Indeed, and while I certainly wouldn’t call Nicholas Hytner a hack, I imagine he’d have been mortified by the Cahiers du Cinema review of ‘The History Boys’ which credited him with absolutely everything (it’s all “Hytner fait” and “selon Hytner”), and didn’t mention Alan Bennett once, either in the piece or the accompanying credits. True, Bennett may well be a total unknown in France (I don’t imagine he translates that well), but that review is still one of my favourite examples of auteurism gone mad. And Bennett is a good case in point, since the directors he’s worked with, be they Hytner, Malcolm Mowbray or Stephen Frears, tend to defer to the writer.

More recently, in an enthralling Q&A in London, Hungarian giant Miklos Jancso was so keen to emphasise that his masterpieces were collaborative efforts that often involved the same group of people that he brought up the subject twice without prompting. And I don’t think too many people would dispute HIS auteur credentials!