Auteur ship Essay!!! :)

Auteur ship In Film

Auteur theory holds that a director’s film can reflect that director's personal creative vision, as if he were the main "auteur" or “author”. The Directors voice seems to be apparent for the observer making them seem above the film. The more a director’s voice is heard through the films, the more it creates a memorable movie. For the assignment, I chose Robert Altman as my director. I saw the films “The Company” (2003), “The Player” (1997) and “The Long Goodbye” (1973). I chose these movies specifically because of the years in which they were made. In getting a feel for the day in which they were made, simultaneously looking at the style and “auteur ship” of the director, himself.

The movie, “The Company” was a surprise for me. I’m not really used to the way he presents the characters and the whole movie in general. I shunned it at first but warmed up to it a bit later on. There wasn’t a whole lot of dialogue going on in this film. It takes place in Boston, after the new millennium. It follows the happenings of a ballet dance company. The movie is slow paced but beautiful. The shots taken while the company dances are awe-inspiring. Its as if the bodies did all the talking in that movie.
Contrary to “The Player."

“The Player” was jam-packed with dialogue. Including the first scene in the movie when its just one long shot with lots of individual conversations and happenings at once. The conversations would flow naturally between the characters and there is a lot of creative wordplay happening back and forth between the characters. This movie gave me more of a feel for the director’s style and directions of his films. The balance between the humor and the serious undertones made it both entertaining and artsy to me. I was anxious the whole film, wondering what was going to happen next.
The last film I saw was “The Long Goodbye”. This movie is set in the 70’s, a private detective gets intro trouble when his friend commits suicide and the mafia come knocking on his door. This was similar to “The Player” In that it was a murder and it was sort of a mystery at the same time. You are figuring everything out as the character goes along. “The Company”, I believe did not follow as closely in relation to the other two but they were all enjoyed. ☺
The cultural aspects of the films were very different. In “The Company” there were many modern things I could recognize but I could also tell by some of the clothes and the hair styles (not to mention a hot James Franco) that it was early 2000’s. “The Player” was much more obvious to me. There was a car phone and there were women with shoulder pads. The talkiness of the 80’s and 90’s is easy to spot. By far, “The Long Goodbye” was the most foreign and most 70’s of all. The nudity, the fag jokes, the beating of women and the use of drugs all show the carefree spirit of the seventies.

As a director, I feel that Robert Altman shows his auteur ship through the way his characters interact, the way the movie is shot so that it seems that we are invading on an actual conversation. The Way he just shows the actions within fame. You can tell everything that is happening. His wordplay especially shows through his movie, especially in “The Long Goodbye”. I believe that Robert Altman definitely has a certain style to his movies and I think its important for films to be inspired by that because it helps show the world how others can see and interpret the world. Intentional or not, there is always a deeper meaning in a work of art.