the script.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
 Michel steals a car to drive to Paris.
However, two policemen on motorcycles
chase him. Michel runs into engine
trouble. He turns off the road and
attempts to fix his car, but is followed by
one of the policemen. Michel shoots the
policeman and runs off.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
All production techniques mentioned above are used in
this sequence:
 Shot on location (highway)
 Camera is mobile and shaky (Pans in shots 3 & 4
are quick, blurred)
 Lighting is natural (Shot 7 sun shines directly onto
lens)
 Casual, improvised acting style
 Subverts continuity editing (jump cut from shots 3-
4; shot 5 car left to right, shot 6 right to left)
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
 Sequence does not aim to show sequence
clearly but the VISION of the auteur.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’
 Stylistic choices also determined by
economics
 Identified low production costs with artistic
freedom.
 Hollywood auteurs transcended high
production values.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’ Social Seriousness
 “Uniqueness of personality, brash individuality,
persistence of obsession and originality were
given an evaluative power over stylistic
smoothness or social seriousness.”
– John Caughie, Theories of Authorship, pp. 11-
12
 Auteurs criticized for lack of social commitment.
 Argued in favour of a more personalized
experience of cinema.
Jean Luc Godard & ‘A Bout de
Souffle’ Social Seriousness
 From 1960s Godard’s filmmaking became
politicized, both in terms of style and content.
 Style: Jolted spectators and made them notice
the film making process.
 Content: Political subject matter e.g. ‘La
Chinoise’, ‘Tout va bien’
 Made films politically about politics.
 Began to downplay romantic idea of the film
director as an auteur, used Dziga Vertov Group.
Task
 Watch ‘Bande a Part’ (‘Band of Outsiders’)
 Create a 5-minute short film that includes
a reinterpretation of one of the following
scenes from the film:
 1) The Minute of Silence;
 2) The Café dance scene; or
 3) The Louvre scene.