From the Cheap Seats

So the writers won. The dispute between the Screen Writers Guild and the studios, in which the scribes downed tools for the first time in twenty years has been resolved. Even though the ‘schmucks with Underwoods’ (as Jack Warner called the people that provided his scripts for him) didn’t get everything they wanted, they won enough to be able to claim victory.

With the battle over money (the writers wanted more of it) over for now, it’s possible more militant members of the newly-bullish Guild will start agitating for a resolution to one of their other persistent gripes, credits. Specifically, they want an end to what’s known as the ‘possessory credit’. The is the credit, usually found before the title, that declares it to be “A [insert name here] Film” or, worse, “A Film By [so and so]”. That vacant space will always be filled by the director. But do they deserve it?

Ever since the young Turks of Cahiers du Cinema (Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Uncle Eric Rohmer and all) started to promulgate what has become known as the ‘Auteur theory’, the director has been regarded as the Alpha and the Omega of any film. The young French critics contended that the director’s personality was reflected in his work; consistent themes would be visible through their careers, as with any artist.

The argument they started has been so comprehensively won that even the wider media, beyond specialist film buff publications, attribute films to the director whether they be the latest Bruno Dumont flick or un film de Bret Ratner. Some of us file our DVD collections according to director, pressing Hawks against Hitchcock as we might file Dickens next to Dostoevsky.

Yet I’m uneasy. We cinephiles might like to think that we somehow appreciate films more than those rubes who think that the actors make it up as they go along but isn’t this blanket veneration of directors only a more sophisticated version of the same idea? In his autobiography (A British Picture – out of print but much recommended), Ken Russell remarked that as long as a director is surrounded by good people he doesn’t have to do much beyond say ‘action’ and ‘cut’, except to soak up the praise for his colleagues’ work.

Of course, Our Ken himself is not one of those: even though I don’t much like them, I have no hesitation in describing the films he directed ‘His’ because of the way they’re staged and the positions they take. But not every director is so assiduous; how, then, can the films they lay claim to be considered ‘Theirs’ in any meaningful sense?

Film is a collaborative medium, like theatre and music but the balance of power is very different. No matter what help a director gives to a playwright working on a new production – and their input can be crucial – it’s the author who gets the curtain call and the glory of any revivals.

Conductors and soloists are not short of applause but their job is to serve the composer and interpret his vision. In television, it’s the author who’s auteur: Dennis Potter gets the credit for Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective, not Piers Haggard or Jon Amiel. Indeed, the current strength of US TV drama is founded on the writers running the shows, as producers, and throwing hissy-fits if anyone messes with their vision.

One of the crucial – and often neglected – parts of the Auteur theory is that not every director is worthy of the tag. That’s why Michael Curtiz, who made some of the best films ever (Casablanca, co-director of The Adventures of Robin Hood) isn’t allowed anywhere near the pantheon while Edgar G Ulmer, who directed a right load of old tat, is firmly established.

Indeed, Andre Bazin – the chap who founded Cahiers du Cinema and the patron saint of the young French critics – was somewhat sniffy about their idea. He preferred to concentrate on distinctive individuals for the most part and attribute the rest to what he called ‘the genius of the system’. Thomas Schatz took this as the title for an essential study of Hollywood’s golden age (The Genius of the System, Faber & Faber).

In it, Schatz suggests real power lay with producers. He points out that the directors who the French canonised – Hawks, Hitchcock, John Ford, Fritz Lang – were those who produced or co-produced their own pictures and thus the opportunity to mould their material. Most directors, then and now, have limited input into any script they’re given. The best of them do a damn good job. They’re craftsmen rather than artists and it does not diminish their achievements to acknowledge that they are serving the film rather than controlling it.

This is not a recantation. I remain an Auteurist (as you can see in the categories section on the right-hand side, where discussion of directors outstrips everything else). The best directors will impose their personality on any material they’re given by the way they organise a scene, where they put the camera, how they cut, how they emphasise those elements that they’re interested in. They fully warrant our attention. Blanket director-worship, however, only satisfies the egos of a few hacks who’ve done nothing to deserve it.

If the writers do press their case, they should draw comfort from the wisdom of one of Hollywood’s founding fathers, arch-producer Samuel Goldwyn. Interviewed by Andrew Sarris, then an earnest young Auteurist, he settled the debate once and for all:
Sarris: “Mr Goldwyn, When William Wyler made Wuthering Heights – ”
Goldwyn: “Wyler? I made Wuthering Heights. Wyler only directed it…”