<HEAD> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1498" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY> <DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid"> <DIV> <DIV>NB: Jerry sent me a revised version of his original post.  With his permission, it is to that version that I reply below.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> I had not realized that you were so wedded to the director as auteur view of movies.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>From my earliest experiences of film, I was aware of the director.  I remember as a teenager being most interested in the "directed by" credit before I had even heard of the term "auteur."  When I finally read about the auteur theory, it seemed like common sense to me.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> Though in your view (as has been expressed before by other auteurist critics) sometimes the auteur is the producer, sometimes the writer, sometimes a combination of all of these folks.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Again, the more I watched movies, the more I experienced how power was deployed in and through them.  Many auteurists think I am mad to cite anyone other than the director as auteur, but I can only go by the evidence of what I see.  <BR><BR>> If we look at the "Homeric question" seriously we would see the same kind of tropes, ideological misleads, and critical mistakes are repeated over and over since the 19th century when discussing authorship, and are again gone over when discussing the auteur theory of movies.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Possibly.  Not kowing about the "Homeric question" I cannot determine if there is a similarity between the two issues.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> And occasionally the same question pops up in architecture.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Welles' makes a point of this in F FOR FAKE when he talks about Chartes Cathedral.  A fascinating film and his  best I think.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> I think that these questions say more about our need for definite "origins" of human works.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I do not know that it is a need.  It is just that when I recognize a visual signature or a musical one or a literary one, I am curious what/who created it.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> We need to find the origins of human works in a great genius, instead of a historical process, that may at times come together in an individual or group of individuals.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Why does it have to be either/or.  Why can't it be both and sometimes just one or the other?  I am not sure of the historical process that provided Mizoguchi with his signature or Imamura with his or Wong Kar-Wai with his.  But their films certain have them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> Searching for directorial distinctness is not irrelevant, but it has only little to do with what is good or bad in most movies and little to do with what went into creating good movies.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>To you.  A bad movie for me has little visual expressiveness -- it is dead eye cinema.  For someone else (my husband for example), a bad film is one that tells a boring story or does not contain any characters with whom she can identity.    </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> It has nothing to do with who is the "author" of movies because movies rarely have "authors."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But why has every culture that produced movies produced certain film with distinct visual sigantures and others  lacking them?  The Hollywood model wasn't the only method of production.  And what about independent and avant-garde filmmakers like Brakhage, Deren, Gehr, Anger, Snow who made movies outside the Hollywood system?    </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> What allowed some directors to sell themselves (their style) to the factory system in Hollywood was simply their ability to be in someway "distinct" or at least not too big of a risk.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Mankiewicz, Hitchcock and Aldrich (to name three directors) were huge risk takers.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> For the most part directorial style was essentially about on the level of the shtick of the "character" actor or the gimmick of a striptease artists.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And that is your perception of it.  Cool.  I do not think of directoral signatures as gimmicks any more than I think that Richard Rodgers' or Franz Lizst's musical signatures were gimmicks or that Fragonard's or Pollock's painterly signatures were gimmicks.  But if a person wanted to she could see them that way.    </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> You think that the crux of the question is why a Douglas Sirk movie is distinct from a Michael Curtiz movie or why Howard Hawks is distinct from everyone else.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think it is part of the question.  The difference is real, so there is a cause.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> I think that the question should be what makes any individual film distinct and strong as a work of art from any other given movie.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I would say that it is because certain films deploy the formal aesthetic elements of film better than other films do.  Film is a visual and auditory medium and certain filmmakers make works that utilize the unique properties of film better than others.  You do not need a story to a have a movie, but you do need images (or at least one).          <BR><BR>> I think that the first quesion is helpful and helps us to answer the second question, but in the end the second question is better answered (for Classic Hollywood cinema) by looking at the various hierarchies of the star system and how the movies were made.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But the hierarchies only answer the question if you accept one of your definitions: that visual signatures are  gimmicks.  But you define visual signatures as a gimmicks because they materialized under these hierarchies.  It is circular logic. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> Frankly, I can enjoy Max Ophuls' tracking shots in "The Reckless Moment" as much as anyone.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But not every one does enjoy those tracking shots.  Just as I have a tin ear, other people have a tin eye.  The interesting thing about movies is that those witth a limited visual ability can fall back on just watching for the story (except if they are viewing Brakhage et. al.).  I do not think you can do that in opera, for example: having a tin ear and falling back on the story in Verdi will not suffice.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> But in general Ophuls tracking shots or Preminger's long takes are only small parts of the movie art, _not_ the smallest part, but not what matters in the final analysis.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>To you.  For me it is just as absurd to say that the visual artistry of Ophuls is not what matters in the final analysis as saying that the musical artistry of Brahms or the literary aritstry of Wordsworth is not what matters in the final analysis.  I understand your value system.  It is just not one that agrees with my experience.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> But Sirk was a great director who made movies that were shmaltzy melodramas.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In terms of plot -- yes.  But unless you reduce a movie to its plot, the fact that his films were shmatltzy melodramas is of little importance.  It is how he deployed the unique visiual and aural strategies of film to convey those melodramas that is important.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> "Written on the Wind" is a distinctive movie, and in it you can see Sirk,-- how he places objects between himself and the characters, how he observes the emotions of his actors at a discrete distance (mostly I suspect to make up for his lousy actors).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Robert Stack is very fine in this film.  Bacall is good and Malone's dance with Sirk's framing, color and use of space is sublime.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> But what makes "Written on the Wind" a lousy movie, is that their was not yet anything to replace the old star system and its integration into a way of production.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What makes it a good movie is the incredible use of space, color and light.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> The same can be said of "Imitation of Life".</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Sirk's masterpiece and maybe the last great picture of the Classical Hollywood era (also the 9th biggest grosser of the year and Universal's biggest all-time hit until AIRPORT in 1970).  The best script Sirk had had  in quite a while, and then perefect casting: he turns Lana Turner's limited instrument into an asset and makes the best film about race since NO WAY OUT by Mankiewicz.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> And then a Truffaut or a Fassbinder comes along and rediscovers Sirk and all of a sudden we have an auteur.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The movie was always great.  It just took people time to recognize its greatness.  Truffaut and Fassbinder looked at the visuals and did not concern themselves with the plot (do you go to HAMET for the story or the poetry?).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>> Frankly, because Hawks was a great director, or because he often placed his camera slightly above or below eye-level,  and he did this consistently, does not make him an author.  It just makes him another part of the Hollywood system.<BR></DIV> <DIV>By why can't he be both?  An author and part of the Hollywood system?  You set up these artificial binaries and then come down firmly on one side and declare all other possibilities as wrong.  Whay does it have to be a matter of black-and-white (except when we speak of Gregg Toland?).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Brian</DIV></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BODY><PRE> </PRE>