Why do you reject the idea of film director as an Auteur?
When you see credits like “a so and so film” or “a film by so and so”, you’re seeing an ego on parade. Nothing more. To belabour the obvious, filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise. There’s absolutely no rational basis for the possessory credit on any film in the history of cinema. It’s amusing that this illusory precept – director as auteur – is derived, in large part, from a group of film critics at Cahiers du Cinema who aspired to be directors. Here were film lovers who dreamed of being filmmakers. You could view La Politique des Auteurs as a form of wish fulfilment. An American critic, Andrew Sarris, simply reified this grand delusion by affixing the word “theory” after it. No one filmmaker solely “authors” a film like a writer “authors” a novel. Filmmaking is not the pure, organic process of fiction writing. (1)
(1). M, Pramaggiore & T, Wallis. (ed), Film A Critical Introduction, London: Laurence King Publishing, (2007), pp. 402.
The Motley View 