> My point was that millions (billions?) of people watch
movies without having any idea, or caring, what the
critics say. That hasn't been true of painting for a long
time.
Okay. I guess I do not see the significance here.
> But you weren't talking just about Ford. You said his
generation wasn't interested.
True. Many directors of his generation always pushed away claims of artistic intention with one hand (though subtly cultivating it with the other). I am not enough of a sociologist of the time to know why they adopted that stance in public. But when you study their production notes and read the recollections of their colleagues, it becomes apparent that they were very much concerned with making art..
Jerry:
> 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.
Why would it be any different than the individual signature of a painter or poet or composer?
> One can "tell" a Hitchcock movie from a movie by Hawkes
Why put "tell" in quotes?
> 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?
No. Not all directors are auteurs.
> 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.
The individual production units were often the auteur of a film. What is fascinating is watching an artist like Vincente Minnelli work for Arthur Freed or Pandro S. Berman or John Houseman and make Vincente Minnelli movies no matter who was producing.
> One was as unlikely then to distinguish individual style of
direction from the house style of the production unit
Not necessarily. A Charles Walters musical is clearly distiguishable from one by Minnelli or Donen-Kelly even though all three would have been produced by the Freed Unit at MGM.
> . . .able to distinguish individual style of one director from
another in the course of most television shows from the 70s and
80s.
But when you can distinguish the style of a Curtis Harrington or Larry Cohen it is wonderful.
> 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.
That is just not my experience. I could always tell the difference between the different house directors on X-Files, for instance.
> I am sticking strictly to Hollywood here because the "auteur" theory
was developed to explain Hollywood conditions more than others.
But auteur theory has evolved considerably since its first iteration.
> 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.
Then why does NOTORIOUS look so different from DINNER AT EIGHT? Both were produced by Selznick and yet they look nothing alike. But NOTORIOUS does look like other Hitchcock films and DINNER AT EIGHT like other Cukor films.
> But again isn't individual style in films itself a spin off of the "star"
system and the market for "star" personalities?
No, since the director's signature was never a selling point the way star personas were.
> but rather wondering if the individual style was anything more than the
survival of the best "star" creation network.
But while B actors never made A movies, B directors made A movies. Being a star director didn't help -- in fact, it often hurt - witness the troubles of Sternberg and Stroheim.
> 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)
And who is an example of this in Hollywood history?
> the second step is that the "style" is marketed to the public as this
> "kind"
of film or that kind of film
Again, what director had his style marketed this way during the classical Hollywood period?
> 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.
It never happened with Capra and only with Hitchcock after the success of his television show, and by that time classical Hollywood was in decline.
> 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.
By and large, directors were seen as journeymen.
> Thus it is hard to tell apart one actor from another unless they were a
> "character"
or a "star".
Again, that is not my experience.
> Similarly it was hard to distinguish one director from another unless they
concentrated on one genre or became a star.
Jack Arnold never became a star and made films across many genres, but it is not hard to recognize his signature.
> 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.... ??
Why would that ability evaporate? Won't we be able to still tell the difference between a Manet and a Pollock? A Gershwin tune and a Cole Porter song?
Brian