Auteur / Cinéma d'auteur

   Coined by the critics of the Cahiers du cinéma, the auteur or cinéma d'auteur concept refers to a type of filmmaking defined as a body of work by a single director that exhibits certain identifiable and stable characteristics across the body of work, among which is a tendency away from seamless narration and the classical Hollywood style and more toward avant-garde or experimental tendencies.

   The notion of auteur is rooted in the structuralist writings of Roland Barthes, wherein texts are authored to be either "readable" (that is, easily understood by a reader) or "writable," where the reader is required to do a certain amount of analytical work in order to derive meaning from the texts. Auteurism posits that films, like texts, are "authored" by their directors, and in auteurist films, the film is more "writable" than "readable," which is to say, it requires a certain amount of work on the part of the spectator.

   The term was first widely applied to the cinema of the directors of the Nouvelle Vague or New Wave, most notably Jean-Luc Godard for films such as À bout de souffle (1960) and Éloge d'amour (2004), and to Eric Rohmer for films such as Ma Nuit chez Maude (1969) and Conte d'automne (1998). The term has been applied also to directors such as Robert Bresson, particularly for films such as Journal d'un curé de campagne (1951) and Lancelot du lac (1974). Agnès Varda, known for films such as Jacquot de Nantes (1991) and Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000), is also frequently cited as an auteur. Younger auteur directors include Jean-Jaques Beineix, best-known for Diva (1981), Mathieu Kassovitz, best-known for La Haine (1995), and Claire Denis, known for films such as Chocolat (1988) and Beau Travail (1999). The concept of auteur may be tied to the constant anxiety of placing cinema in the realm of art, rather than of popular culture, an anxiety that stretches back to the film d'art tradition. Alexandre Astruc's notion of the caméra-stylo is also closely related to the concept of auteur.

   Historical Dictionary of French Cinema by Dayna Oscherwitz & Mary Ellen Higgins