On the Auteur debate, that’s an oldie but a goodie. I read the original post over at girish? is it? And, the blog author is spot on with my take. Funny, the post from Pat above discusses college film courses, of which I teach a great many. I tell my students to take the “theory” with a grain of salt. To paraphrase Allen and Gomery, the films of, oh I dunno, Hitchcock, Ford and Hawks may bear distinctive markings of an author’s signature but, they also bear distinctive marks of genre, Hollywood style, and commmodity. I think, there’s been a crumbling of auteur theory in recent years and I can understand why. It is elitist and reductive to lay “sole” credit for a motion picture to a director. I guess all those names at the end of a film these days mean nothing.

Ah Ha! What about the Cronenberg example at girish’s place? Well, like Hitchcock, I feel Cronenberg’s talent lies in taking material and turning it into an incredible prosaic - adding infinite layers to his visualizations. Hithcock’s “pure cinema” mode of operation was powerful and added a dimensionality to the source narrative that often wasn’t there. So doesn’t that fly in the face of what I wrote above? It sure does! Hence - - - Grain of Salt.

My thoughts are in between. I make strong arguments to students that the works of Mario Bava, Chaplin, Keaton, Scorcese, Cronenberg, Ford, Hitchcock, Altman, Fellini, Bergman, etc etc etc., are worthy of examination from an auteur perspective - and also tell them to beware their economic considerations as well.

I don’t, for the record, really see the validity of using the word for people like Wes Anderson, whose cult seems to grow and grow - but I am in the minority. And, in fairness, his body of work is growing. The word seems to have transcended its Hollywood Studio origins - and is used almost interchangeably with “director” - lol.

All the best Rick!

Pat — I love Lester’s The Three Musketeers. The Anchor Bay DVD containing both parts is great … think I’ll go home and watch them!

It’s certainly easier to treat films as having a single “author,” and I myself do it all the time, at least some of the reviews I write have been auteurist in focus.

For a great literary-critical reading of a movie, that isn’t particularly auteurist, see Jim Emerson’s take on No Country for Old Men, here.