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Film Authorship
The studio had expected this to be a nice little murder mystery, an ordinary kind of picture. Well, you don't have Orson Welles and have an ordinary anything.
He could only make it extraordinary. her Janet leigh on Touch of Evil

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77.

How do people decide which films to see? They read film reviews in newspapers, magazines, and journals, and on websites. They listen to their friends . Many fans flock to see movies featuring their favorite star; others line up for a film by a director whose work they enjoy. These viewers use their knowledge of a direc­ tor's oeuvre as well as historical and biographical information to analyze, inter­ pret, and evaluate her latest film.
14.1 One ofJohn Ford's famous frame within a frame compositions in Shenandoah.

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The common practice of using a film's director as an organizing based on the aUleur theory, developed by French cinephiles in the and 1950s. At its most basic, the theory proposes that a director is the the film: aUleur translates as "author." The term implies that the director' primary creative source and his films express his distinctive vision of the IS
John Ford was an important Hollywood director who is rightly with the Western genre: as the director of more than sixty Westerns career that spanned six decades , Ford established many of the genre's familiar conventio ns. In visual terms he made the Old West synollymous the desert terrain of Monument Valley on the border of Utah and Arizona. worked with the same actors again and again, including John Wayne,
McLaglen , and Ward Churchill. Wayne became a Western icon thanks to films. Ford's best·known visual technique is probably the frame within a composition (fig. 14.1). In terms of theme, Ford 's films focus Oil OUtsiders find it difficult to fit into a community. Just as "Dickensian" might be u5ed describe Charles Dickens's literary style, so "Fordian" would be used to a film exhibiting these characteristics and "Wellesian" would be applied to a Iillll using Orson Welles's signature devices of deep·focus cinematography and fluid camera movement.
The French critics who argued on behalf of the aUleur did not just extol the work of recognized French writer-directors. Instead, they argued for the anlstry of Hollywood directors. Their theory claimed that even commercial Hollywood directors (whose films others disparaged as mass entertainment , made in an assembly·line fashion) could be viewed as artists .
More than fifty years after the aUleur theory emerged, it seems unremarkable to assume that the director is the primary creative force behind a hlm. Directors. studios, and film critics all encourage this notion. But the customary use of the auteur approach to film should be tempered by an understanding of its full imph· cations. This chapter examines the idea of film authorship as it developed in
France and , later, in the U.S ., and the way the aUleur can be used as a marketing tool. Then it looks at the application of this approach when writing about film and provides examples of four contemporary international auteurs in the context of research questions raised by aUleur theory . This chapter explores both the value and limitations of the auteur approach.

The Idea of the Auteur: From Cahiers du Cinema to the Sarris-I<ael Debate
The aUleur theory emerged from a speCific cultural milieu: postwar France,
During the 1940s and 1950s in Paris , intellectuals who loved cinema used it to explore aesthetic and philosophical questions. Many of these cinephiles-includ· ing Fran~ois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jean·Luc Godard, and Claude Chabrol-also made important films. Others, including Andre Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, can' tributed to film theory. Their early arguments in favor of the auteur approach tn film criticism were published in the influential film journal Cahiers du Cinema.
Alexandre Astruc looked at film as a medium of personal expression, like

408

Chapter 14: Film Authorshi p

He elaborated this idea in a 1948 essay, where he used the phrase m:era.srylo," which literally means "camera pen." In 1954 Truffaut published certain Tendency of French Cinema, " a Cahiers essay that endorsed Astruc's by advocating the auteur approach. In the essay, Truffaut argued that average, unremarkable film director merely translates a pre-existing work film, but an auteur transforms the material. In the proc ess, he makes it his
(an especially remarkable feat when accomplished by directors working the commercial Hollywood studio system). Writer-directors and directors shape pre· existing material according to a distinctive, creative sensibility
Cluteurs.
Truffaut favorably compared Hollywood films with the French cinema's "trad· of quality." To him, Hollywood provided models for daring cinematic crea· whereas the latter produced dull translations of Iiteraty works. Truffaut
Bazin elevated Hollywood studio filmmakers who they thought had been though Bazin also warned against making the director a cull hero.
The auteur theory challenged the prevailing view of the aesthetic superiority
European cinema over American. As Robert Stam notes:
Filmmakers like Eisenstein, Renoir and Welles had always been regarded as auteurs [ .. . J The novelty of auteur theory was to sug· gest that studio directors like Hawks and Minnelli were also auteurs.
(Stam , p . 87)
The theory not only reconsidered popular films as potential works of art; it
31so spurred debates about which directors deserved to be called auteurs. In the lited States the discussion of authorship appeared in the journal Film Culrure
.md The New Yorker magazine, in a well·known debate between film critics
Andrew Sarris and Pauline Kael.
In "Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962," Andrew Sarris created a version of the auteur approach designed to evaluate directors. Sarris's criteria are meant to determine: (I) whether or not an individual director is an auteur; and (2) where a director ranks among all auteurs . A necessary (but not sufficient) criterion for an aUleur is technical competence; a director must be capable of creating a well· made film. Second, the director must demonstrate a distinguishable personality.
Finally, Sarris argued that the films in an auteur's body of work share an interior meaning, defined as an underlying tension between the director's vision and the subject matter.
Sarris did not define this last criterion to the satisfaction of many critics, but it can be thought of as the continuing elaboration of a director' s perspective on lhe world through the treatment of themes . An example of interior meaning would be Stanley Kubrick's ironic view of imperfect human beings and the
Oawed technologies they create in their own image. Many of his films satirize the desire for control and transcendence through technology, but they also reveal a grudging respect for the creative potential of human beings.
New Yorker critic Pauline Kael challenged Sarris. She argued that technical competence was a weak criterion: it failed to acknowledge the true masters of technique, such as Antonioni. She also pointed out that the distinguishable per· sonality criterion penalized directors who risked venturing beyond a familiar

