Even if you’ve only a marginal interest in film criticism, chances are you’ve stumbled upon it in a used bookshop in one of its more tattered, marked-up forms. Andrew Sarris’ seminal study on the American film canon, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, relentlessly quoted from and anthologized, has had much to do with our own understanding of a particular theory concerning film authorship derived from those young turks over in France at Cahiers. Starting tonight and running until March 31, Anthology will be showcasing the works of, as Sarris puts it, the “unsung directors with difficult styles or unfashionable genres or both. Their deeper virtues are often obscured by irritating idiosyncrasies on the surface, but they are generally redeemed by their seriousness and grace.” All together, Sarris, EXPRESSIVE ESOTERICA.

Givenhow naturally and frequently the word auteur is used fifty years later, it’s certain that the term itself has gone through various permutations that may or may not have had much to do with Sarris. For this reason, it may pay dividends to go back to Sarris’ text and see how he first used auteur and what he had to say about it, for historical perspective, if anything else.

We’ve highlighted brief selections from an early article penned by Sarris, published in 1962, in response to Truffaut’s original formulation of the theory. Enjoy, and come over to Anthology to see a film or two!

ANDREW SARRIS: EXPRESSIVE ESOTERICA
February 22 - March 31
For the full schedule: http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/40511

…

First of all, the auteur theory, at least as I understand it and now intend to express it, claims neither the gift of prophecy nor the option of extracinematic perception. Directors, even auteurs, do not always run true to form, and the critic can never assume that a bad director will always make a bad film. No, not always, but almost always, and that is the point.

…

Now, by the auteur theory, if a director has no technical competence, no elementary flair for the cinema, he is automatically cast out from the pantheon of directors. This is true in any art.

…

The second premise of the auteur theory is the distinguishable personality of the director as a criterion of value. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style, which serves as his signature. The way a film looks and moves should have some relationship to the way a director thinks and feels.

…

The third and ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material.

…

In one sequence of La Règle du Jeu, Renoir gallops up the stairs, turns to his right with a lurching movement, stops in hopliike uncertainty when his name is called by a coquettish maid, and, then, with marvelous postreflex continuity, resumes his bearishly shambling journey to the heroine’s boudoir. If I could describe the musical grace note of that momentary suspension, and I can’t, I might be able to provide a more precise definition of the auteur theory. As it is, all I can do is point at the specific beauties of interior meaning on the screen and, later, catalogue the moments of recognition.

…

Nowadays, it is possible to become a director without knowing too much about the technical side, even the crucial functions of photography and editing. An expert production crew could probably cover up for a chimpanzee in the director’s chair. How do you tell the genuine director from the quasichimpanzee? After a given number of films, a pattern is established.

In fact,  the auteur theory itself is a pattern theory in constant flux. I would never endorse a Ptolemaic constellation of directors in a fixed orbit

…

Only after thousands of films have been revaluated, will any personal pantheon have a reasonably objective validity. The task of validating the auteur theory is an enormous one, and the end will never be in sight. Meanwhile, the auteur habit of collecting random films in directorial bundles will serve posterity with at least a tentative classroom.