Auteurs And Authorship

Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader offers students an introductory and comprehensive view of perhaps the most central concept in film studies. This unique anthology addresses the aesthetic and historical debates surrounding auteurship while providing author criticism and analysis in practice. Examines a number of mainstream and established directors, including John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Douglas Sirk, Frank Capra, Kathryn Bigelow, and Spike Lee Features historically important, foundational texts as well as contemporary pieces Includes numerous student features, such as a general editor’s introduction, short prefaces to each of the sections, bibliography, alternative tables of contents, and boxed features Each essay deliberately focuses across film makers’ oeuvres, rather than on one specific film, to enable lecturers to have flexibility in constructing their syllabi

Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths evaluate the debates about the most important film authors, the nature of film authorship, and even whether films have authors at all. It analyses the historical development and theoretical underpinnings of the concepts of film authorship and the auteur. It then examines recent theories of film authorship and proposes a reconceptualisation of film authorship --Book Jacket.

The film director or `auteur' has been central in film theory and criticism over the past thirty years. Theories of Authorship documents the major stages in the debate about film authorship, and introduces recent writing on film to suggest important ways in which the debate might be reconsidered.

The director's authorial role in filmmaking--the extent to which a film reflects his or her individual style and creative vision--has been much debated among film critics and scholars for decades. Drawing on generations of criticism, this study describes how the designation "auteur" has gone from stylistic criterion to product label--in what has always been an essentially collaborative industry. Examining the controversy in regard to Hollywood directors, the author compares directors and would-be auteurs of the classic studio system with those of contemporary Hollywood and its new climate of cultural entrepreneurship.

Written by experts in the field, this dictionary covers all aspects of film studies, including terms, concepts, debates, and movements in film theory and criticism, national, international and transnational cinemas, film history, film movements and genres, film industry organizations and practices, and key technical terms and concepts in 500 detailed entries. Most entries also feature recommendations for further reading and a large number also have web links. The web links are listed and regularly updated on a companion website that complements the printed book. The dictionary is international in its approach, covering national cinemas, genres, and film movements from around the world such as the Nouvelle Vague, Latin American cinema, the Latsploitation film, Bollywood, Yiddish cinema, the spaghetti western, and World cinema. The most up-to-date dictionary of its kind available, this is a must-have for all students of film studies and ancillary subjects, as well as an informative read for cinephiles and for anyone with an interest in films and film criticism.

Authoring a film adaptation of a literary source not only requires a media conversion but also a transformation as a result of the differing dramatic demands of cinema. The most critical central step in this transformation of a literary source to the screen is the writing of the screenplay. The screenplay usually serves to recruit producers, director, and actors; to attract capital investment; and to give focus to the conception and production of the film project. Often undergoing multiple revisions prior to production, the screenplay represents the crucial decisions of writer and director that will determine how and to what end the film will imitate or depart from its original source. Authorship in Film Adaptation is an accessible, provocative text that opens up new areas of discussion on the central process of adaptation surrounding the screenplay and screenwriter-director collaboration. In contrast to narrow binary comparisons of literary source text and film, the twelve essays in this collection also give attention to the underappreciated role of the screenplay and film pre-production that can signal the primary intention for a film. Divided into four parts, this collection looks first at the role of Hollywood's activist producers and major auteurs such as Hitchcock and Kubrick as they worked with screenwriters to formulate their audio-visual goals. The second part offers case studies of Devil in a Blue Dress and The Sweet Hereafter, for which the directors wrote their own adapted screenplays. Considering the variety of writer-director working relationships that are possible, Part III focuses on adaptations that alter genre, time, and place, and Part IV investigates adaptations that alter stories of romance, sexuality, and ethnicity.

Authorship in film has been a persistent theme in the field of cinema studies. This volume of new work revitalizes the question of authorship by connecting it to larger issues of identity--in film, in the marketplace, in society, in culture. Essays range from the auteur theory and Casablanca to Oscar Micheaux, from the American avant-garde to community video, all illuminating how "authorship" is a complex idea with far-reaching implications. This ambitious and wide-ranging book will be essential reading for anyone concerned with film studies and the concept of the author.

How should we understand film authorship in an era when the idea of the solitary and sovereign auteur has come under attack, with critics proclaiming the death of the author and the end of cinema? The Bressonians provides an answer in the form of a strikingly original study of Bresson and his influence on the work of filmmakers Jean Eustache and Maurice Pialat. Extending the discourse of authorship beyond the idea of a singular visionary, it explores how the imperatives of excellence function within cinema’s pluralistic community. Bresson’s example offered both an artistic legacy and a creative burden within which filmmakers reckoned in different, often arduous, and altogether compelling ways.