The Idea of the Auteur

genre or style, and she found the "interior meaning" criterion impossibly vague.
She pointed out that the auceur approach might lead critics to overvalue trivial films, elevating them si mply because they had been made by a recognized auteur.
Kael also criticized the auteur approach for refusing to ta ke into account the collaborative nature of filmmaking. The theory ignores the fact that many peo­ ple's creative decisions are part of the process of making films. Kael claimed that in many cases the director was not the driving creative force. Although She argued incorrectly that screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, not Orson Welles, was responsible for the final version of the Citizen Kane script (and therefore should be considered its auceur), most film historians agree with her point that, like most films , that project was a collaboration. The innovati ve visual elements of
Citizen Kane resulted fr om Welles's collaboration with cinematographer Gregg
Toland. A number of film scholars have argued that it is appropriate in certain cases to label producers (Val Lewton, Christine Vachon), actors (Clint Eastwood), and screenwriters (Dudley Nichols) as auteurs .
One additional limitation of the approach should be considered . Auceur criti­ cism implies that the director possesses conscious intentions and, perhaps , unac­ knowledged ideas, all of which combine to produce a film, and, eventually, a body of work. The approach views the director as the primary source of mean . ing. But film theorists such as Peter Wollen argue that the meaning of any text, whether it is a film , novel , short story, television show, or a billboard, exceeds the intentions of the person or people who created it. Wollen questions whether anyone-even the author-can fix any film's meaning definitively for all time.
To him , a strict auceunsc approach may ignore the complexity inherent in any text by insisting that the only authorized readings be linked to some notion of what a director meant to convey.
A simple example illuminates Wollen's concerns. It is well known that Orson
Welles was intrigued by the idea of making a film based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Although pursuing this avenue of research ma y prove fru itful for analyzing Cirizen Kane, to constrain an interpretation to this single aspect would exclude the many ideas the film generates about Ameri­ can culture, aging, and the nature of human relationships, as well as other themes that Welles mayor may not have intended to address.
Despite many shortcomings, the auceur approach remains central to film scholarship and criticism. Moreover, the powerful notion of film authorship exerts an influence on filmmaking as an economic practice, as the next section will show.

Auteur as Marketing Strategy: Old and
New Hollywood
The potential commercial appeal of the auceur drives many marketing cam­ paigns. In 2006 Paul Greengrass became the first director to address the fraught subject matter of the terrorist attacks of September II, 2001, in a mainstream feature film, Uniced 93 (fig. 14.2). One strategy within Universal Studios' market­ ing campaign was to characterize Greengrass as a "compassionate and socially

Chapce,.14: Film Authorship

aware writer/director of fi.lms that study the impact of terrorism in Northern
Ireland in Bloody Sunday and Omagh" ("Production Notes "). Two points illus­ trate the way auteurism is used to market the film: first, the films menti oned deal with the subject of terro rism and adopt a near-documentary visual style
(fig. 14.3) . Thus they establish Greengrass' s legitimacy as a director of thought­ provoking films who is able to depict political violence in a sensitive, rather than an exploitative, manner. Second, the promotional materials overlooked a popular film that, ironically, helped establish the director's reputation in the
United States: The Bourne Supremacy (2004) . One reason for this omission may be that the latter film is a spy thriller that trades on the excitement generated by violence . To appeal to potential viewers concerned that a film about September
II would exploit the events for entertainment, the studio touted on ly the films that helped to solidify Greengrass's reputation as a compassionate and conscien­ tious director.
Other examples point to the ubiquity of using a director to market a fi lm . DVD box sets are packaged by director: Hitchcock,
Kubrick, Scorsese, Kurosawa , and Tarantino.
As film theorist Andre Bazin predicted, the film director has become something of a cult celebrity.
But in fact , commerce has always informed the idea of film authors hip. The next section looks at the careers of Orson Welles and
Alfred Hitchcock to examine the way the auteur has been used by the commercial film industry during the studio era and in post­ studio Hollywood.

14.2 (above) United 93 adopes 'he styl e of docu mentary fitmmaking.
14.3 (below) Sunday Bloody Sunday also demonstrates the director's knack for realism .

Studio-era Auteurs:
Welles and Hitchcock
Orson Welles personified the creativity and fierce independence of the auteur. When he began making films in the 1940s, the U.S. film industry was in its heyday. Although the hierarchical orga,n ization of the major studios positioned directors as mere studio employ­ ees , a unit production system that had emerged in the 1930s offered some latitude to certain directors and producers . The demand for features was so great that studios also hired independent producers and directors, as RKO did when they hired Welles in 1939.
Welles was well known because of his successful Mercury Theater productions
(including the legendary radio broadcast of

Auteur as Marketing Strategy: Old and New Holl ywood

411

cock in a publicity

H.G. Wells 's The War of the Worlds). Because of Welles's reputation, RKO Stu. dios granted him unprecedented creative control to make three fi lms. His first
Citizen Kane, did not achieve box office success. During the editing of his second fi lm , The M(J8nificent Ambersons (1942), Welles was filming a documentary in
Brazil. In his absence, studio executives excised forry minutes of footage and appended a happy ending. The film was not commercially successful; nor Was
Welles's third film, Journey into Fear (J 943), and the director was unceremoni. ously fired by RKO. Over the cours e of the next three decades, WelJes rejected the notion that studio executives knew how to make good films, but periodically he submitted to studio discipline (as an actor and director) in order to make his own films.

Rohmer, Fran~ois Tru[[aut, and Robin Wood had to argue forcefully in order for

Because his work was formally audacious and chall enging, and because he clashed with executives who sought to exert control, Welles became notorious as an outsider reviled by the Hollywood power structure. No other American direc. tor before or since has so epitomized the gertius who flouted the profit-oriented commercial system . He directed films at B studios and in Europe, before return­ ing to Hollywood to make Touch of Evil for Universal in 1958, yet another pro. duction that generated conflict between Welles and studio executives.
One example of Welles's importance as a marketing tool is the 1998 re-release of Touch of Euil. As was the case with most of his studio films, Welles clashed with Urtiversal over its decisions regarding editing and sound. He wrote a de tail ed memo urging the studio to make a number of changes before releaSing the film. Welles 's fifty-eight -page memo to Universal studio head Edward Muhl formed the basis for the film 's restoration in 1998. Film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum
(who participated in the restoration) explained the process:

keting machine.

Rick Schmidlin concocted a wild scheme: to follow all of the memo's instrudions for the first time and put together the Touch of Evil Welles had had in mind. After Schmidlin showed Universal an edited sample of one of Welles 's suggestions, the studio saw a way to get more value out of an old chestnut. (Rosenbaum, Touch of Evil pp . 134-5)
The impetus for the project was financial gain: Universal would "get more value out of an old chestnut." Thus, Universal used Welles's reputation as a fiercely independent artist to entice viewers to see the restored film, one that promised to be superior to the original because it hewed more closely to the auteur's inten­ tions . The "revamping" project would be a worthwhile endeavor in a ny case, but the Welles name made it feasible to a profit ·driven corporation. A lesser director's work might not receive the same commiunent.
Like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock is a celebrated auteur. Edward R. O'Neill notes that Hitchcock's very image is famous and that his name "has passed in to the vernacular in the word 'Hitchcockian'" (O'Neill, p. 310). Lil<e Welles,
Hitchcock clashed with producers and corporate executives in Hollywood, and particularly the independent producer David O. Selznick.
Urtiike Welles, however, Hitchcock earned a reputation as a popular and pro­ lific director. His steady output-fifry-three features between 1925 and 1976­ seemed to confirm his persona as a craftsman rather than a tortured genius . This reputation was so entrenched that influential critics such as Claude Chabrot Eric

