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Film classic Gone with the Wind (1939) starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh

Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking that first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the later years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 (with the advent of sound film) and 1960. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.

Similar or associated terms include classical Hollywood narrative, the Golden Age of Hollywood, Old Hollywood, and classical continuity. The period is also referred to as the studio era, which may also include films of the late silent era.

1910s-1927: Silent era and emergence of the classical style

For millennia, the only visual standard of narrative storytelling art was the theatre. Since the first narrative films in the mid-late 1890s, filmmakers have sought to capture the power of live theatre on the cinema screen. Most of these filmmakers started as directors on the late 19th-century stage, and likewise, most film actors had roots in vaudeville (e.g. The Marx Brothers) or theatrical melodramas. Visually, early narrative films had adapted little from the stage, and their narratives had adapted very little from vaudeville and melodrama. Before the visual style which would become known as "classical continuity", scenes were filmed in full shot and used carefully choreographed staging to portray plot and character relationships. Editing technique was extremely limited, and mostly consisted of close-ups of writing on objects for their legibility.

Still from the silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915), starring Lillian Gish (second from right)

Though lacking the reality inherent to the stage, film (unlike the stage) offers the freedom to manipulate apparent time and space, and thus create the illusion of realism - that is temporal linearity and spatial continuity. By the early 1910s, when the Lost Generation was coming of age, filmmaking was beginning to fulfill its artistic potential. In Sweden and Denmark, this period would later be known as the "Golden Age" of the film; in America, this artistic change is attributed to filmmakers like D. W. Griffith finally breaking the grip of the Edison Trust to make films independent of the manufacturing monopoly. Films worldwide began to noticeably adopt visual and narrative elements which would be found in classical Hollywood cinema. 1913 was a particularly fruitful year for the medium, as pioneering directors from several countries produced films such as The Mothering Heart (D. W. Griffith), Ingeborg Holm ( Victor Sjöström), and L'enfant de Paris ( Léonce Perret) that set new standards for the film as a form of storytelling. It was also the year when Yevgeni Bauer (the first true film artist, according to Georges Sadoul) started his short, but prolific, career.

Theatrical release poster for Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

In the world generally and America specifically, the influence of Griffith on filmmaking was unmatched. Equally influential were his actors in adapting their performances to the new medium. Lillian Gish, the star of film short The Mothering Heart, is particularly noted for her influence on on-screen performance techniques. Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation also starring Gish was ground-breaking for film as a means of storytelling - a masterpiece of literary narrative with numerous innovative visual techniques. The film initiated so many advances in American cinema that it was rendered obsolete within a few years. Though 1913 was a global landmark for filmmaking, 1917 was primarily an American one; the era of "classical Hollywood cinema" is distinguished by a narrative and visual style which began to dominate the film medium in America by 1917.

1927-1960: Sound era and the Golden Age of Hollywood

The narrative and visual style of classical Hollywood style developed further after the transition to sound-film production. The primary changes in American filmmaking came from the film industry itself, with the height of the studio system. This mode of production, with its reigning star system promoted by several key studios, had preceded sound by several years. By mid-1920, most of the prominent American directors and actors, who had worked independently since the early 1910s, had to become a part of the new studio system to continue to work.

The beginning of the sound era itself is ambiguously defined. To some, it began with The Jazz Singer, which was released in 1927, when the Interbellum Generationers became of age and increased box-office profits for films as sound was introduced to feature films. To others, the era began in 1929, when the silent age had definitively ended.[better source needed ] Most Hollywood pictures from the late 1920s to 1960s adhered closely to a genre - Western, slapstick comedy, musical, animated cartoon, and biopic (biographical picture) - and the same creative teams often worked on films made by the same studio. For instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films; Alfred Newman worked at 20th Century Fox for twenty years; Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount Pictures; and director Henry King's films were mostly made for 20th Century Fox. Similarly, actors were mostly contract players. Film historians and critics note that it took about a decade for films to adapt to sound and return to the level of artistic quality of the silents, which they did in the late 1930s when the Greatest Generationers became of age.[citation needed ]

Many great works of cinema that emerged from this period were of highly regimented filmmaking. One reason this was possible is that, as so many films were made, not every one had to be a big hit. A studio could gamble on a medium-budget feature with a good script and relatively unknown actors. This was the case with Citizen Kane (1941), directed by Orson Welles and regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. Other strong-willed directors, like Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra, battled the studios in order to achieve their artistic visions. The apogee of the studio system may have been the year 1939, which saw the release of such classics as The Wizard of Oz; Gone with the Wind; The Hunchback of Notre Dame; Stagecoach; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Destry Rides Again; Young Mr. Lincoln; Wuthering Heights; Only Angels Have Wings; ; ; Babes in Arms; ; ; Goodbye, Mr. Chips; and The Roaring Twenties.

The visual-narrative style of classical Hollywood cinema, as elaborated by David Bordwell, was heavily influenced by the ideas of the Renaissance and its resurgence of mankind as the focal point. It is distinguished at three general levels: devices, systems, and the relations of systems.

