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

leurs passions, il me paraît difficile de ne pas admettre que l'on se trouve, pour une
fois, en face de ce qu'il y a après tout de plus rare dans cette industrie: un auteur de
films. 67
The quote describes the expectations that the spectator has vis-à-vis systematic
aspects, both in terms of themes (“toujours la même histoire”) and stylistically (“le même
style”). Hitchcock also expressed ideas largely through visual means, and his ability to
characterise unconventional protagonists is also perceptible in this visual expression of
thought and psychology. In a noir context, for instance, Strangers on a Train manages to
deal with the issue of transfer of guilt, and to imply homosexual overtones in a visual way
(reinforced by showing distorted relationships between men and their mothers) and,
globally, the darker side of human nature in, as the above quote states, “une façon
examplaire de dépouiller les personages”. Another example of visual menace is revealed in
Shadow of a Doubt whose opening scenes show a distant train approaching in an ominous
cloud of black smoke that hangs over the train station as Uncle Charlie arrives in Santa
Rosa, giving the impression, as François Truffaut has pointed out, that “the devil was
coming to town”. The quote then concludes that the auteur theory thus argues that the
director is not just simply directing or putting together a pre-existing text; he is not just a
metteur-en-scène. Robert Siodmak in The Killers, for instance, often assumed that the
things that he took from Ernest Hemingway’s short story, apart from the tough, hard-boiled
style were just catalyst elements, that is, of a man, Swede, who systematically gets tracked
down by a pair of hired killers.
Since the seventies the area of film studies has experienced significant shifts, and
the theoretical proclamations made at that time, particularly those that were associated with
psychoanalysis, have been re-examined. It may be the case that textual analysis of the
seventies relied too much on formal and technological aspects of the cinema, and as a
result gave exclusive signifying authority to the individual film and showed insufficient
respect for the complex nature of the cinematic institution. The argument of the auteur
theory that it is the distinguishable personality of the director that works as a decisive
factor of value, or as Sarris put it, “The way that a film looks and moves should have some
67 When a man for over thirty years and through fifty films tells almost always the same story, that of a soul
grappling with evil, and maintains, along this unique line, the same style, he is essentially stripping the
characters and immersing them in the abstract world of their passions. It seems difficult not to admit that, for
once, we are in the presence of what is after all the rarest in the industry: an author of films. (my translation)
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