A Resilient Notion

In the new millennium, five major English- language books and anthologies have returned to the question of film authorship (Gerstner and Steiger 2003; Wexman 2003; Grant 2008; Sellors 2010; Kozloff 2014) putting into new light the richness of film studies classics such as John Caughie's Theories of Authorship: A Reader or Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema: Directors and Directions. To this day, virtually every guide to film studies presents an entry on the topic. Studies on national cinema, including Hollywood, tend to devote substantial space to “directors and directions.” Monographs and biographies in this vein abound; director series published by academic presses have proliferated. For all the profusion, there is general agreement that film authorship is a powerful myth and the film author a decidedly problematic construction. Nonetheless, even the most recent and sophisticated auteur studies do not fully embrace the constructionist assumption nor completely reflect the many theoretical misgivings well known to film studies scholars. For all the debates about the constitution of film authorship, embodied authors are more present than ever in film reviewing, film criticism, film studies as well as in film festivals and the film industry in its various countenances.

The notion of the film author is intimately linked to the larger endeavor to establish cinema as an art and movie going as a legitimate cultural practice. “The auteurist idea at its most basic (that movies are primarily the creation of one governing author behind the camera who thinks in images and sounds rather than words and sentences) is now the default setting in most considerations of moviemaking, and for that we should all be thankful,” assessed Kent Jones in 2014. “We'd be nowhere without film auteurism, which boasts a proud history: the lovers of cinema did not just argue for its inclusion among the fine arts, but actually stood up, waved its flag, and proclaimed its glory without shame” (Jones 2014, 41– 42). The long and illustrious history of this notion dates back to European film reviewing and criticism of the 1920s.