Perhaps.
What you say Brian sounds reasonable but I wonder.... I wonder if the individual "signature" of the director in itself is not an artifact of a different kind of star system selection process, rather than of something individual in the director.
One can "tell" a Hitchcock movie from a movie by Hawkes, but can one really tell one fun of the mill director directing an Andy Hardy movie from another run of the mill director directing another Andy Hardy two months later? The mass of movies made during the height of the studio system seemed like movies from various production units more than movies from individual directors. One was as unlikely then to distinguish individual style of direction from the house style of the production unit as one is now able to distinguish individual style of one director from another in the course of most television shows from the 70s and 80s. Now days some television series have "house" styles determined by the producers, but it is nearly impossible to tell one director from another even when you know the directors well.
I am sticking strictly to Hollywood here because the "auteur" theory was developed to explain Hollywood conditions more than others. But if one seriously takes the "view" of the production unit, one can argue that the reason why styles stand out is that who ever organizes the production unit as working operation as such makes the style. Thus with few exceptions Selznick imparted a certain style to his films.
But again isn't individual style in films itself a spin off of the "star" system and the market for "star" personalities? I am not really arguing for or against the notion of an auteur, but rather wondering if the individual style was anything more than the survival of the best "star" creation network. The first step is that the Hollywood director markets his personal style to studios and producers, (along with the ability to come in on time and under the budget); the second step is that the "style" is marketed to the public as this "kind" of film or that kind of film; the final step is that the persona-style of the director him/herself is marketed to the public as a "Hitchcock" film or a "Capra" film. The star system was so pervasive in Hollywood as a kind of commodification of persona that much of Hollywood operated this way both externally and internally. To a certain extent it was true of all above the line "workers", that they had to develop some kind of star "persona" to move up, or else one always remained a journey-man. Thus it is hard to tell apart one actor from another unless they were a "character" or a "star". Similarly it was hard to distinguish one director from another unless they concentrated on one genre or became a star.
I also wonder if 500 years from now -- if film as an art and as a medium survives and if humans in civilization or as a species survive -- anyone will be able to tell the difference between a Hitchcock film and a Disney film.... ??
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