ABSTRACT
Auteurism has held a prominent position in feminist film theory as it has in film studies in general. The idea of the director as the auteur (author) of a film began in the 1950s and 1960s with French New Wave filmmakers, most notably with François Truffaut's polemical 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français” (“A Certain Tendency in French Cinema”). For French New Wave theorists the concept of the auteur was a way to establish the film director as the individual creative force behind a film and to see film not as a mere entertainment vehicle, but as the unique personal achievement of an individual artist. When American film critic Andrew Sarris took up the idea in his influential 1968 study of Hollywood directors, The American Cinema, he used it as a way to invest film with an air of respectability and prestige as an art form worthy of serious consideration. He also set out to establish a pantheon of notable directors who could be said to have placed their personal artistic stamp on their films even if they were working under the limitations imposed upon them by the studio system. To study film from an auteurist perspective involves looking at a director's body of work to ascertain narrative, thematic, and stylistic patterns that provide evidence of the director's personal artistic touch. This auteurist stamp might be found in plot conventions and formulas, recurring themes, shot construction, camera work, and other elements of film structure repeated throughout a director's films and said to reveal a distinctive style and overarching thematic interests. Once this signature auteurist stamp has been determined, it can be used as an evaluative tool that allows the films of an auteur to be marked as superior to those produced by directors considered only to be on the artisan level (Crofts 1998: 312).
