Comparing Auteurism In Jaws And Star Wars

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Auteurism or the auteur theory is the idea that a director puts so much of himself (his style, personal experiences, etc) into a film that he is basically it’s author. “Film should ideally be a means of personal artistic expression for it’s director bearing the signature of his or her personal style.”(Lewis, page 11) For a film to be “auteuristic” for lack of a better word, it should clearly be a product of its director. Early auteurs include Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and other well known directors. Orson Welles, known for his big hit Citizen Kane, is an example of failure within auteurism. While Citizen Kane was wildly successful and still considered a brilliant film today, Orson Welles was also deeply criticized for it. Due to the criticism, he was never allowed to have as much stylistic freedom with a film again and did not produce any other ”blockbusters”. Alfred Hitchcock is an example of major success …show more content…

They changed Hollywood, for better or worse, in more than one way. Jaws and Star Wars both took advantage of tv commercials to advertise. Jaws was the first of the two to do this, “Jaws proved that one film under careful guidance from its distributor, in this case Universal, could precipitate a national pop culture event and make millions upon millions of dollars for a single studio with but a single film” (Stringer, page 73) Jaws quickly surpassed The Godfather in box office numbers, making over $100 million in the first six months.(Stringer, page 72) Star Wars would later pass Jaws record using the same tv advertisement strategy. These successes made television no longer a rival for films, but an ally. With this new tool, film profits began to skyrocket, and therefore so did the film’s budgets. Movie merchandise started to pop up, and that made films exponentially more profitable, as merchandise could be sold and also acted as a piece of advertisement. (Stringer, page

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