Full Description
An accessible introduction to the concept of the auteur (author) in film theory.
Robert Kolker and David Wyatt provide readers with a history of auteur theory, from its initial origins in France in the late 1940s as an outgrowth of the cinematic theories of the French film critics and theorists André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc, to the canonizing work of American film critic Andrew Sarris in the 1960s. After a streamlined account of the various postwar renaissances in film - the shock of "Neorealism", the "New Wave", and "New American Cinema" - the book features detailed examinations of the work of forty-eight auteurs, including F.W. Murnau, Jean-Luc Godard, Ida Lupino, Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujirō Ozu, Stanley Kubrick, Spike Lee, Pedro Almodóvar, and Jane Campion. In its focus on a limited number of auteurs, this book aims to offer a map of representative figures rather than an exhaustive or comprehensive list, providing an informative entry point to the study of the auteur.
Essential reading for any students of film theory and film studies, particularly those taking classes on the auteur.
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
MOVEMENT AUTEURS
Chapter Two
FORERUNNERS
Chapter Three
RENOIR AND THE COOPERATIVE
Chapter Four
COMEDY
Chapter Five
GRAND MASTERS
Chapter Six
THE WESTERN
Chapter Seven
NOIR AND AFTER
Chapter Eight
SENTIMENTALITY AND AGGRESSION
Chapter Nine
VIOLENCE AND THE COZY
Chapter Ten
A FEMALE GAZE
Chapter Eleven
THE JAPANESE SMILE
Afterword
Index
