Lecture 4: The Auteur.

What is an Auteur?

A filmmaker usually the director whose movies are characterized by a filmmaker's creative influence.

Cahiers du Cinema 

www.moviemags.com

Andre Bazin

Reasons for why Hitchcock was so successful/ important in film

•The dolly zoom  is an unsettling in-camera special effect that appears to undermine normal visual perception in film.

• •A dolly counter zoom is also variously known as:
  •Back Zoom Travelling
  •Smash Zoom" or "Smash Shot"
  •Vertigo zoom
  •The "Hitchcock zoom" or the " Vertigo effect"
  •"Hitchcock shot" or "Vertigo shot
  •A " Jaws shot"
  •A "zido"
  •A "zolly"
  •"Telescoping"
  •A "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot"
  •Push/pull
  •A Stretch shot
  •More technically as forward zoom / reverse tracking  or zoom in / dolly out
  
  

Trauma 

Voyeurism 

Doubling of Blonds.- Uncanny Likeness 

Scottie 'Their true name is sequoia semperviren, always green, ever living'

Suicide of Madeline 

Living through a breakdown

Judy- an accidental meeting

Judy/ Madeline lives again

Transformation is complete

Colour being used in a expressionistic way- Make the audience suffer as much as possible 

The director's distinguishable personality (style)

Expressionism – form evokes emotion

Cameo appearances of the director

Narrative is often visual rather than told through dialogue

Continuous of certain actors (Cary Grant, James Stewart , Tippi Hedren, Doris Day, Joan Fontaine)

Obsessive use of the blonds

Suspense

Cameo of the Director 

1938 Hitchcock leaves Gainsborough studios to work in America

David O Selznick introduces  him to pyschoanalyis

They make (Rebecca,1940) (Spellbound, 1945), (Notorious, 1946)

Film Posters.

  Self-Proclaimed fears

“I am scared easily, here is a list of my adrenaline - production: 1: small children, 2: policemen, 3: high places, 4: that my next movie will not be as good as the last one.”

Themes that are revisited.

•ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events,

• mistaken identity,

•espionage,

•murder and madness.

•sly wit and moments of macabre humour,

• strong sexual themes,

• explorations of the darkest corners of the human mind

• always “Hitchcockian” suspense. 

Critique of the Auteur 

   It presents a canon of films made by ‘elites’ (many male auteurs)

It disguises the work of others (cinematographer, art director, screen writer, editor, sound technicians …)

It offers a universal view of quality

It is a capitalist device by selling a film by virtue of it’s director