The Romantic Notion of a Film Director

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The intention of this essay is to discuss the romantic notion of a film director who has etched their own cinematic vision into the body of their film work, and whether the theory and practice is dead and an infringement of the spectator’s imagination and is it the spectator who finds meaning in the film. I will be closely looking at critical material, primarily André Bazin and Roland Barthes and applying them to several case study films directed by Christopher Nolan including The Following (1998), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010), to examine whether Nolan possesses the qualities of an auteur and if so, does that imply an ideological view of what the auteur resembles or an artistic one.

The term auteur theory arose in France during the 1940’s, a foundation to the French cinematic movement known as the nouvelle vague (French New Wave), principally noting the director as the author. The dominant view of cinematic authorship has consisted of novels, paintings, poems and more recently, films. To understand the auteur we must first realise that film can be considered an art form; the creative expression of an individual artist. As Alexandre Astruc states ‘the cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the other arts have been before it, and in particular painting and the novel’ (Astruc, 1999: 159). This allows the director to be capable of expressing themselves through recurrent thematic elements or particular visual aesthetics. A film’s meaning can be attributed to a single creative source, the director, who stands behind it as its creator thus giving the narrative a composed personal meaning. The distinction of the auteur can be signified through many works such as the use of crew members and cast t...

... middle of paper ...

.... USA: Warner Bro’s. Pictures.

Doodlebug, 1997. Directed by Christopher Nolan. UK: Cinema16.

Following, 1998. Directed by Christopher Nolan. UK: Next Wave Films and Syncopy.

Inception, 2010. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Warner Bro’s. Pictures.

Insomnia, 2002. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Warner Bro’s. Pictures.

Memento, 2000. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Summit Entertainment.

The Big Sleep, 1946. Directed by Howard Hawks. USA: Warner Bro’s Pictures.

The Dark Knight, 2008. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Warner Bro’s. Pictures.

The Maltese Falcon, 1941. Directed by John Huston. USA: Warner Bro’s Pictures.

The Matrix, 1999. Directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. USA: Warner Bro’s Pictures.

The Prestige, 2006. Directed by Christopher Nolan. USA: Touchstone Pictures.

2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. USA: MGM.

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