In 1954, François Truffaut wrote an essay entitled A Certain Tendency in French Cinema. In this work he claimed that film is a great medium for expressing the personal ideas of the director. He suggested that this meant that the director should therefore be regarded as an auteur. In fact, Truffaut once provocatively said that: "There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors"
The worth of this theory has been questioned by some critiques. But, it is particularly useful as a starting point for the interpretation of some films.
Auteur Theory suggests that a director can use the commercial apparatus of film-making in the same way that a writer uses a pen or a painter uses paint and a paintbrush. It is a medium for the personal artistic expression of the director. The film theorotician, André Bazin, explained that: auteur theory was a way of choosing the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard of referencce, and then assuming that it continues and even progresses from one film to the next.
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.
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