Module description
This module aims to examine in depth the critical legacies of and debates surrounding film authorship. Modelled to a large extent on literary and art history, film authorship, broadly speaking, underlines the production, marketing and reception of films (festivals, reviews, prizes, etc.), as well as much writing of film history and film criticism, as witnessed in the ongoing flow of monographs on individual directors that constitute a cornerstone of publishing on film. Despite important theoretical challenges, authorship has endured as a significant and powerful notion both in the film industry and in film studies. The module surveys key theoretical texts and explores them in themselves as well as through comparative case studies of two directors-Robert Bresson and Takeshi Kitano-who have both produced a significant body of work and given rise to substantial attention to their respective careers in film. We will consider how Bresson and Kitano fit into and/or defy the "auteur theory" and its variants through close attention to both the films themselves and the critical discourses (aesthetic, historical, national, generic) they have generated. The two directors under examination have worked (and in Kitano's case is presently working) in different regions of the world, at different periods in film history, and/or with different stylistic or generic emphases. But they also, however, share certain characteristics, predilections, production practices, or other authorial traits that warrant their, and can make for potentially rich, comparative study. This module will thus appeal to students who wish to extend their skills in analysing film aesthetics and practice in both conceptual frameworks and historical contexts. Finally, the module will invite students to consider what "film directing" is, as artistic and cultural practice.
Assessment details
- Participation 10%
- 1000 Word Essay 30%
- 2000 Word Essay 60%
Educational aims & objectives
Long before its influential theorization in post - war France, authorship has constituted a key organising principle i n the film industry and in film studies. Soon after the early era when manufacturers, cameramen and then producers prevailed, the director (e.g. D.W. Griffith) has been understood as the primary creative force and source of meaning in the cinema, despite the collaborative nature of filmmaking. This notion of film authorship, modelled on literary and art history, underlines the production, marketing and reception of films (festivals, reviews, prizes, etc.) as well as much writing of film history and film criticism, as witnessed in the ongoing flow of monographs on individual directors. Despite important theoretical challenges, authorship has endured as a significant and powerful notion both in the film industry and in film studies. This module charts the historical development of the notion of authorship in the cinema - from 'common sense' notions to the polemics of the politique des auteurs in 1950s France (Astruc, Truffaut et. a!.) and theorizations in the UK and US in the 1960s (Movie, Sarris); it then moves on to challenges posed by semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis and Marxism in the 1970s ('auteurstructuralism': Screen, Wollen) - connected to developments in critical theory (Barthes, Foucault) whereby the auteur becomes the source of unconscious textual processes - and the return to, andreinvigoration of, the figure of the auteur with the arrival of women directors and the formulation of concepts such as female, gay and queer authorship, as well as the challenges posed by ethnicity and the increasingly trans - national nature of the film industry. The module surveys key theoretical texts and explores them in themselves as well as through the extended case study of a film director who has both produced a significant body of work and given rise to substantial writing (the example taken here is Hitchcock, but other contenders include Renoir, Ophuls, Arzner, Hawks, Sirk, Bergman, Godard, Kurosawa, Lang, Ford, Varda).
Learning outcomes
By they end of the module, students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practical skills appropriate to a level 5 modules and in particular will be able to: - gain an understanding of the historical development and continued currency of the notion of authorship in the cinema, and of its place in film (and cultural) production - the auteur as an economic and cultural force; - examine the textual manifestations of authorship in terms of thematic and stylistic patterns - the auteur as textual signifier; - explore the relationship between authorship and other important paradigms in film studies, such as genre, gender, sexuality and national identity; - survey a significant case study as illustration of the general aspects of authorship studied on the module.