The devices most inherent to classical Hollywood cinema are those of continuity editing. This includes the 180-degree rule, one of the major visual-spatial elements of continuity editing. The 180-degree rule keeps with the "photographed play" style by creating an imaginary 180-degree axis between the viewer and the shot, allowing viewers to clearly orient themselves within the position and direction of action in a scene. According to the 30-degree rule, cuts in the angle that the scene is viewed from must be significant enough for the viewer to understand the purpose of a change in perspective. Cuts that do not adhere to the 30-degree rule, known as jump cuts, are disruptive to the illusion of temporal continuity between shots. The 180-degree and 30-degree rules are elementary guidelines in filmmaking that preceded the official start of the classical era by over a decade, as seen in the pioneering 1902 French film A Trip to the Moon. Cutting techniques in classical continuity editing serve to help establish or maintain continuity, as in the cross cut, which establishes the concurrence of action in different locations. Jump cuts are allowed in the form of the axial cut, which does not change the angle of shooting at all, but has the clear purpose of showing a perspective closer or farther from the subject, and therefore does not interfere with temporal continuity.

Narrative logic

Classical narration progresses always through psychological motivation, i.e., by the will of a human character and its struggle with obstacles towards a defined goal. This narrative element is commonly composed of a primary narrative (e.g. a romance) intertwined with a secondary narrative or narratives. This narrative is structured with an unmistakable beginning, middle and end, and generally there is a distinct resolution. Utilizing actors, events, causal effects, main points, and secondary points are basic characteristics of this type of narrative. The characters in classical Hollywood cinema have clearly definable traits, are active, and very goal oriented. They are causal agents motivated by psychological rather than social concerns. The narrative is a chain of cause and effect with causal agents - in classical style, events do not occur randomly.

Cinematic time and space

Time in classical Hollywood is continuous, linear, and uniform, since non-linearity calls attention to the illusory workings of the medium. The only permissible manipulation of time in this format is the flashback. It is mostly used to introduce a memory sequence of a character, e.g., Casablanca.

The greatest rule of classical continuity regarding space is object permanence: the viewer must believe that the scene exists outside the shot of the cinematic frame to maintain the picture's realism. The treatment of space in classical Hollywood strives to overcome or conceal the two-dimensionality of film ("invisible style") and is strongly centered upon the human body. The majority of shots in a classical film focus on gestures or facial expressions (medium-long and medium shots). André Bazin once compared classical film to a photographed play in that the events seem to exist objectively and that cameras only give us the best view of the whole play.

This treatment of space consists of four main aspects: centering, balancing, frontality, and depth. Persons or objects of significance are mostly in the center part of the picture frame and never out of focus. Balancing refers to the visual composition, i. e., characters are evenly distributed throughout the frame. The action is subtly addressed towards the spectator (frontality) and set, lighting (mostly three-point lighting, especially high-key lighting), and costumes are designed to separate foreground from the background (depth).

The New Hollywood of the mid-1960s to early 1980s was influenced by the romanticism of the classical era, as was the French New Wave.

These were recognized on the American Film Institute's list ranking the top 25 male and 25 female greatest screen legends of American film history. As of 2024, Sophia Loren (89) is the only living star listed.

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Classical Hollywood cinema is a term used in film criticism to describe both a narrative and visual style of filmmaking that first developed in the 1910s to 1920s during the later years of the silent film era. It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 (with the advent of sound film) and 1960.

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Originating from the artistic philosophy of 'auteur theory'; a concept that acknowledges film as a product of the director's absolute imaginative and inspired aesthetic vision, New Wave filmmakers inspired the cult of the director as artistic icon on a par with writers and painters.

The philosophical importance of the French New Wave, and their role in the development of a theory of film, was in large part due to one of the movement's most influential and pivotal creators, André Bazin. Bazin, a theorist of cinema and renowned film critic, was the founding father of the French movie magazine Cahiers du Cinéma.

Its initial publication in 1951 marked a crucial moment in the lives of many acclaimed French screenwriters and directors. In his belief in film as a highly intellectual art, Bazin was a meticulous academic of film who believed that cinema was far more than popular entertainment. Bazin's emphasis on the crucial role of a director, the artistic creator who implements his or her own aesthetic and narrative vision to the screen was debated, interrogated and explored in various articles of Cahiers du Cinéma, specifically in an essay published in 1954 by François Truffaut titled, A Certain Tendency in French Cinema.

François Truffaut

A cinephile from childhood, François Truffaut's passion for film shaped his life entirely. Working intimately with close friend and fellow film philosopher Bazin, François Truffaut was a critical presence in Cahiers du Cinéma. Truffaut worked tirelessly as a ruthless film critic and academic before embarking on filmmaking himself. He was also greatly influenced by Hollywood film, specifically the work of Alfred Hitchcock, whom he revered.

Truffaut's full length feature debut The 400 Blows (Les Quatre Cents Coups), released in 1959 and one of his most stirring films, tells the story of a neglected Parisian boy who experiences the hardships of life at a very young age. This deeply autobiographical film set the tone for much of Truffaut's later work and established him as a deeply humanistic and elegiac director.

