Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

2 Noir and the Film Auteur
2.1 Auteurism
It was during the fifties that the auteur theory gained a hold, especially within
French New Wave cinema and with the film critics who were directly attached to the
influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma. At that time, the conviction arose that American
commercial cinema deserved to be studied in-depth, or that the idea that masterpieces were
just directed by a reduced number of filmmakers was wrong; rather, a large group of
directors had had their work unduly rejected and/or ignored. François Truffaut is normally
referred to as the cineaste that had a major impact on film criticism in general and the
auteur theory in particular. However, this theory goes back to the time when André Bazin -
one of the members that founded the renowned film periodical - recognised moviemaking
as an industrial process in which the director could nevertheless still make his own
personal mark in terms of mise-en-scène, aesthetic vision, technique, etc. It is therefore the
director who basically controls the distinctive features that allow the artistic statement to
emerge and be recognisable as such. In this sense, it is acknowledged that Hitchcock, the
master of mystery and suspense, derived many of his effects and the psychology which he
uses in his film techniques from German Expressionist filmmakers, for example.
Back in January 1954, François Truffaut wrote an essay for Cahiers du Cinéma
entitled “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français” (“A certain trend in French cinema”),
and further analysed the concept of auteur by coining the expression “La politique des
Auteurs”. This involved a conscious programme to re-examine films and recover what they
might have of value. In this regard, Truffaut once defended Jacques Becker’s Ali Baba et
les Quarantes Voleurs despite the harsh critique by the press when the film was first
released:
À la première vision, Ali Baba m’a déçu; à la seconde, ennuyé; à la troisième,
passionné et ravi. Sans doute le reverrai-je encore mais je sais bien que passé
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