Hitchcock's work to be taken seriously.
Hitchcock's authorial persona was used to market his films at the time they were released. A lengthy trailer advertising his 1960 film Psycho follows the director arou nd the set, as he mugs for the camera and exaggerates his dour per­ sonality by hinting at the shocking events that take place in the hotel, in the shower, and in the gothiC mansion where Norman Bates lives (fig. 14.4) . In this trailer, Hitchcock performs his "Master of Suspense" persona to entice viewers to see the film . In the trailer, Paramount used the audience 's idea of Hitchcock­ and not the stars, genre, or plot line-as the hook . In other words, even during the studio era, some directors were celebrities used as fodder for the studio mar­

Blockbuster Auteurs: Spielberg and Lucas
The shift to a corporate entertainment environment in the 1980s and 1990s did not eradicate the idea of the auteur, but modified its profile. Jon Lewis cites
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas as examples of the successful blockbuster auteur (2007; p. 64). This is the director who is savvy about exploiting the economic poten tial of vertically and horizontally integrated film corporations in post-studio Hollywood, including product tie-ins and DVD sales.
The auteur is alive and well and "bound up with the celebrity industry of
Hollywood" according to Tim Corrigan (Corrigan, p. 39). The director functions as a brand name to signify a consistent product. Corrigan claims that the auteur assures blockbuster profits by doing interviews and television appearances.
Another economic and technological development that exploits the auteur as brand name is the marketing of DVDs and Blu-ray. The director's cut solidifies the dlrector as auteur, particularly on commentary tracks where he describes the film in detail. Without disputing the value of a director's insight, this practice speaks to entertainment conglomerates' ability continually to reap the financial benefits of the auteur as celebriry and brand name (figs. 14.5, 14.6).
Thus far, this chapter has concentrated on the origins and implications of film authorship. The remainder of the chapter examines methods of incorporating the auteurist approach into research and writing and presents examples of the auteur approach by analyzing the careers of several established and up-and-coming auteurs.
14.5 (above) George Lucas.

Using the Auteur Approach to Interpret

and Evaluate Films

14.6 (b<iow) As [his Star Wars figurine demons[rates, director George Lu cas is a cu lt figure: eager fans consume his image.

The concept of the film auteur functions in practical terms as an organizing prin· ciple, helping scholars and fans to explore and evaluate films by categorizing them according to their director. Other concepts that can be used to classify films according to aesthetic and historical characteristics include genre (Western, screw· ball comedy), studio (Warner Brothers, Disney, or Miramax). national contexts
(Bollywood, Hong Kong), production or industrial contexts (studio, independent, avant-garde) and historical eras (silent, sound, studio·era Hollywood, post·
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Chapter 14: Film Authorship

Using the Auteur Approach to Interpret and E.... aluate Films

studio Hollywood) . Choosing one of these systems to group films is not a neutral decision: each of these frameworks contains implicit assumptions about the aspects of cinema that the scholar believes are most important to study.
This last section of the chapter explores specific models for using auteur the­ ory as the basis for film interpretation. The first reading, which focuses on
Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, demonstrates how one can try to locate con­ sistency across a director's films.

The Auteur and the Consistency Thesis

wo.

The idea that an individual film director possesses a stylistic sensibility that makes his or her films recognizable and distinct from those of other filmmakers should be treated as a hypothesis that we posit whenever we utilize aureur the­ ory. One goal of analyzing many films by a single director is to prove or disprove this hypothesis, and thUS, film scholars routinely investigate this research ques­ tion: is there a marked consistency across all the films made by a director, whether in subject maner , visual style, and overall sensibility (or worldview)?
There is an implicit belief that true aureurs possess a compelling vision for their work that emerges from all their films, despite often challenging circumstances of collaboration in industrial filmmaking contexts, including intervention on the part of studio executives, clashes with writers and actors, and so on.
The career of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (1910-98) offers an instruc­ tive case study of a director whose filmmaking approach and visual style remains discernible across a substantial number of films (fig. 14.7). A discussion of
Kurosawa (or any director) that forwards a claim of consistency should present a precise descriptive rubric that identifies the key components of a director's style and that encompasses the vast majority of her or his films. It may also seek to identify certain influences on those components of style, possibly in historical events and the director's biography. Finally, this type of analysis may trace the way a director's visual or narrative concerns develop over time . In fact, some writers discuss an auteur's early style versus their late style (the latter assumed to embody a confrontation with mortality), recog­ nizing that a director's entire catalog will incorporate both con­ sistency and change.
Akira Kurosawa directed thirty-one films in a fifty-year career spanning the second half of the twentieth century. Kurosawa began making films in Japan in 1943, after a period of apprenticeship with Kajiro Yamamoto at peL studios (which later merged with JO to form Toho). His importance as a major international filmmaker became undeniable when his 1950 film RasiWl1Wn "burst forth with the force of a new discovery," (Berhnardt p. 39) winning the Golden
Lion at the Venice Film Festival and earning best film and director honors from the National Board of Review in the U.S. Kurosawa was the first Japanese director to gamer such international acclaim.
Kurosawa earned screenwriting credits on all the films he directed, often adapting screenplays from literary works and col­ laborating with one or two other writers. His adaptations draw
Cha.pter ~ 4: Film Authorship

from diverse sources and include works of classical literature. Shakespeare 's
Macbeth and King Lear inspired Kumonosu-j6 ("Throne of Blood"; 1957) and Ran