One of his most successful films was Day for Night (La Nuit Américaine) which won the award for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards in 1974. In Day for Night Truffaut chronicles the disastrous, seductive, destructive and awe-inspiring antics that take place on a film set during production of fictional film Je Vous Presente Pamela. Truffaut's canon features a wide range of cinematic endeavors including a film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, Truffaut's only English language film.

Alain Resnais

Alain Resnais never associated himself with the nouvelle vague movement, choosing instead to surround himself with writers such as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras. In fact, Duras wrote the screenplay to Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Resnais's most famous work that not only questioned, but ultimately broke with linear storytelling, blurred characterisation and jumped between plots and subplots, memories and fictions.

Two years after Hiroshima Mon Amour and its resounding success, Renais worked with Robbe-Grillet on another masterpiece that combined literature and cinema: Last Year in Marienbad ( L'Année dernière à Marienbad, 1961). The production signalled a revolution in the art of filmmaking; the film's narrative technique, at once perfectly lucid and completely impenetrable, pushed the boundaries of the medium while diving into more complex, epistemological questions about the nature of fiction, belief and perception. Resnais died on 1 March 2014, aged 92, leaving behind a cinematographic legacy that is both inspiring and impossible to imitate.

Éric Rohmer

A favorite among international film festivals and a former editor of Cahiers du Cinéma, Éric Rohmer (born Maurice Henri Joseph Schérer) was a truly gifted storyteller whose talent transcended form and led to successful careers in academia, journalism and fiction writing in addition to his critically acclaimed films.

Rohmer's films are known for their postmodern illumination of the narrative process. Rohmer's early career of film shorts eventually led to his directorial debut (which earned him a Best Foreign Film Academy Award Nomination) 1969's My Night at Maud's (Ma Nuit Chez Maud), the story of a pious Catholic whose spiritual and personal life are greatly altered after moving to a small town. Claire's Knee followed in 1970, a story of seduction, sex, love and one man's passionate urge to touch the knee of a young woman. Rohmer is also responsible for two series of films, Six Moral Tales and Comedy and Proverbs, all of which have become modern classics of French cinema.

Claude Chabrol

Much like his fellow New Wave members, especially Rohmer, Claude Chabrol established himself as a respected philosophical film academic before embarking on a filmmaking career. Chabrol experienced great commercial success in films that proved to be accessible to a mainstream audience without sacrificing narratives of great intellectual weight.

Often noted as the group's most abundantly productive member (directing, writing or producing at least one film, if not multiples, each year of his 50-year career), Chabrol's formal directorial debut 1958's The Handsome Serge (Le Beau Serge- the story of an unexpected homecoming and two friends who struggle to accept the harsh emotional circumstances of their adult lives) introduced its director as not only a devout disciple of Alfred Hitchcock, but an innovative filmmaker whose true craftsmanship is displayed in each and every frame of his films.

A decade later Chabrol released in quick succession three of his most acclaimed thrillers, Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969) (The original version of Adrian Lyne's Unfaithful) and Le Boucher (1970). Chabrol's canon today remains synonymous with highly intellectual depictions of genre narratives.

Jacques Rivette

Although he dismissed Truffaut and Bazin's notions of 'auteur theory' in the later years of his esteemed career, Jacques Rivette was greatly inspired by his fellow writers and directors in the New Wave movement. Known for films featuring free flowing narratives, Jacques Rivette is a legend of modern French cinema.

His debut, 1961's mystery Paris Belongs to Us (Paris nous Appartient), was initially dismissed, although it is now considered a critical success in its depiction of a group of strangers who convene under peculiar circumstances at a party in Paris. Rivette continued his cinematic preoccupations with twisting mysteries in 1974's Celine and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en Bateau).

Rivette's most celebrated film, both critically and commercially, was The Beautiful Troublemaker (La Belle Noiseuse), first released in 1991.

La belle Noiseuse is an erotic thriller that tells the story of a French painter and his wife who welcome his young apprentice and his girlfriend to their country home. As the couples intertwine in their creative processes, limits and boundaries are destroyed.

Jean-Luc Godard

Perhaps the French New Wave's most notable international figure is Jean-Luc Godard, a visionary of film both in France and abroad. In addition to being an accomplished screenwriter and director, Godard was also a highly respected critic of film.

Admired for his inventive experimentation with both technical and thematic aspects of film (a passionate rejection of 'traditional' French cinema's stories of the aristocracy), Godard's film career started with his involvement with Cahiers du Cinéma as one of the publication's first and most celebrated contributing writers. His full-length feature debut came with 1960's À Bout de Soufflé (Breathless); a pop-culture inspired narrative told in a truly revolutionary style.

Breathless is a metropolitan romance (between a recent murderer on the run with a girl) set within the urban landscape of Parisian streets. The feature film introduced Godard as a truly innovative force within film. His films emphasize the presentation of story, more than the story itself, much like Bazin's notes on audience perception of a film. 1964's Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part), a mischievous and flirtatious turn for Godard, is the story of a trio of hopeless crooks planning a heist. , released in 1967, features the often bizarre occurrences that plague a married couple in what they thought would be a peaceful weekend to the countryside.

Godard's most recent release, 2010's Film Socialisme, is a cinematic orchestra of sorts, featuring various characters, narrative strands and themes beautifully interwoven in a story interrogating equality and intimacy of the human condition.

