Auteur Theory 3 Essay Example

The auteur theory consists of a director’s own personality or attitude in each film that they create. Each film has his or her own style and they use their own personal technique in each film differently. In the article entitled “Notes on the Auteur Theory,” written by Andrew Sarris, he states that there are three different premises of the auteur theory. The first premise is “the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value.” A director can be either good or bad, it all depends on the types of films they create. The second premise of the auteur theory is the “distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion value.” In every film a director correlates his or her own personality into the premise of the film in some way. This creates a relationship between how the film looks and moves to how the director thinks and feels. The third and final premise of the auteur theory according to Sarris is “concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art.” This premise projects the director’s attitude towards life during their films or their vision on the world.
Over the years, many directors have met the criteria of an auteur director, but none have fit the characteristics of suspense and mystery like Alfred Hitchcock has. Alfred Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, London England on August 13th, 1899. He had two older siblings, William and Eileen and the three of them grew up in a strict catholic family with their parents named William Hitchcock and Emma Jane Whelan. Hitchcock did not join the film industry until the 1920s, and prior to that he attended St. Ignatius College and a school for engineering and navigation. In the beginning of his film work, Hitchcock began drawing sets because of his skills in art and eventually got into filmmaking. Some of Hitchcock’ include, The Pleasure Garden, Jamaica Inn, Frenzy, The Lady Vanishes, Psycho, The Rear Window, The Lodger, Vertigo, and Dial M for Murder. In 1942, after Hitchcock