Film History Week 9 3/21/12  Film Noir  Auteur Theory  Stanley Kubrick

The Blacklist Film History

Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama Film History

Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama Film History

Cinemascope, 3-D, Cinerama Film History

B-Movies Film History

The Coming of Television Film History

The Parallel Development of Film & Television (First 50 Years) Film History

Film Noir Film History on Film Noir

Film Noir Film History Click on the image to the right to see a PDF.

Film Noir Film History Click on the image to the right to see a PDF.

Film Noir Film History “Genre” Signatures 1.Urban Setting 2.Dark, Usually Rain-Soaked Streets 3.Customarily Concerned with Crime and Criminals 4.A Pervasive Cynicism 5.Seedy Sexuality 6.A “femme fatale” of Central Importance. 7.“[A] range of plots—the central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.)” [Wikipedia]. The Big SleepThe Big HeatThe Set-UpNight and the CityGun CrazyD.O.A.

The Auteur Theory Film History

François Truffaut, "Une Certaine Tendance du Cinéma Français" ("A Certain Tendency in French Cinema"), Cahiers du Cinéma (1954) Film History

Andrew Sarris (US): Auteurism’s American champion Film History

 Drawing on the original insights of the French, the American critic Andrew Sarris translated the auteur theory into an American idiom.  For a time, under the influence of Sarris’ goal of converting "film history into directorial autobiography," American intellectuals interested in the movies began to think and talk and understand the movies through the specially-ground lenses provided by the auteur theory.  "Over a group of films," Sarris insisted in what amounts to his foundational principle, "a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serve as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels" (Sarris 586). Film History

 Truffaut formulated the original auteur theory in opposition to the monopolization of film art by writers.  Sarris’ critical venture was likewise undertaken "against the wind." He sought to undermine the too-great hold of sociological and political critics. He wanted to talk about the art in the movies he loved, not their social significance. Film History

“In its more extreme incarnations auteurism can be seen as an anthropomorphic form of ‘love’ for the cinema. The same love that had formerly been lavished on stars, or that formalists lavished on artistic devices, the auteurists now lavished on the men—and they largely were men—who incarnated the auteurists’ idea of cinema. Film was resurrected as secular religion; the ‘aura’ was back in force thanks to the cult of the auteur.” Robert Stam (88) Film History

The auteur theory’s appeal, the critic Peter Wollen has noted, was obvious: it "implie[d] an operation of decipherment... reveal[ing] authors where none had been seen before" (77). Film directors, it was argued, and soon thereafter generally assumed, could put their stamp on a wide variety of movies, even in several genres. Their attention was not focused solely on American directors, of course; they also singled out for praise French auteurs like Abel Gance, Jean Vigo, and Jean Renoir. Film History

The auteur theory was ready to accept, of course, that "Just as not every conductor is a Leonard Bernstein, so not every director is an Alfred Hitchcock" [Dick 147]). Not all directors became maestros—those individuals Sarris categorized as "Pantheon Directors"--but many shed their anonymity, their earlier work now retrospectfully interesting, their new films anticipated. The works of a wide variety of directors were catalogued, in some cases exhaustively. And it was not only the movies of these directors that came in for greater scrutiny. The writings of auteurs and available interviews with them concerning their film aesthetics and methods were also put under the microscope. Film History

"[Like the monolith in 2001, Stanley Kubrick] was a force of supernatural intelligence, appearing at great intervals amid high-pitched shrieks, who gives the world a violent kick up the next rung of the evolutionary ladder."--David Denby Film History Week 9 Stanley Kubrick (American, )

Killer’s Kiss (1955) Stanley Kubrick Film History

The Killing (1956) Stanley Kubrick Film History

Paths of Glory (1957) Stanley Kubrick Film History

Spartacus (1960) Stanley Kubrick It's like the end of Spartacus. I've seen that movie half a dozen times, and I still don't know who the real Spartacus is. That's what makes that movie a classic whodunit. --The clueless Michael Scott on The Office (Season 6) Film History

Lolita (1962) Stanley Kubrick Film History

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Stanley Kubrick Film History Stanley Kubrick on the Film History Blog

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick Film History Stanley Kubrick on Film History Blog My Mentor, W. R. Robinson, on 2001 : “ 2001 and the Literary Sensibility” ”The Birth of Imaginative Man in Part III of 2001: A Space Odyssey ”

A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick Film History Stanley Kubrick on the Film History Blog

Barry Lyndon (1975) Stanley Kubrick Film History

The Shining (1980) Stanley Kubrick Film History

Full Metal Jacket (1987) Stanley Kubrick Film History

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) Stanley Kubrick Film History

AI (Steven Spielberg, 2001) Stanley Kubrick? Film History