The works of all the French New Wave directors remain fresh and potent today, displaying a postmodern playfulness, and a surfeit of ideas which other filmmakers still struggle to replicate. Although there had been many classic French films made before the New Wave, it was these directors who established France as the centre for cinematic innovation and art house film, something which remains true even today.

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The French New Wave: Revolutionising Cinema

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Originating from the artistic philosophy of 'auteur theory'; a concept that acknowledges film as a product of the director's absolute imaginative and inspired aesthetic vision, New Wave filmmakers inspired the cult of the director as artistic icon on a par with writers and painters.

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The Hays Code was the informal name for The Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930 but not seriously enforced until 1934. The Code was a set of rules governing American filmmaking that shaped-and in many ways stifled-American cinema for over three decades before it was phased out during the late 50's and finally set aside in 1965 in favor of the MPAA rating system that is still in use to today. It also happened to completely overlap with The Golden Age of Hollywood.

The Pre-Code Era of Hollywood cinema stretched from around 1928 to 1933, and the contrast between films made before and after the Hays Code was enacted shows the impact censorship had on American cinema. Films like Howard Hawks' Scarface (1932) were far more brazen and upfront about Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!, lacking the Do Not Do This Cool Thing tacked-on correctives seen in films like Angels with Dirty Faces (though even during this era, with Hawks' film, the studio added scenes and changed the title to Scarface: The Shame of the Nation to appease local censorship boards). The landscape was also less politically correct, as actors and actresses played all kinds of roles. Lots of pre-Code films have a surprisingly feminist slant; working women are even regarded with sympathy and affection. William A. Wellman's Heroes for Sale (1933) shows a Shell-Shocked Veteran returning from World War I falling into morphine addiction. Directors such as Josef von Sternberg worked with Marlene Dietrich to create provocative explorations of sexuality and power. 1930's even featured the first lesbian kiss in sound cinema.

During the later years of The Silent Age of Hollywood and the Rise of the Talkies, Hollywood became inundated with public complaints about the perceived lewd content of films. Scandals centered around big stars (most infamously Fatty Arbuckle) and the ensuing media frenzy made vocal sections of the public call for the government to rein in Hollywood. As luck would have it, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1915 that films did not qualify for First Amendment protection. Congress began to consider creating a national censorship board akin to the ones found in several states both before and after the Mutual Decision but nothing came of it.

To stop the government from censoring or banning films, Hollywood decided to do the deed themselves with the Hays Code, a set of production directives voluntarily adopted by all the major studios that would ostensibly prove to Congress (and the public) that Hollywood had cleaned up its act. Will H. Hays, a former Postmaster General under Warren G. Harding, did not create the Code, but he was the first head of the office of its enforcement, so his name became more-or-less permanently attached to it. Amongst filmmakers, Joseph Breen was the main man behind censorship from 1933 to 1953 who strictly enforced the Code, which was also known as the Breen Code for this reason. The Code placed a number of restrictions on all films produced, distributed, or exhibited by the members of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), the organization today known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The Hays Code restrictions were as follows:

Crime and immorality could never be portrayed in a positive light. If someone performed an immoral act, they had to be punished on screen, resulting in numerous cases of Adaptational Karma.

This forced a change to the ending of The Bad Seed. In the novel and stage play, Christine gives an overdose of sleeping pills to her dangerous sociopathic daughter Rhoda, and Christine shoots herself, but Rhoda survives, with the implication she will kill again (especially now that her mother, the only person aware of her true nature, is gone). The film version has Christine survive her suicide attempt, whereas Rhoda dies in a contrived and implausible Karmic Death (she goes to the lake to find the penmanship medal for which she killed a boy, and a tree is struck by lightning and falls on her).

The Hays Office made the ending of The Big Sleep more violent and decisive than the one originally planned.

The Reveal in suffered as a result of this rule. Originally, the cruel and faithless Rebecca is murdered by her husband Maxim, but in Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 film version, her death is accidental and Maxim covers it up because he feels nobody will believe his innocence.

This ruling came into conflict with It's a Wonderful Life wherein the original ending would have had Mr. Potter die of a heart attack upon being confronted by Clarence and told he will go to Hell when he dies. Another would have had him suffer a heart attack as he counted his ill-gotten money. Both scenes were deemed too macabre and as a result Potter gets away with his deeds and stealing the money Uncle Billy was supposed to deliver to the state bank examiner.

This rule also disallowed morally derelict characters being Driven to Suicide, which changed the originally planned ending of and the circumstances of Billy's death in .

In the 1935 film adaptation of David Copperfield, when the thief who robs young David of his money takes off in his cart, the authorities are shown chasing after him, something not present in the original novel and very obviously added to comply with the code.

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad portrayed Toad as being framed for theft, whereas in the book (and all future adaptations), he actually does steal the motorcar.

In This Our Life radically changed the ending of the novel in which the racist politics of the time allow Parry to go to jail because it's Stanley's word against his. The film now has Parry being found innocent and Stanley perishes in a fiery car crash. This severely diluted the story's statements on racial bias.

The "Rise and Fall" Gangster Arc becoming a mainstay of gangster films is widely considered a byproduct of this restriction.