(1985) and Tolstoy'S The Death of Ivan Ilyich influenced Ikiru ("Doomed "; 1952).
He drew from the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (The Idiot) and Maxim Gorky
(Donzoko (The Lower Depths]. 1957) as well as popular writers. RasiWmon
(1950) was based on two stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and American pulp fiction writer Ed McBain'S King's Ransom formed the narrative basis for Tengoku
10 jigoku ("High and Low"; 1963). Kurosawa 's frequent use of literary source mate­ rial from Russia and the West gave him a reputation for blending the values and aesthetics of East and West. Because his Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai,
1954) was widely admired and re-made as The Magnificenl Seven (John Sturges
1960), Kurosawa is often credited with reinventing the American Western.
Kurosawa's films influenced international directors for many decades. Martin
Scorsese writes, "For me and for many others, he instantly became our master.
Our sensei. You can see his visual mastery in [his] drawings [ .. .] and, of course, in his films, which taken together add up to one of the greatest bodies of work in cinema. " (Scorsese) The drawings Scorsese refers to are the sketches, story­ boards, and paintings that Kurosawa made throughout his life, many of which have been exhibited in museums around the world since his death in 1998.
These art works are an important clue to Kurosawa's distinctive visual style: the director trained as a painter at the Doshusha School of Western Painting prior to becoming a filmmaker. In fact , he exhibited his work when he was only eighteen years old, before he decided to pursue a career in film. Kurosawa overtly expresses his love for painting in his penultimate film , Yume ("Dreams";
1990), where a young twentieth-century Japanese man pursues Vincent Van
Gogh (played by Scorsese) by literally walking thrOUgh his canvases on screen.
The significance of Kurosawa's artistry as a painter is that it helps to explain the way he approaches the film frame as a two-dimensional canvas. His distinc­ tive style is defined by his frequent use of widescreen compositions; Kurosawa quickJy adopted the new technology of CinemaScope, beginning with Donzoko
(The Lower Depths), and the action adventure film The Hidden Fomess (1958), which exerted a strong influence on George Lucas and Star Wars. In terms of the look of his images, Kurosawa often used telephoto lenses, whose optical properties tend to flatten the frame, compressing the distance between foreground and back­ ground, recreating the two dimensional effects of looking at a canvas. Describing his use of extremely long lenses (up to 750 mm) for Akahige ("Red Beard"; 1965),
Kurosawa stated "I wanted to get that crowded, two-dimensional, slightly smoky effect that only a long distance lens can give you." (quoted in Richie, p. 182)
Moreover, Kurosawa typically situates his actors so that they fiJl the screen horizontally and orchestrates movement across the screen. Film scholar Stephen
Prince observes "lateral motion across the frame is one of the visual signatures of his cinema," (Prince, p. 18) while critic J. Hoberman emphasizes Kurosawa's influence on other filmmakers including "Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, George
Lucas, Walter Hill, John Woo, and just about anyone who has ever used the widescreen format with a modicum of pizzazz." (Hoberman) The use of wipes as transitions contributes to the emphaSis on the horizontal dimension of the film frame in Kurosawa's films.

Using the Auteur Approact, to Interpret and Evaluate Films

415

This emphasis can be seen as early as RashOmon, even though that film was shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio. In this film, Kurosawa choreographs the movement of his central characters in a linear fas hio n rather than emphasizing the depth of the frame : one notable example is the scene early in the film when the woodcutter runs through the forest: because of his rapid movement, the leaves behind him are transformed into a flattened, abstract backgro und (fig.
14.8). This scene also depends upon a highly mobile cam. era-a technique of Kurosawa's that is most apparent in his sam urai action films.

les in a painterly on. One additional visual signature of Kurosawa's-the use of multiple cameras to shoot a single scene-is also evident in Rash6mon. This technique allows for rapid cuts on action and introduces fragmentation, mObility, and kinetic energy, all of which cont ribute to dramatic action scenes in Seven
Samurai and Ran. This technique does far more than sim­ ply jolt the audience viscerally; it also speaks to one of Kurosawa's signature themes : the idea that individuals hold radically different perspectives on the world around them. In fact , the title of RashOmon has become synonymous with this philosophical conundrum: when several people remember a real life event they have witnessed or panicipated in, there may well be several different ver­ sions of th e truth . This theme reappears in High and Low with a slight variation; in this film , Kurosawa looks at the way the rich and the poor experience the world differently.
Moving from visual style to issues related to theme and genre also reveals
Kurosawa's consistency. He is best remembered for his sweeping, epic samu rai action films, made in the tradition of the Japanese jidai'geki, or historical drama, including Seven Samurai, Yojimbo (1961), and Ran, although he also made films of contemporary Japanese life, the gendai-geki, includ ing lkim and High and
Low. Whether orChestrating grand battle scenes, or observing the subtle warfare his characters engage in as they navigate modem life, Ku rosawa always focuses on the difficult moral choices individuals make. One early film review of lkiru made a point that came to define the director's oeuvre: "K urosawa has endowed the film with compassion and understanding, with an ironic awareness of human weakness and a knowledge of the dignity of the individual. ,. (Bernhardt p. 41) A scholar and admirer of Kurosawa's work, Donald Richie, emphasizes the psy­ cholOgical and social dimension of Kurosawa's work by pointing out that his heroes refuse to be defeated . Many of those heroes were played by Toshiro
Mifune, who starred in sixteen of Kurosawa's films. "In Kurosawa's hands" writes Ed Park in The Village Voice, "[MifuneJ was grandly human: not just van­ quishing bandits but grappling with the dictates of fear and the maddening logic of responsibility." (Park)
In a career that spanned decades, Akira Kurosawa made films that remain instantly recognizable, due in large pan to his consistent visual style, which is rooted in his wide screen compositions and use of the telephoto lens, and his repeated engagement with questions of morality, choice, and indiv idual responsibility.

The Life and Work of an Auteur: Studying
Biographical Influence
A second approach to using this theory of authorship as a method of interpreta­ tion is to consider how biographical experiences have shaped a director's career.
Typically, scholars who pursue this line of interrogation analyze a director whose reputation as an a!.Ueur has already been established. In this mode, explaining what influenced a director's sensibility is as important as spelling out recurring themes and stylistic techniques. In the discussion below of Ousmane
Sembene (J 923-2007), the author explores how the director's experiences grow­ ing up in Senegal, a French colony in Africa, which attained independence in
1960, influenced his work.
In 1963, novelist and essayist Sembene (fig. 14.9) turned to filrnrnaking, partly because he realized that most of his fellow Senegalese were illiterate. He trained at Moscow's Gorky film school. Sembene made his firs t African feature,
Black Girl ("Le Noire de .. "l, in 1966 and he continued making films until his death in 2007. His style was influenced by both Italian Neorealism and indige­ nou s Senegalese traditions, evident in the way his films often critically examine
French colonialism as well as post-independence Senegal.
Sembene's career was shaped by the historical context of his childhood and his experiences in Senegal and in France as a young man. Caryn James identi fies a common theme in the director's oeuvre: the depiction of Sengalese and African histories through a central character. Sembene's Camp Thiaroye ("Camp de
Thiaroye"; 1988), concerns the experiences of African troops who fought for
France in World War II but are detained at a transit camp on their return home to Dakar. France repays the soldiers ' seJVice by making them suffer the indignity of being forced to live in what amounts to a P.O.W. camp. Sergeant Diatta (Sidilu
Bakaba)-the protagonist who fiercely defends h.is fe llow soldiers' right to return home, but who is also married to a French woman and is a connoisseur of
Western music and literature-embodies the complex struggles associated with

postcolonial and globalizing African identities.
John Pym argues that Diatta gives voice to Sembene's concerns as a post­ colonial subject. But Pym draws an even more direct link between the character and the director by referencing Sembene's specific biographical details:

