Opinion | Notes on auteur theory in 2021

From left to right: Directors Ridley Scott, Chloé Zhao, James Gunn and James Wan are modern day embodiments of film critic Andrew Sarris’ auteur theory. Photo illustration by DANIEL PEARSON, Photo Editor

Over the course of the 1950s, the critics of French film journal “Cahiers du Cinéma” formulated “la politique des auteurs” — a mode of film criticism through which films are assessed and analyzed as the product of a singular creative voice, or auteur. 

In the roughly 70 years that have elapsed since then, this perceptibly simple concept has reshaped film criticism in ways I doubt the “Cahiers” critics could have ever imagined. 

Although “la politique des auteurs” lacks a precise definition, American film critic Andrew Sarris attempted to condense this nebulous idea in his seminal essay “Notes on Auteur Theory in 1962.”According to Sarris, “auteur theory” — his rough translation of the French “politique des auteurs” — was composed of three central tenets, of which directors needed to master in order to be considered an auteur: technique, personal style and interior meaning. 

Caden McQueen, Opinions Editor

While somewhat narrow in scope, Sarris couches his interpretations of the “Cahiers” critics’ ideas in enough reservations as not to assert them as definitive, acknowledging auteur theory as “a pattern theory in constant flux” in his 1962 essay. Yet in spite of all his precautions, Sarris’s essay is undone by a relatively simple error: his framing of auteur theory as something to be proven. 

This choice effectively reduces lofty definitions of “politique des auteurs” from Eric Rohmer, André Bazin, François Truffaut, Jean Luc-Goddard and Jacques Rivette to an essentialist set of criteria that — while subject to change — can be objectively validated as a “true” method of film criticism. Of course, one would expect such an audacious claim to garner a response. But I doubt even the most clairvoyant of media analysts could have predicted the vast impact Sarris’s essay had on the American film industry. 

Catalyzed by Pauline Kael’s 1963 polemic, “Circles and Squares” — a direct response to “Notes on Auteur Theory in 1962” — the discourse surrounding auteur theory has since propelled it to the forefront of American film culture. Today, it continues to define not only how films are perceived, but also how they are produced. 

Over the last year, Hollywood’s obsession with the auteur has grown increasingly evident. A glance at most any recent film trailer will reveal their burgeoning desire to create images of visionary directors; the marketing materials for “Eternals,” “Last Night in Soho,” “The French Dispatch” and “House of Gucci” all describe the films they’re advertising for as “from” or “by” the director. Sarris’s auteur theory has even nestled its way into film journalism; its patriarchal terminology is present in nearly everything popular outlets like Variety write about the medium. 

This theory appears to have become the de facto lens through which many understand film in America, and ─ much to my dismay ─ it has, in many circles, grown even less nuanced with time. 

With much of the discourse surrounding film centering firmly around the director, many ─ like filmmaker Gore Vidal did back in 1976  ─ have accused Sarris’s theory for defying “directors over writers in the moviemaking process.” Despite Sarris’s best efforts to counteract this cultish interpretation of his theory, time has tragically proven Vidal correct. 

As film communities on Twitter continue to thoughtlessly proclaim directors like Christopher Nolan and Wes Anderson as unequaled geniuses, the other artistic voices that contributed to beloved films like “Inception” (2010) are continually ignored. This egotistical, reductive mode of film analysis is frankly asinine, and must be abandoned if we ever hope to truly understand the wide variety of perspectives that comprise the films that populate our screens. 

That isn’t to say auteur theory as a whole ought to be abandoned; it simply must be approached with a bit more tact. As a critical framework, auteur theory is undeniably useful; without it, we could not trace a director’s development as an artist over their body of work. 

Yet we mustn't allow narrow interpretations of auteur theory to blind us to the complex network of artists that realize these director’s visions.