Films could only present "correct standards of life" (for the times) unless the plot called for something else.

One strange repercussion of this rule: some directors avoided taking on films that centered on poverty, as it could have conflicted with the Code.

The 1940 Pride and Prejudice had changed Lady Catherine de Bourgh's opposition of Elizabeth marrying Mr. Darcy into a test of wits to prove her worth, which takes away Lady Catherine de Bourgh's antagonistic role from the story.

The law had to be respected and upheld.

Nudity and overt portrayals and references to sexual behavior (even between consenting adults) could not be shown.

Under this rule, the aftermath of sexual activity-pregnancy and the resulting childbirth-weren't allowed. In Gone with the Wind, when Melanie Hamilton Wilkes is giving birth, she and Scarlett and Prissy are literally shown only as shadows on a wall because of this rule.

The ban on anything that could be construed as sexual is what pretty much killed the cartoons. It also made Mae West a star, as her films made good use of her innuendo-laden humor.

Red Hot Riding Hood pushed the limits of what was allowed for fanservice on the silver screen. A lot of the sexually-charged wild takes were removed from prints for general audiences, but were reinstated in copies made for American soldiers fighting overseas during World War II.

The Walter Lantz shorts "Abou Ben Boogie" and "The Greatest Man In Siam" also got away with a surprising amount of fanservice, although this eventually kept them banned from TV airings in later years.

The word "virgin" was banned for this reason, and it was Bowdlerised out of the film versions of and The Rose Tattoo. It was mostly because of the usage of that word that led to The Moon is Blue being released without Hays Code approval.

Although depicting men and women in bed together wasn't strictly forbidden-it was in the "be careful" section, rather than the "don't" section-Sleeping Single became a universal trope thanks to this rule, and it remained such until the 1960s.

It was necessary in all romantic scenes for a woman to have at least one foot on the floor, to prevent love scenes in bed. This led to Foot Popping becoming popular.

The Hays Office had many issues with Casablanca, most of them related to sexual content. In the unproduced play which the film was based on, the ending featured Lois (renamed Ilsa in the film) sleeping with Rick for the letters of transit. The Hays Code put an end to that. Rick and Ilsa's affair in Paris was only allowed because she believed her husband was dead at the time, and even with that the censors tried to quash any hint that they might have slept together while in Paris. In keeping with this, they rejected the writer's preferred ending, which would have had Ilsa choosing to stay with Rick, and insisted that the film end with Ilse staying with her husband. The Hays Office also objected to Captain Renault's use of the Scarpia Ultimatum, only allowing it after it was toned down so that it's only implied.

Christian faith and Christian clergy could never be depicted in a mocking manner.

This rule almost got the Censored Eleven short Clean Pastures banned in the time it was released, as it showed a burlesque of religion with black people depicted as angels going to Heaven (not to mention glorifying gambling and jazz in the same mention as Heaven, both of which were considered taboo back then).

This rule also led to characters who had previously been depicted as less than exemplary members of the clergy getting new careers in secular fields. Four notable examples:

Drug use, including alcohol consumption, could not be shown unless the plot called for it.
Under the first version of the Code, drug use was allowed only if the story was a cautionary tale against drug abuse, or if the druggie got what they deserved for doing it in the first place (this was why Reefer Madness managed to be released, even if the message that drugs are bad was artificial and tacked-on). Illegal narcotics were strictly prohibited, no matter what the circumstances.

All detailed (that is, imitable) depiction of crime had to be removed. This included lockpicking, safe-cracking, or the mixing of chemicals to make explosives.

Films could not use revenge as a theme or premise in stories set during modern times, since it could be seen as glorifying violence (specifically murder).
The Code made exceptions for historical settings-particularly where there was no law to punish the offender-so Westerns became the only movies allowed to have revenge as a theme or premise.

Topics considered "perverse" could not be discussed or depicted in any way. Such topics included-but were not limited to- homosexuality, miscegenation (interracial relationships), bestiality, and venereal diseases.

Studios used the explicitly racist ban on depicting miscegenation to justify the exclusion of non-white actors from employment: they reasoned that the Code would be breached if either actor or character was of a differing race. Anna May Wong, the leading Chinese-American actress of the time, was rejected as the female lead in The Good Earth because the male lead was white actor Paul Muni. In fact, Anna May Wong only made one film in which she got to kiss her white co-star (, which was made in the UK). Ironically, this was done despite the fact that the Code actually advocated for the "inherent dignity of foreign peoples" and insisted that their cultures not be undeservedly slurred – of course, this didn't really help American non-whites (especially not the Japanese during World War II).

The bestiality ban was part of the reason for changes to Red Hot Riding Hood's original ending, which showed the Wolf forced into marriage by the Grandma, then years later taking his half-human, half-lupine children to the nightclub to see Red perform. (The original ending, much like the "erection takes", existed on a Director's Cut that was sent to overseas soldiers.)

The decision to kill off half-Native American Pearl in Duel in the Sun was based on this rule. In the book, Pearl lives and marries the good brother, Jesse.

Imitation of Life (1934) struggled to get approved because it featured a biracial character who tried to pass for white, and was played by an actual mixed-race actress. It was ultimately approved after two weeks of shooting - although a scene in which a black man nearly gets lynched for flirting with a white woman was ordered cut from the script.

