Directors Inc. - Branded with the Auteur Iron

This week sees the release of two films by directors proclaimed to be auteurs; relatively new kid on the block David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels and Gus van Sant’s delayed release, ’skate thriller’ (Erm…) Paranoid Park. From the promisingly edgy Mala Noche and Drugstore Cowboy through to commercial success with hits such as To Die For and Good Will Hunting, and poor choices in Finding Forrester and the unnecessary remake of Psycho, Gus Van Sant’s career has been erratic to say the least and with the upcoming Seth Rogen comedy Pineapple Express to add to his repertoire, David Gordon Green’s career is shaping up to be similarly versatile. With Gordon Green at the start of his career, and Van Sant tuning in to the ‘emo’ niche with Kurt Cobain tribute Last Days, are these two talents truly auteurs? And how does a director evolve into an auteur within the notoriously constrictive, money driven film industry?

Auteur Theory was introduced during the French new Wave when an influx of American films flooded French cinemas after World War II. The cineastes would recognise similar stylistics, iconography and actors in a director’s body of work, (for example Hitchcock’s distinctive use of chiaroscuro or Howard Hawks eye-level camera shots ) and if this style was consistent the director would be dubbed an auteur. However, Auteur Theory was problematic in that it disregarded the artistic contributions of the actors, director of photography, writers or editors, and accredited the genius of a film solely to the director. Upon first hearing of the theory, writer William Goldman commented ‘Where’s the punch-line?’. However, the theory still holds credence and it is important to recognise when a director truly shines in a film, especially when many film students have to rely solely on their own initiative to start their careers.

David Gordon Green has been criticised for his career choices after a promising start with touching, Southern, coming-of-age tale George Washington. However Gordon Green is a fairly fledgling director with only a four features under his belt. To dub him an auteur so early on in his career is to ensure accusations of ’selling out’ as he moves on to the more commercial choices which will gain him the exposure and potential to produce more personal films. David Gordon Green’s path to ‘wunderkind’ director is atypical of all talented students struggling to enter the industry. After studying film intensely for four years, making films in his spare time, he moved to L.A to break into the big leagues, experiencing the kind of disillusionment many wide-eyed artists develop, saying, ‘I don’t like the way it works out there. Everything is contingent on cast and packaging. Everything seems so artificial, and not soulful and not passionate. People would go into multi-million dollar productions that they knew in the end were going to be terrible movies, but had already pre-sold for financial gain in foreign territories, so they were just laughing their way through it all. It was disheartening for me.’. He finally decided to work in a doorknob factory to accumulate the money needed to make the film independently. Surely Gordon Green has payed his dues, earned his indie cred and his entry into the mainstream can only be a good thing if his style is so distinctive. Perhaps his peers have been a little hasty in calling him an auteur when his career could prove to be extremely varied.

Gus Van Sant is already well-established, but seems to be re-inventing himself as the mouth-piece for the emo generation. His recent films have focused largely on instances of extreme teen angst or teen idols and Blake Nelson novel (writer of grunge teen romance Girl) Paranoid Park continues this theme. Although Van Sant has a distinctive style, lingering shots, themes of enigmatic disasters with the blanks filled in and violently coming of age teenagers, his career seems too eclectic, with not enough thematic consistency to be truly auteur. His recent films seem to be a plea for status which does not quite convince. In the cut-throat industry it is important for a directors name to stand out. Many directors today seek to establish themselves as auteurs, artificially stamping their films with their identity, in order to attain the directorial status of Hitchcock, or Welles. They forget that auteur status was traditionally bestowed on directors who were well established, with a large enough back catalogue to determine if they meet the criteria, and had such a prominent reputation that studios gave them carte blanche. When the term auteur is applied to Charlie’s Angels director McG, you know it has been bandied about beyond its true meaning.

Auteur theory limits the possibilities for both new and established directors. Having a distinctive style can work as a creative straight-jacket. For example, modern auteur Tim Burton, whose earlier works skip between genres and mix up stylistics from the neo-gothic (Edward Scissorhands) to fifties futuristic (Mars Attacks), recently seems to be trapped in a cycle of opium drenched, carnivalesque Victoriana. In an industry where homogeneity is relied upon to justify large budgets, it seems that auteur directors could simply be exacerbating this problem by offering a consistently similar product - for example, within this model, Jerry Bruckheimer could correctly be called an auteur because his films are commercial enough to draw the crowds. Where this model fails is in allowing new voices and styles to be given a worthy stage, merging new talent into the dominant system so quickly that auteur status is awarded during their formative debuts, as has happened with Gordon Green. When posed the same question about what they were trying to achieve with their films, the legendary John Ford answered ‘a cheque’, and the equally legendary Howard Hawks answered ‘I’m trying to tell my story as simply as possible’. Two auteurs in their own right, their answers wryly comment on the auteur situation today, auteurs who value style over substance and auteurs who create their own style within which their own stories can flourish both have a place in the hierarchy, but Hollywood simply needs to risk that cheque on the latter.

Thanks for visiting us at Obsessed With Film, we update several times a day, so if you haven't done so yet you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also sign up to receive updates via e-mail.