Hitchcock's Auteur Theory

In the film industry, sometimes it can be hard to credit a single person for the production as so many individuals can hold significant influence. The auteur theory solves this dilemma by saying the director is the primary creator source, therefore being the writer expressing their own point of view in a distinct way to the rest of the world. This theory emerged in postwar France, hence the distinctive French spelling for auteur, during this time, the 1940s through the 1950s, cinematography in Paris was mostly based on aesthetic or abstract philosophical films. The film journal Cahiers du Cinema, was influential in pushing this auteur theory, as Alexandre Astruc said in an essay the director held the camera-stylo, or translated the camera pen.

The use of auteur as a marketing strategy has also been a valuable strategy in both old and new Hollywood filmmaking; as much as genre and casting has an impact on the amount of interest advertising for a certain film generates, so does the news of the director and the subject matter being addressed either explicitly or through subtext. As mentioned in the textbook, Hitchcock is a very highly celebrated auteur, and it is very easy to label and distinguish his work from other directors as Hitchcock’s perfectionist style not only created amazing films, but also acted as his own personal signature on everything he did. It was almost guaranteed that every Hitchcock film would have a good number of viewers ready to go out of their way to see it simply because Hitchcock made it. Hitchcock’s specific viewpoint and deliberate acceleration of suspense in his directing is a perfect example of the camera-stylo previously mentioned by Astruc, as only Hitchcock was able to provide the audience with a feeling untouched by any other thriller or suspenseful

As every individual has their own beliefs, culture, experiences, and biases, these are conveyed through how they present themselves and what they do to the outside world, giving a piece of their mind to others as this section of personality can remain unseen if not acted out in some way. This new way of analysis can come through in different ways whether it is focusing on the historical progression of a certain company or the presentation of a certain topic, the national applications, the production or industrial context, the studio producing the film, and so many more subcategories that can be exploited to dig into specifics of film production. An example of an auteur’s impact on the film interpretation is, if a film is centered around a religion many different perspectives towards this religion can be shown and it is up to the audience to take away which perspective they were intended to empathize with. If the director is very vocal about being against the religion or without religion, the message of the film may be meant to convey the absurdity of religion as a practice; however, if the director themselves was dedicated to the religion being presented in the film, then they could mean to convey the importance of joining or following their religion and the harmful effects of going against this