From Here to Eternity cut all references to homosexuality (the soldiers fraternise with male prostitutes in the book) and Karen's infertility from gonorrhea (which is now caused by a bad miscarriage). Hilariously the brothel is turned into a gentleman's club with the whores being called "hostesses" - but the characters still act like they are.

Tea and Sympathy deals with a character being Mistaken for Gay, but the film eliminates a gay teacher who is fired for being seen sunbathing with Tom on the beach (which starts the whole thing off). Tom instead just gets mocked for being found sewing.

These Three, the 1936 adaptation of lesbian-themed play The Children's Hour, changes the central conflict to an accusation of heterosexual infidelity, rather than a lesbian relationship.

The sanctity of marriage had to be upheld.

The Code is often credited as creating the Comedy of Remarriage genre, as an act of infidelity wouldn't actually count as infidelity if the leads were (temporarily) divorced, but that genre already existed pre-Code, so the credit is unwarranted.

Tea and Sympathy again, where the censors insisted on a Framing Device being tacked on - where a letter from Laura preaches about how her affair with Tom was wrong and she was a scarlet woman.

Blasphemy-including using the name of God as an expletive or exclamation-was not allowed. Using the word "God" was allowed, but only if used in a reverent tone or meaning. In addition, profanity of any kind was prohibited.

These rules led to supposedly tough-and-gritty protagonists using mixtures of Unusual Euphemism and Gosh Dang It to Heck!. Any word stronger than "damn" was completely disallowed, and any usage of profanity was likely to result in a hefty fine. Rhett Butler's famous line in Gone with the Wind was considered a big deal back then, because of this rule; the production did face a fine, but more than made up for it at the box office.

During the dying years of the Code, the famous line in Planet of the Apes (1968), "God damn you all to Hell!" was presented to the censors as not being blasphemous, because Taylor was literally calling on God to damn humanity to Hell for what they had done (destroying themselves in nuclear warfare). It managed to get by, though as mentioned, the Code was already too weak by then to do anything about it.

The United States flag was to be treated with utmost respect. Other flags, not so much.

Any films that compiled with the Code, the Hays Office would give the film their seal of approval and allowed to present to theaters. If not, they would not be shown and they had to pay a hefty fine of $25,000. An interesting footnote in all of this is that there was a heavy Catholic influence in the Code, especially when it came to portrayals of clergy and the belief that movies shouldn't "lower the moral standards" of audiences. Breen was a prominent but strict Catholic moralist layman, and the initial text of the Production Code was co-authored by a priest and a layman. This meant that the Code reflected a very specific moral perspective that maybe didn't reflect what the majority of Americans thought (though it wasn't intended to do that in the first place). An oft-repeated joke is that the Code amounted to Catholics censoring movies made by the Jewish for Protestant audiences.

The rules could be slightly skirted in film adaptations; for example, they managed to keep the famous line "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn" in Gone with the Wind because the (mild) swearing was in the original novel. This was especially true for faithful adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays, which were likely considered too artistically significant to censor (, for instance, was filmed over a dozen times despite its main theme of revenge being something normally prohibited by the Office).

Since the Code did not apply to the stage, aspiring screenwriters could (and did) write plays about subjects too sexy or politically controversial for Hollywood. In New York (at least), stage censorship-though not unheard of-was far less of a threat than it had been in the 1920s (when Mae West was jailed and the Wales Padlock Act was passed), and comedies quite freely made fun of the movie censors. One particular pin-up image was created specifically to see if someone could break every single Code provision in a single still.

Additioanlly, Christian organizations like the Catholic Legion of Decency and the Protestant Film Office (another Christian group involved in shaping content) apparently made a pretty big difference, offering a buffer between Hollywood and the culture at large.

But even in the period of the worst censorship, several films and directors managed to subvert it. The Preston Sturges comedy The Miracle of Morgan's Creek is a case in point; the film stars Betty Hutton as a good-time girl who gets impregnated by a GI Soldier and gives birth to six children. Martin Scorsese, in his documentary on American movies of the same period, noted that some filmmakers used cinematic means and subtlety to suggest complex themes (and even subvert censorship mandates). This always involved the usage of subtext, Meaningful Background Event, and Stylistic Suck in the Happy Ending, which often made such endings very unconvincing to audiences and helped them sense the subtext lying just underneath. Scorsese cites films like Johnny Guitar, which was a major Take That! to the Witch Hunt and the Red Scare, and directors like Samuel Fuller and Douglas Sirk, who kept pushing the boundaries of content. Fuller's The Steel Helmet, made in 1950, was the first film that addressed the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War, and he continued to make anti-racist films throughout that decade. His Film Noir, Pickup on South Street, provoked the ire of J. Edgar Hoover himself - but Fuller had the friendship of 20th Century-Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck, who backed him through all this. Douglas Sirk's Imitation Of Life, made in 1959, was the most successful Universal film until Airport, and it portrayed the reality of race relations in pre-Civil Rights era with a stark eye. Elia Kazan, on the other hand, pushed the boundaries of sexuality with films like , A Face in the Crowd, and Splendor in the Grass.

