Cinema: The Film Maker as Ascendant Star

“What’s at the movies?” asks a Yale junior vacationing in Manhattan.

“Well,” replies his date for the evening, “there’s the Godard, an old Fellini, the new Truffau’—”How about something without subtitles for a change? 2001. Or The Midnight Cowboy. Or the Alan Arkin picture . . .”

Such dialogue—this one occurred last week—reflects the state of the contemporary film. In the U.S., movies are known by their titles or their stars. Overseas, the director is becoming the star. There may always be the Catherine Deneuves and Marcello Mastroiannis who are billed above the titles of their films. But increasingly the actor in Europe has become less important than the man who calls the shots. When France’s Jean-Luc Godard makes a film, the title is virtually irrelevant. Satyricon is the official name of a forthcoming fantasy about the sexual excesses of ancient Rome, but the knowing audience may be attracted more by the movie’s unofficial title: “The New Fellini.” Such Italian directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica are also, in effect, the titles of their films, as are Swedish Director Ingmar Bergman and celebrated French Film Makers François Truffaut and Alain Resnais (La Guerre Est Finie).

French Origins. It was not always so. The general public has long regarded movies as entertainment, not literature. Great and powerful films arrived as unpredictably as meteors and were gone before they could be measured. The rest was forgettable glitter.

The doctrine that lifted directors to their new eminence first appeared in the pages of the resolutely avant-garde French magazine Cahiers du Cinema. In January 1954, Truffaut, then a critic and aspiring film maker, wrote a prophetic article entitled “Politique des Auteurs” (“The Mark of the Author”). Its purpose: to show that celluloid could be just as prestigious as paper. Movies were not group art, he argued. The scenario, camera work and acting were all under the unifying force of the director —the author of a body of film work.

The theory soon gathered support on both sides of the screen. Suddenly the films of Alfred Hitchcock or Orson Welles could be spoken of as works with strands of philosophy running through them, like the plays of Racine. Republic Pictures’ westerns and Warner Brothers’ gangster films from the ’40s were reappraised as examples of directorial brilliance.

Despite its persuasive power, the auteur theory suffered from one serious flaw. Though the Cahiers critics had an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, they understood little of the Hollywood System. From the ’30s onward, American directors have often been mere foremen, called in for the job after the laborers —including the actors—were hired by the studio. Some, like John Huston, are capable of severe impressive films (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre). Others are erratic job-by-job film makers whose unifying philosophy seems to be a healthy respect for the box-office receipts.

Nearly all directors were long denied complete authority over their creations. The final cut—editing before release —was done by the studio, a situation comparable to a publisher blithely excising chapters of a novel without the writer’s consent. In recent years, a few enterprising directors—Stanley Kramer and Billy Wilder among them—have managed to escape the system by producing their own films independently. Paul Newman, John Cassavetes and a handful of other actors have also fought the studio scissors by controlling their movies from conception to editing.

The Focal Point. None of these problems invalidates the French theory. Film has all but replaced the novel as the chief topic of cultural talk on the campus and at many cocktail parties. Audiences as well as critics need someone to praise or blame for the total product. Given that need—and his new intellectual credentials—the director has become the focal point of film making. Henry Hathaway (True Grit), Howard Hawks (Red River) and John Ford (Cheyenne Autumn) have been reappraised as the prime movers of the west ern. Alfred Hitchcock has been called an eminent psychologist for his shrewd manipulation of audiences as well as actors. Some of the praise seems fulsome: Jerry Lewis has been compared favorably with Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles. Still, general acceptance of the auteur theory has given American directors new power with major studios and fresh rapport with audiences. Though no American film maker has yet achieved the stature of Italy’s Visconti or Britain’s David Lean, a handful seem to be well on their way: ∙ ARTHUR PENN. A product of television and stage work, Penn successfully brought his Broadway hit, The Miracle Worker, to the screen. At first, he proved better at transferring than at creating. His early experiment, The Left-Handed Gun, starring a self-conscious Paul Newman as Billy the Kid, paid heavy homage to the Actors Studio. Mickey One was a sedulously Francophilic film with Warren Beatty in the unlikely role of Everyman. But both movies displayed a moral force and a growing understanding of the possibilities of film. With Bonnie and Clyde, Penn abruptly became an internationally recognized film maker. In his newest film, Alice’s Restaurant, Penn gives visual substance to Mocking-Bard Arlo Guthrie’s instant-hit record of last year. Penn currently is working on Little Big Man, a study of the contemporary American Indian, with Dustin Hoffman in the title role. ∙ STANLEY KUBRICK. A favorite of the French theorists, Kubrick ironically has the most difficulty fitting their procrustean bed. His films are alike only in their lapidary craftsmanship and strong visual sense. At his best, Kubrick created America’s finest antiwar movie, Paths of Glory. At his worst, in Lolita, he flattened Nabokov’s Krafft-Ebing satire and missed the author’s parody of motel Americana. With the innovative successes of Dr. Strangelove and 2001, he recouped much of his prestigé. Still, there remains some doubt as to whether Kubrick has retained his ability to create characters of psychological breadth and substance. His newest project—a life of Napoleon—should answer that question. Orson Welles’ old appraisal still holds: “Kubrick is a great director who has not yet made his great film.” ∙ MIKE NICHOLS. Unlike Kubrick and Perm, Nichols arrived in Hollywood with formidable riches and reputation. As an entertainer he had been (with Elaine May) a cutting satirist. As a Broadway director he was known as a Midas: everything he directed became a hit. His first film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, proved to be an erratic success notable for its mature dialogue and some puerile performances. By comparison, The Graduate was as mixed as its reviews. Only the audience was unanimous: box office grosses totalled over $50 million. Now completing Catch-22, Nichols seems to have recognized his past errors. “It seems to me,” he says, “that the highest achievement in a film is for no technique to be visible at all.”

Vision to Inspire. Any director must master formidable complexity. He must be adept at sound and camera work, a soother of egos, a cajoler of artistic talent. A great director has something more: the vision and force to make all these disparate elements fuse into an inspired whole. In The Seventh Seal, Bergman had Death lead a troupe of clowns, obedient to a will larger than their own, across the dusky horizon to oblivion. The scene, still indelible in the minds of most viewers, somehow lifts cinema into the realm of philosophy, psychology and even religion.

The ultimate accolade to an artist’s consistency—in any medium—is the suffix “esque” at the end of his name. To say a film is “Felliniesque,” for example, is to suggest operatic and surrealistic fantasies, or the mixture of brio and disgust with which Fellini views society. “Godardesque” implies the nervous tics and mannerisms of an artist whose creative palsy can produce intriguing collages but never a totally complete vision. “Antonioniesque” suggests the world as a chessboard, full of malignant surfaces and doomed figures. “Pennesque,” “Nicholsesque,” “Kubrick-esque”—the labels refuse to stick. Yet the time may not be far off when they will.

Catching Up with Theory. The director’s battle with Hollywood is far from over. Recently, the associate producer of Isadora, Universal Pictures, hacked away 39 minutes without the assent of Director Karel Reisz. But for The Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger achieved total freedom. “United Artists didn’t come near me,” he boasts. And Paramount Pictures has granted Mike Nichols final authority over Catch-22. It is happily in the French tradition that the facts are finally catching up with the auteur theory.