ABSTRACT
In his polemical discussion of auteurism, André Bazin wrote that it involves “choosing the personal factor in artistic creation as a standard of reference” ([1957] 1985: 255). However, he also distanced himself from the other auteur critics of the 1950s by pointing out the commonplace notion that “the cinema is an art which is both popular and industrial” (ibid.: 251; emphasis added). An auteur is a technician or craft worker (principally a director) who attains the status of artist. But is the label of artist merely a form of (self-) invention? What processes are involved in the transformation of a technician into an auteur, especially in the industrial and economic organization of contemporary Hollywood (the “package-unit system”)? And is there a correlation between the “package-unit system” of film production and the rise of blockbusters? I shall argue that an auteur in contemporary Hollywood is a director who gains control over all the stages of filmmaking: not just film production, but also distribution and exhibition. In other words, he or she attempts to vertically integrate (or reintegrate) the various stages of filmmaking. As an example, I shall refer to the Hollywood director most associated with movie blockbusters, Steven Spielberg, focusing on his authorship and relation to the DreamWorks studio he co-founded with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen on October 12, 1994.
