Paragraph 4
Thus,
(1)
the auteur theory flew in the face of the
hard facts of the Hollywood industry.
(2)
Directors
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A FILM STUDIES ESSAY
were employees, employed, by and large, to turn a
screenplay, which most often they had had no hand
in creating, into celluloid. A contracted Hollywood
director would be handed a script, actors would be
cast, a cameraman and other technicians assigned,
a shooting schedule worked out, and he (the vast
majority of Hollywood directors were male) was
expected to make the movie within the budget and
on time for release. Very few directors had rights
even over the final editing of the movies ‘they’ made.
The studio heads would make these decisions guided
by their own instincts and audience reactions to the
sneak previews of the movie. The commercial
potential of any movie was the most important
factor for the studios. The pressure on the studio
heads was to create box-office successes, not works of
art.
(3)
If by accident a successful film in box-office
terms was praised as being artistic, then that was
just a happy accident.
(4)
Paragraph 5
However,
(1)
talented directors did work within the
Hollywood system and did manage to impose
themselves on the material they worked on.
(2)
Alfred
Hitchcock, for example, made ‘thriller’ movies that
could fairly be claimed to be works of art. Movies
such as ‘Vertigo’, Psycho’, ‘North By Northwest’ and
‘Notorious’ are entertaining genre films, but they
are also worthy of serious consideration. However,
Hitchcock did not make these movies by himself. He
was very astute at picking talented collaborators
without whom the movies would have been much less
impressive. Try to think of the best of Hitchcock’s
movies without the scores of Bernard Herrmann, for
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example, or the cinematography of Robert Burks
(‘Vertigo’, ‘North by Northwest’).
(3)
Film-making is a
collaborative process and even the ablest of directors
cannot do everything themselves.
(4)
Paragraph 6
Nevertheless,
(1)
some directors acquired more control
over the films they made by becoming independent
producers and working out deals with the major
studios.
(2)
When a producer/director has control over
casting, script, editing and almost all the other
aspects of film-making, then he or she can make a
claim to some kind of authorship, but even then they
are dependent on the artistic input of many people:
actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, production
designers, among many others.
(3)
Ingmar Bergman,
the great Swedish director, had as much control over
the films he directed as any director who ever
worked in the cinema, but even he needed the
talents of cinematographers and actors to get his
vision onto the screen.
(4)
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