14.9 Ousmane Sembene.

It's not reading too much into this character [Diatta] to see in him
[ ... ] a portrait of the principled young Sembene, the one-time union organizer of the Marseille waterfront who went on to write, among other books in French, Les bouts de bois de Dieu, a novel set against the 1947-48 French railway strike. (Pym, p. 280)
Embracing the biographical approach to auteur criticism, Pym educates the audi­ ence about Sembene's youth, arguing that Sembene's pursuits as a political activist and author are relevant details for interpreting his cinema.
Berenice Reynaud's reading of Sembene's Moolan.de (2004) takes this approach one step further, demonstrating the possibilities of reading a film in light of a director' s professional experiences within a film industry. Moolao.d£, which won the Prix Un Cenain Regard at the Cannes film festival, explores the
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Chapcer 14 : Film Auchorship

Using che Auteur Approach to Interpru and Evaluace Films

topic of female genital mutilation in Burkina Faso . In the film, villagers struggle to negotiate the tension between modern values, which have made their way into the communiry (as a motif involving portable radios makes clear), and tra­ ditional customs. The heated debate over whether or not a group of young girls should undergo the age-old ritual makes explicit this connict between competing value systems . One woman , Colle, refuses to force her daughter to undergo the painful procedure, but her husband Amsatou, an elderly village patriarch , obeys tradition and publicly whips Colle for defying the elders.
Reynaud argues that the complexly drawn Amsatou and his struggle to choose between tradition and moderniry mirrors the director's own professionallIibula_ tions. Sembene, she explains, used his status as Senegal's foremost director to make films that give voice to women in his culture. Because he was a man,
Sembene had the power and privilege to champion women's rights. At the same time, Sembene's status as a colOnized African subject laboring to finance his films diminished his capacity to fully articulate a progressive vision. Sembene relied on French subsidies for his early films, putting his need to finance his career at odds with his interest in exploring anti-colonialist themes . As Sembene's work became more radical, he found it more difficult to secure funding.
Reynaud argues that this dilemma is strikingly apparent in one dramatic close-up of Amsatou's face as he weighs whether to support his wife in her effort to change tribal customs, or to yield to tradition: " Moolaade is a paean to the strength, the determination of women ; it is about Colle's fight. Yet it is a man, entangled in his own contradictions, who chose to tell the story. ( ... ) Sembene represented his dilemma , on the margin on the filmic discourse, where it could move us subliminally." (Reynaud)
James , Pyrn, and Reynaud all interpret Sembene's work in light of the direc­ tor 's life experiences. Film scholars interested in pursuing this approach inevita­ bly conduct research, scouring libraries and archives for any information that might be relevant for understanding the director's outlook. Family life, biograph­ ical anecdotes, education, and cultural and economic conditions are but a few of the many possible fruitful areas of inquiry .

Auteurs and Anomalies: Studying Aberrational Films
Accounting for and exploring the differences between films that epitomize a director's creative signature and those that seem anomalous is another way scholars and critics approach auteur theory. Writers who adopt this approach might begin by asking questions: in what ways does one film appear to differ from the director's other work? Do production circumstances or historical eras account for these differences? Do any components of the director's established signature show up in the film, albeit in a modified fashion?
Starting with these broad questions might lead to some intriguing new ways of interpreting a film or reconsidering the gist of a director's oeuvre. Sometimes writers disco ver that a fiJm that appears incongruous at first glance is actually in step with a director's other work. The process of attempting to uncover similari­ ties between the anomalous film and the director's established films mayor may not yield this conclusion. A scholar might meditate on how obvious shifts in a

director's approach signal th at he's taken his work in a new direction-perhaps the changes noted in a particular film mark the beginning of a new stage in his career, or perhaps they represent a one-ti me experiment.
Wes Anderson's animated Famastic Mr. Fox (2009) serves as a useful example of how an apparent deparrure can actually be understood to cohere with a direc­ tor's earlier work. Before the release of Mr. Fox , Anderson had earned a reputa­ tion as one of American cinema's most distinctive auteurs after having made just five features-Borrle Rocket (I996), Rushmore (I998), The Royal Tenenbaums
(2001), The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004) and The Darjeeling Limited
(2007)-each of whkh he made with a dependably idiosyncratic voice (fig,
14,10), The fact that Anderson wrote or co-wrote all of his screenplays and repeatedly returned to a stalwart cast of loveable misfits (including Owen and
Luke Wilson, and Bill Murray) helped shape his authorial signarure.
But Fantastic Mr. Fox marked a dramatic departure for Anderson, For the first time, he adapted someone else's work, developing his film from British novelist
Roald Dahl 's children's novel. This fact invited questions about whether or not
Anderson could maintain his cinematic identiry while working with material someone else had composed. Furthermore, Anderson was venturing into ani­ mated film for the first time; fo r a director famous for his meticulously studied costumes and sets, and his string of familiar cast members, the decision to use stop motion animation seemed like a complete abandon­ ment of the style that had made him famous. With Dahl's
Mr. Fox, however, Anderson selected source material that allowed him to elaborate the same characters and themes he had tackled in his earlier work: in all of his films, he portrays iconoclastic individu als whose egotistical and mis­ guided need to micromanage the world around them leaves them unhappy and isolated from people they care about. In order to maintain their relationships with others, these characters must learn to cultivate a more mature outlook on life and embrace the choices others make.
What unites Anderson's most endearing characters is their immature vaniry, which reveals itself in the control­ ling and condescending manner with which they treat oth­ ers. fn Rushmore, prep-school underachiever Max Fischer
(Jason Schwartzman) falls in love with teacher Rosemary
Cro ss (Olivia Williams) and blithely assumes they are intel­ lectual and emotional equals . She tries to befriend Max , but when she pursues other romantic interests, Max insists on insulting her suitors and sabotaging her relationships.
While Ro yal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) in Anderson's next film is considerably older than Max, he's as emotion­ ally stunted as the teenager. Royal longs to return home to the family he abandoned. To win his way back into the fold, Royal pretend s to be dying (rom a terminal disease .
Inevitably, what Max, Royal, and nearly all of Anderson's
P
ne'er-do-wells come to realize is that their stubborn

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Chapter 14: Film Authorsh ip