The mere fact that censorship had to be so rigorously enforced in the first place stands as a testament to how (and how often) directors and screenwriters tried to resist it. Even a classic like Rebel Without a Cause featured a barely-concealed gay character who was treated sympathetically. ( Bury Your Gays is enforced, but it's clearly treated as a tragedy.) Genre films tended to fall Beneath Suspicion, so directors of comedies, Film Noir, The Western, and Sci-Fi films often had a freer hand than directors who made Oscar Bait films, the Epic Movie, or The Musical. The B-Movie side of things wasn't taken seriously by Moral Guardians; as a result, films like The Big Combo, Detour, Touch of Evil, Murder by Contract, and The Crimson Kimono had more progressive and interesting content than the A-movies they played with on a double bill.

In 1945, Hays retired as president of the MPAA and Eric Johnson was elected to replace him, keeping it until his death from a stroke in 1963. During his time as MPAA president, Johnson quietly "liberalized" the Code and reduced restrictions. It is believed that Johnson started to consider replacing the Code with a ratings system, in theory based on the age-appropriateness of the film. However, Johnson didn't follow through on this and mainly left censorship to the Hays Office, only stepping in and making decisions when it was the last resort.

In 1948, the Supreme Court neutered the MPAA's ability to enforce the Code over all films shown in the US. The "Paramount Decision" (read more about that in Fall of the Studio System), among many other things including the rise of television, ended the ability of the "Big 5" (MGM, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and RKO; as well as Universal, Columbia, and United Artists to an extent) to own the entirety of movie production, distribution, and exhibition. The major studios sold their theater chains, which meant they pretty much lost all say in what could be shown in those theaters. This opened a flood door to independent filmmakers who released films that don't apply by the Code. However, the new theater owners were no more eager to incur the wrath of the Hays Office than the Big Five had been, though. In 1953, Breen retired as head of the Hays Office and was replaced by Geoffrey Shurlock, who was far more lenient than Breen was and allowed more things to slip under the radar of the Censorship Board.

But the Supreme Court itself began to undercut the purpose of the Code (to prevent federal government censorship of the film industry) starting in 1952. The Italian film The Miracle by Roberto Rossellini featured controversial use of religious imagery; its American release provoked a severe outcry. Film distributor Joseph Burstyn sued to have the short film's license reinstated in New York, and the Supreme Court did just that in what is now known as the "Miracle Decision", which helped give film First Amendment protections as an artistic medium, thus further reducing the Code's authority in Hollywood. In the late 1950s and the 1960s, a wave of films from Europe (particularly British films like , the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the movies, the output of Hammer Film Productions, and the Beatles films A Hard Day's Night and , The French New Wave from masters such as François Truffaut, and Italian films such as Bicycle Thieves and the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone), none of which were subject to the Code, tackled gritty topics that American studios couldn't touch because of the Code. American theaters could show these films without the prior approval of either the MPAA or the Hays Office thanks to the Paramount Decision. While Johnson and Shurlock didn't really care, their subordinates tried to demand the censorship of those films. However, their efforts backfired resulting in the Code ending up looking even more ridiculous and more like a suggestion than the standard. Around this time, domestic filmmakers, such as Sirk, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, John Cassavetes, and Stanley Kubrick, mounted serious challenges to the Code in the late 1950's. The Pawnbroker featured an artistically-essential topless scene and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? featured equally-essential harsh language. Against the considerable critical acclaim of these films and overwhelming public sentiment, the Hays Office tried to bend-those films were considered "special exceptions"-but this opened the door for every daring filmmaker of the day to ask for similar consideration. This change of criteria also encouraged executives of the major film companies to stop cooperating with the Code in the late 50's and into the 60's when it became clear that the public's opinion of the Code had changed. It was one thing for the Code's censors to have objections about specific content that fell into agreed-upon criteria, but it was a whole other thing for those censors to act as de facto film critics who could arbitrarily determine which films were of good enough quality to make them "exceptions". Around the late 50s as well, the Catholic Church, who had been the main reason it was created, pulled back from its enforcement of the Code in its parishes because of this and started using an unoffical ratings system. Then in 1965, the Supreme Court essentially ended the MPAA's ability to even attempt censorship (much less banning) over any film with the Freedman v Maryland decision. The Hays Office saw the writing on the wall and began to close down.

In 1966, as a final act of direct defiance against the Hays Office, MGM released the British-produced film Blowup, which failed to gain their seal of approval prior due to its relatively explicit erotic content. But because of the Paramount Decision and Freedman v Maryland, nothing could stop MGM from distributing the critically-hailed film, which became a smash hit. Soon after, the Hays Office, alongside the Protestant Film Office, finally closed its doors because of both Freedman v Maryland as well as the fact that their denominational funding was pulled and the Christian groups connected to the effort reportedly didn't care to continue it. Also in 1966, Jack Valenti ( and his cheeks), who previously served as an aid to President Lyndon B. Johnson (unrelated to previous MPAA president Eric Johnson), was elected as head of the MPAA with President Johnson's approval and the urging of Universal Studios chief Lew Wasserman, with the promise to move from the Code to a ratings system, so that filmmakers could tell their stories the way that they wanted without fear of censorship while also informing parents of the content within said films. The MPAA Film Rating System was finally enacted in 1968, and though it has altered slightly over the years, it is still in use to this day. The fall of the Hays Code rid Hollywood of the last relic of Golden Age and marked the beginning of the "New Hollywood" era of the late '60s and the '70s. Unfortunately, the transition from the Code to the rating system (1965-1968) proved awkward with several ugly incidents occurring such as kids watching Night of the Living Dead (1968) (the first modern adult horror film), thinking it was a harmless zombie film, and a review by film critic Roger Ebert's is as much about how the kids were becoming genuinely traumatized seeing a high-intensity story definitely not made for them.

