http://www.totalfilm.com/features/50-
greatest-actors-turned-directors
Narrative
• Strong cause-and-effect
• High degree of narrative closure
• Psychologically rounded, goal-driven characters
• Character subordinate to plot
• Fictional world governed by spatial and temporal verisimilitude
• Familiar rules, codes, conventions
• Heterosexual romance normally present as main plot or subplot
Art Cinema/ European
• Loose cause and effect
• Open/ambiguous endings
• Ambiguous characters, often
lacking defined desires/goals
• Plot subordinate to character
• Psychological or social realism
• Experimentation (less
formulaic)
Hollywood
http://movies.amctv.com/movie-
guide/the-50-greatest-directors-of-
all-time/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1951264/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast
‘camera stylo’
Alexandre Astruc: 1948
Refer to a director’s discernable style through
mise-en-scene or to filmmaking practices
where the director’s signature was in evidence
Value personal expression and creativity
A director’s auteurist status emerges from the
consistency of themes, images and styles over
the whole body of his or her work;
Une Certaine Tendance du
Cinema Francais (Francois
Truffaut, 1954)
‘La Politique des auteurs’
The director’s personal expression is key in distinguishing whether they should be afforded
the title of auteur
metteur en scene
Merely adapt material given to them rather
than making it their own…they lack extra
depth involved (Bazin)