Using the Awreur Approach to Interpret and Evaluate Films

attempts to exert control over others is always self-defeating; it only drives the objects of their affection further away.
Although "Foxy" Fox, an animated Canis m{u.s, might initially appear to be a very di[[erent type of character for Anderson, in reality he is a four-legged, furry combinatio n of Max and Royal. The film begins with Fox (voiced by George
Clooney) and his wife (Meryl Streep) successfu ll y knocking off a chicken coop.
During the getaway, however, he winds up ensnared in a trap because he ignores his wife's pleas not to tug on a mysterious rope dangling above him. His stub­ born curiosity gets the best of him ... and it lands the two of them inside a cage.
The episode defines their relationship: she is cautious and concemed abou t keeping the family safe, while he is drawn to advenrure and often fails to con­ sider how his impetuous behavior threatens the family's stability. More to the point, Mr. Fox is convinced that he is crafty enough to always "outfox" the farm­ ers, and that Mrs. Fox wants to "change his nature" by meddling with his wily schemes. As with Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox's self-centeredness plays out in his rela­
Iionship with his son Ash (Jason Schwartzman) . Although Ash actively seeks his father'S approv al, Mr. Fox lavishes his attention on his athletic, alternative cousin Kristofferson (Eric Anderson). Perhaps Mr. Fox loves his escapades so much that he's bored by his own son, or he's so vain that he would rather associ­ ate with his accomplished nephew because it makes him look better, or he may simply be more comfortable aro und others who are adventurous like he is, or whom he sees as gifted_ In keeping with Anderson's entire coterie of misguided male characters , Mr. Fox is bent on "winning" -on making himself look good by outwitting his friends and foes-even if his plans h urt those he cares for the most. With Fantastic Mr. Fox, Anderson maintains several other key ingredients of his distinctive style. Two are particularly relevant : Anderson's scrupulous atten­ tion to cos tuming and his emphasis on literary, theatrical, and cinematic talent and invention. Anderson's characters tend to maintain a trademark look: Max
Fischer rarely takes off his prep-school blazer; Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) and his sons never remove their red tracksuits and his brother Ritchie (Luke Wilson) wears tennis-pro sweatbands even though his career on the court has collapsed .
The fact that Anderson hired cou turiers Fendi and Lacoste to design costumes for
The Royal Tenenbaums is some ind ication of how crucial wardrobe is to the director's vision (Mayshark p. 128). Apparel becomes one of the most important ways his characters express their identities. Max Fischer isn't a model student
("He's the worst student we have," bemoans the school's headmaster) but he dresses like one; his blazer defines not who he is, but what he wants to project.
Mr. Fox likewise lives by the motto " the clothes make the man." He's a petty criminal who dresses the part of a suave cosmopolitan. Anderson hired seam­ stresses to create a rust colored corduroy suit and tie for Mr. Fox, transforming the furry critter into a double-breasted dandy.
Anderson repeatedly fashions characters who are creative anists: Max directs school plays; Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a playwright ; and Steve
Zissou is a documentary filmmaker. Their involvment in creative endeavors complements Anderson's interest in characters who want to take creative control

Chapter 14: Film Authorship

over their lives; Max, (or example, directs the people in his life as if they were cast members of the elaborate plays he stages. This interest in characters who literally see all the world as a stage resonates with the stylized and synthetic quality o( Anderson's costumes and sets . The most dramatic example o( this pro­ nounced artificiality ma y be Steve Zissou's ship in The Life Aquatic, a dioramic set constructed and filmed in long shots so that it looks like the cross section of a doll house. Expressionist set design is one way Anderson' s visual style under­ scores the (act that his characters abandon authentic, messy emotions, and instead try to live out perfectly crafted storybook lives .
Mr. Fox doesn't direct plays or make movies; for him , creativity lies in plan­ ning and executing his capers. And, as film critic Nathan Gelgud observes, the animals who involve themselves in Foxy's schemes are drawn to the possibility of reinventing themselves:
The self-aware, kid-fitted references to action-movie tropes-bandit hats, poison dog bait , "this time it' s personal"-work incredibly well because the characters themselves, especially Fox and his son
Ash, are self-co nscious about defining their roles : Fox [ ... J describes his habit of whistling and clicking his teeth as his trademark.
("Masterpiece")
When his master plan doesn't unfold according to script, tho ugh, Mr. Fox real­ izes that his van ity has life or death consequences. Ultimately, Max Fischer,
Steve Zissou, and Mr. Fox don't abandon their crea tive urges to assert control over their lives. But for these controlling characters to mature in Wes Anderson's world, they must learn to accept creative input from othe rs . In Mr. Fox , each crit­ ter-even Ash-gets to help write his or her own part and helps to save the entire animal commu nity (rom the farmer's destructive rage.
As this brief reading of Fantastic Mr. Fox demonstrates , explaining why a text that appears to be uncharacteris tic actually adheres to a director's usual mode can be a useful way to employ auceur theory . Locating similarities across a direc­ tor's work, and making a special attempt to include seemingly eccentric texts, can help the fan, student , or scholar recognize themes at work and more fully appreciate a director's visual and narrative choices in every film.

Auteurs and Ancestors: The Question of Influence
A fourth way to develop a scholarly understanding of a director's body of work using auteur theory is to explore the influence of another director. Many auteurs are recognized as such because their distinctive style endures in the work of sub­ sequent generations of filmmakers who borrow ideas from them. Critics and fans are usually delighted to recognize an hommage to a beloved auteur. Some influ ­ ences can be overt, appearing in obviou s references, while others may become apparen t only with careful, close analysis.
Adopting this approach requires the writer to first identify the stylistic profile of the director whose status as an auteur is well-established, and then to argue that these traits re-appear in another director 's fi lms. The purpose behind this exercise isn't necessarily to argue that the latter filmmaker is a lesser artist whose

