Auteur's Theory

The French word, auteur, when directly translated to English is author. It is basically a way of reading and appraising films through the imprint of the author, which is the director.

It started with Francois Truffaut when he wrote an essay entitled A Certain Tendency in the French Cinema. It was in this essay that he claimed a film is an amazing medium for a director to express their personal ideas. And he made the suggestions that this is the reason why directors should be regarded as an author.

The main idea of auteur theory gained momentum in America around the 1960s through Andrew Sarris. He is the one who actually started the notion of auteur theory by using it to tell the history of American filmmaking by classifying individuals into their respective talents.

Auteur theory basically suggest that a director has the privilege to utilize film-making just the way a writer uses a pen or when a painter uses paint and paintbrushes. Just as Francois Truffaut put it, movies become a medium for personal expression of the director. So, the film will actually take on the maker's signature styles.

For an example, in Tim Burton's movies, more often than not are made of darkly lit scenes. Also, Tim Burton's movies often isolates the main character from the rest of the characters in the movie. This could be the possibility that Tim Burton is making his movies based on his personal experience.

Auteur Theory suggests that the best films will bear their maker’s ‘signature’. Which may manifest itself as the stamp of his or her individual personality or perhaps even focus on recurring themes within the body of work. Alfred Hitchcock plays this idea up in most of his movies where he makes sure that he appears on screen in a brief cameo spot. This became a game that viewers would engage in, waiting to find out when he would appear.

However, the downside of auteur theory is that other roles in movie tend to be diminished. Of course, this is also because of the fact that auteur directors highly focus on their main character as the whole movie revolves around that character.