Using the Auteur Approach to Interpret and Evaluate Fi lms

421

work is derivative. though film critics may pursue this line of logic. Rather. exploring the role of artistic influence can provide a useful framework for inter. preting new films by comparing and contrasting them with older works . This approach can also lead to a re-evaluation of an older direclOr by demonSlIating how his artistic vision continues to have relevance for new filmmakers. It may also help 10 identify important questions regarding cultural and historical factors that may be involved when one director invokes the work of another. Have his­ torical events. for example. or a mood or zeitgeist suddenly thrust the concerns and vision of the original auteur into relief in new ways? And finally. what are the tangible pieces of evidence that link the work of the original auteur to the director under consideration: can the writer/researcher be certain that he saw and lOok note of the earlier figure? Interviews with filmmakers are often Critical to establishing a conscious borrowing from another direclOr's work.
Whereas many critics have focused their analysis of Kathryn Bigelow's much . admired The Hun Locker (2008) on the question of whether or not the film is pro- or anti -war. careful consideration of the director's artistic influences helps draw attention to her central theme . Bigelow (fig. 14,11) is more interested in exploring the psychological impact of combat on individual soldiers than she is in debating ideological questions regarding the ethics of the U.S, war in Iraq. As this analysis will demonstrate, understanding how Bigelow's film incorporates the visual strategies and thematic ideas associated with the directors that influ­ enced her opens the door to a new and compelling angle for interpretation.
One of the most obvious influences on Bigelow's films is the work of Sam
Peckinpah. famous for gracefully choreographed and violently bloody Westerns uke Ride che High Councry (1963). The Wild Bunch (1969). and Pac Garrecc and
Billy che Kid (1973). Film critic Amy Taubin has called Bigelow Peckinpah's artis­ tic "daughter" because of her films ' "double-faced critique of-and infatuation with-the codes of masculinity." (quoted in Dargis) Bigelow herself explicitly acknowledged her connection to "Bloody Sam" in January 2010 when she intro­ duced The Wild Bunch for the "Films That Inspired Me" film series at the
Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
The comparison with Peckinpah is an apt one. since the bomb defusers in Tite
Hun Locker look and act like modern day cowboys , Renegade Sergeant William
James (Jeremy Renner) flaunts his unhesitating stride as he walks down arid boulevards toward unexploded ordnance: he certainly wouldn't look out of place in the climactic scene in The Wild Bunch. sauntering into the middle of a heavily armed Mexican villa to rescue an abducted compadre (fig. 15.3). James 's near suicidal obsession with dismantling bombs arises from the same impulses that drive Peckinpah's ragtag anti-heroes . Addiction to the adrenaline rush and an existential ambivalence toward the meaning of life propel these men as much as any sense of loyalty or obligation. Like Peckinpah. Bigelow works in the arena of the taut male action film, which . in her case. also coincided historically with the hardbody action flick, analyzed by scholars Susan Jeffords and Yvonne Tasker.
Bigelow's films include K-19 : The Widowmaker (2002), a Cold War nuclear sub­ marine saga; Paine Break (1991). about an FBI agent who is in deep cover with a gang of thieves; and Blue Sceel (1989), a neo-noir cop thriller. Bigelow orches­ trates tension and explosive violence in these films. unveiling "the hysteria
Chapter 14: Film Autho~hip

beneath [men's] seeming rationality ." (Taubin, quoted in Dargis)
Just a casual glance at Bigelow's use of cinematography reveals Peckinpah's influence. In The Hun Locker and in The Wild Bunch, both direclOrs carefully frame their male protagonists in wide shots. often with telephoto lenses. This technique situates the men in unfriendly settings while also emphasizing their singular composure under pressure. Put another way. Bigelow and Peckinpah amp up the tension in long. languid moments when men wait for something to happen: they are vulnerable but poised in a hostile environment. Rapid zooms to random details-onlookers , animals, and enemies-suggest in a very kinetic way the pressure of having to maintain the appearance of calm while constantly surveying one's surroundings. The camera's unrelenting surveillance in these moments evokes the men 's mental agility and stamina. adjuncts to the phYSical prowess typically associated with strong masculiniry . The rapid camera move­ ment also implies their distrust of the world around them and a frenetic quality of being very near the edge of saniry.
When action does erupt. Peckinpah and Bigelow dissect and mUltiply the violence; they cut quickly 10 capture from multiple points of view the surreal choreography of bodies under assault. But they also punctuate rapid barrages of imagery with slow-motion shots. which lIansform the rituals of violence inlO a bloody ballet.
Earlier in her career. Bigelow identified another influence on her sryle. which is less obvious than the Peckinpah connection, but potentially more provocative, given that Bigelow makes action films. She noted her indebtedness 10 Douglas
Sirk o Sirk is known for directing melodramatic Hollywood "weepies" in the
1950s. particularly MG8ni{icene Obsession (1955). AU chac Heaven Allows (1955),
Wriccen on che Wind (1956), and lmication of Life (1959). Claiming Peckinpah and Sirk as one's lineage might appear contradictory. since these direclOrs are a study in contrasts: the former is associated with male-oriented action spectacles. whereas the latter specialized in stylized family dramas centering on women fa c­ ing tragic romantic and familial dilemmas . Nevertheless. Sirk's work has been an influence on Bigelow since her first feature. The Loveless (1982), which pays tribute via overt references to Wrilten on che WiruJ. (Beyond Melodrama). What makes this cOruJection so compelling is the fact that the relationship between
Sirk and Bigelow is underneath the surface. The fan or critic may have 10 dig to see how so-caUed "women's films" might influence a war movie. but the process of discovery can be a rewarding intellectual experience that prompts the viewer to rethink the apparent simplicity of the testosterone-driven action film.
Peckinpah 's and Sirk' s competing aesthetics run throughout The Hun Locker. revealing the way Bigelow 's film grapples not just with the physical mechanics of defusing bombs. but also with the emotions at the heart of Sergeant James 's motivations . Thomas Elsaesser argues in his seminal essay on melodrama that in action films the characters' inner dilemmas get translated into physical quests:
.. A jail-break, a bank-robbery. a Western chase or cavalry charge. and even a criminal investigation lend themselves 10 psychologized, thematized representa­ tions of the hero's inner dilemmas [ ... ]," (Elsaesser. p. 55) By contrast. family melodramas in the vein of Douglas Sirk "more often [record] the failure of the protagonist to act in a way that could shape the events and influence the

Using the Auteur Approa.ch to Interpret and Evalua.te Films

14.11 Kathryn

Bigelow.

emotional environment, let alone change the stifling social miLieu." (p. 55) In other words, actio n heroes express their emotions through actions that change Ule external environment; in melodrama , "the world is closed, and th e characters are acted upon." (p. 55)
In The Hun Locker Bigelow treats these conflicting impulses of Peckinpah and
Sirk-action and melod rama- as a Structuri ng device . The first half of the film focuses on bomb defusing set pieces rife with hean stopping action . Bigelow depicts James's a ttempt to change and control his environment by defyi ng both his commanding office r and his odds of survival. He takes un necessary risks in the fie ld merely for the sake of adding another neutralized detona tion device to hi s collection, which he stores in a box under hi s bed . The second half of the film moves squarely into Sirkian territory: it illuminates James's desire to have some kind of intimate connection to another person, explains his mo st reckless behav. ior, and exposes his vulnerability.
The connection between James's self-destructive beha vior and his emotional longing becomes explicit when, over the course of a night of heavy drinking, we witnes s James's desire to bond with other men, and his simultaneous impulse to deny any intimacy. The three men drink to celebrate having survived a tense sniper attack. But after James opens up about his family life, he begins to spar with squad leader Sergeant J.T . Sanborn (Anthony Mackie): "As if to deny the comradeship they felt , they th row punches that are meant to hu rt." (Tau bi n,
p. 35) Eventuall y, the playful roughhousing spirals out of control and real anger erupts, culminating with Sanborn pulling a knife on Ja mes. These men clearly cra ve some kind of friendship , but the masculine code prohibits close homoso. cial bo nds and so the ir actio ns defuse a ny sign of emotional connection.
James also tries to nurture a bond with Beckham, the local boy who works on th e base and who becomes James's surroga te so n. But when James finds that thi s relationship makes him emotionally vu lnerable, he must once again deny hi s feelings and resort to action instead. On one miSSion, James's team discovers a corpse stu ffed with a "body bo mb ." James thinks the body is Beckham .
Therea fter, James becomes consumed wit h avenging Beckham 's death, threaten ­ ing the vendor who hired the boy and sneaking out in the middle of the night to interrogate the boy's fa mily to punish them for sacrificing their son to the insur­ gency . These scenes make it clear that, des pite James's attempt to avoid emo­ tional entanglements, his feelings still intrude. His only mechanism for address­ ing these feelings is to reson to violent, male bluster.
Rather than accomplishing a nythi ng productive, much less avenging
Beckham 's death, James 's effons prove to be ineffectual : the vendor Whom he threatens apparently ha s no clue as to Beckham's whereabouts (or even why
James is so agitated). To make matters worse, the couple he interrogates are not involved with the insurgency, nor are they Beckha m's parents. Later, when his team responds to a bombing, James is so frustrated by feelings of impotence that he leads hi s men o n a dangerous wild-goose chase through Baghdad 's alleyways in the middl e of the night-an exercise in futiliry that gets a so ldier seriously injured . In shon, James tries to be a super actio n hero in his effon to address his feelings of loss , sa dness, and helplessness, but his effons are in vain .
This ponrait of masculinity as self-defeating posturing has more in common

Chapter 14 : Film Auchorship

with Sirk 's brand of melodrama than Peckinpah's outlaw heroes. The notio n that the war and its social context are too complex fo r James to understand, much less ha ve an impact on, hits home when Beckha m reappears on the base . James had been mistaken. Whereas a more heroic protagonist would have succeeded in either saving the bOY 's li fe or avenging his death , James realizes he has com­ pletely misinterpreted the situation around him and utterly overestimated his ow n impOrlance. " [Melodrama' s protago nists] emerge as lesser human beings for having become wise and acquiescent to the world." (Elsaesser, p. 55)
Sirk's fi lms are justifia bly famous for the stunning beau ry of his imagery .
While hi s characters lead li ves of desperate misery , they at least manage to do so in immaculate houses stuffed with ornate objects. Indeed, it is this tension between visual beau ty and tragic circumstance that fa scina tes Bigelow, who is drawn to the "interesting juxtaposition between [the cha.racter'sl nihilistic inte­ rior and this lush, almos t exotic exterior ." (Beyond Melodrama) Put another way,
Sirk surrou nds characters with the material goods tha t repla ce the emotional con­ nections missing in their lives. His chara cters value thei r homes as symbols of middle class success, but these spaces also come to represent the characters' inner e mptiness . In AU That Heaven
Allows , for example, Cary Scott's
(Jane Wyman) ch ildren b uy her a new telev ision set to fi ll the void left by their absence. In 1950s America, the televi sio n was the qui ntessential symbol of stat us and prestige. Cary's chi ldren fill her li ving room with the most fashionable items, but they don 't encourage her to fulfill her emotional needs by ma rrying the working class man she loves (in fa ct, they pro hib it it). One especiall y dramatic shot reveals Cary 's blankly melancholic gaze reflected off the set'S screen, making her sad ness and sense of ent rapme nt within a world of elec­ tronic gadlletry palpab le (fig. 14.12).
A similar moment of tragedy befalls
Sergeant Ja mes when he returns home from his tour of dury. The first scene stateside finds him not at home with his fa mily, b ut shopping fo r groceries.
He leaves Bagh dad 's dangerous, war­ torn landscape behind a nd finds him­ self embedded in consumer culture.
Rather then fee li ng comforted , James clearly feels at odds with this environ­ ment. When he goes to fetch a box of cereal , Bigelow uses a wide· angle lens

Usi ng the Auteur Approach

[0

Interp re [ and E.... alua[e Films

14.12 (above) The technotogical trappings of consumer culture in

All Tha' Heaven Allows.
14.13 (below) The gastronom icat trappings of con sumer culture in

The Hurt Locker.

425

and pos itions the camera at a low angle sligh tly behind James as he surveys the s helves (fig. 14.13) . Like Cary Scott staring at the soul-deadening television before her, James gazes at "the endless possi bility of what's available," Over_ whelmed (Bigelow, Commentary). The second half of the film has been leading to this emotional dead end. In typical melodramatic fashion, the film depicts a vicio us cycle in which James goes on one self-defeating mission after another as a substitu te for e moti onal connection, only to find that when he retUIns home he is comp letely alienated from the society and fa mily he has fought to defend .
The tragedy of melodrama is that its characters are impri son ed by social fac­ tors beyond their control (Elsaesser, p. 55), and Sergeant James 's deciSion to re-enlist should be interpreted in such terms . This choice is not an a ction fil m gestUIe in which the hero takes one last stand to correct what's wrong; James returns simpl y out of disillusionment and resignation-t here's Simply no other place for him to go. Indeed , Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow view James, dressed in his bomb disposal gear in the fin al image of the film, as a man walking to his death, faCi ng the "fu tility and the inexorable tide of violence " awa it ing him
(Commentary) .
As this discussion of Kathryn Bigelow demonstrates , studying an aUleur's artistic a ncestry involves careful consideration of how the interior meaning and cine matic techniques running throughout one director's canon of film s appear in another director's work . Student s should apprecia te how th is approach doesn' t requ ire a n exact co rresponde nce from one director to the next. Rather, the most thoughtful analysis will typically explore how a director pays respect to her influ­ ences while also updating or adap ting the approach. Bigelow does n't just ape
Peckinpa h's portrait of male violence; she transforms his vision into something new , in part by also dra wing on Sirk's legacy of melodrama . When a director pays tribute to those who influenced her, in a sense she is engaging in a dia­ logue: acknowledging, e laborating on, and sometimes even challenging or con­ tradicting a nother's powerful artistic statements.

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Chapter 14: Film Authorship

Using [h e Auteur Approach to In terpret and Evaluat e Films