In the years since its creation, the MPAA rating system has itself been criticized by many people-notably Ebert and the filmmakers of This Film is Not Yet Rated -for doling higher ratings based on depictions of sex, gay people, or other controversial topics (and obscenity, to a certain extent) than depictions of violence. Other complaints note the lack of transparency about exactly why certain films get the ratings they do (for example, several films listed with "nothing offensive" as the whole MPAA content description have received PG ratings). Additionally, Movieguide founder and media critic Dr. Ted Baehr calls the MPAA rating system "vulnerable", "flawed", and "corrupt", claiming it misrates films and is "rigged" in favor of the big studios and filmmakers.

Stephen Colbert's book I Am America (And So Can You!) contains a parody "excerpt" from the Code, including rules such as "Characters may not walk and chew gum at the same time," "If a train is shown entering a tunnel, the tunnel shall not be portrayed as enjoying it," "Characters may not discuss the high suicide rate among dentists in a manner that implies they have it coming," and "For Christ's sake, somebody put a bra on Jean Harlow". The excerpt also deliberately omits rule #666, and also #669 for good measure.

Another example of mocking the Hays Code goes all the way back to 1942. In "A Tale of Two Kitties", a classic Looney Tunes cartoon directed by Bob Clampett, the cats Babitt and Catstello plot to devour the ever-prepared Tweety Bird. At one point, Catstello is on a ladder to Tweety's nest and struggling with his fear of heights, while from the ground, Babitt starts pushing his buttons by yelling, "Give me the Bird! Give me the Bird!"-to which Catstello turns to the audience to say, "If the Hays Office would only let me, I'd give 'im the boid, all right". The really fun thing here is that animated shorts like this showed many different examples of breaking the Code-excessive violence ( though completely bloodless, of course) and (what was then) harsh language-simply because they were animated in ways that took everything to a level of pure parody. Rules were subverted, but in as overt a way as possible. (A non-animation example of this sort of Hays Code subversion would be The Three Stooges shorts, which were able to be the first to satirize Adolf Hitler in Hollywood.)

The full text of the code can be found here . The Broadway musical A Day in Hollywood/A Night In The Ukraine takes the text of Production Code and has the cast dance to it .

Critic Michael Medved, one of the very few film critics who support Moral Guardians in many cases and who is more recently a right-wing Talk Radio host, makes the argument in at least partial support of the Code: "While many of the specific rules in the old Production Code look thoroughly ludicrous by today's standards, it is instructive to recall that Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, John Ford and Billy Wilder, George Cukor and Frank Capra and Orson Welles all somehow managed to create their masterpieces under its auspices." He was rebuked with the counter-argument that films by these directors were made in spite of the Code, and Executive Meddling is responsible for flaws in even the greatest films of this time, especially in the case of Welles. Additionally, Baehr has voiced his support for the Code and, using Movieguide and its sister site The Christian Film and Television Comission, has attempted several petitions for Hollywood to abandon the rating system and institute a "standards based Entertainment Code of Moral Decency" with a slightly updated version of the Code called "The Motion Picture and Television Production Code of Conduct and Moral Decency" or at the very least to re-rate certain films (such as re-rating Django Unchained from R to NC-17). Medved and Baehr also argue that after the demise of the Code, motion picture attendance fell-from ~44 million per week in 1965 (when the Code finally stopped being used) to ~19 million per week in 1969-and that attendance has never reached the levels of the post-TV, pre-ratings age since in absolute numbers (since 2000, for example, attendance in the US & Canada has fluctuated between 25–28 million tickets sold per week) with Baehr additionally claiming that profanity, sex, violence, nudity, and drug use will result in lower box office results for films that have them compared to films that don't have them. Others note that this has little to do with the Code in any real sense. Hollywood had been paranoid about the drop in movie attendance since the loss of their distribution arm, and throughout The '50s they countered television with a bunch of gimmicky movie exhibitions, and then expensive roadshow releases which in The '60s became unprofitable thanks to the failures of Cleopatra and Hello, Dolly!. There are additional factors that have nothing to do with the importance of censorship. note It's also pointed out that, although the attendance of motion pictures did drop significantly, the movie industry still survived and even prospered. Indeed, the 50 highest grossing movies of all time were all made years after the collapse of the Code.

The biggest point missing is that the Hays Code was never erected to increase movie attendance and box office results; it was erected out of fear of local organizations interrupting or halting distribution in a number of states and out of fear of national censorship. These external tensions happened because of the movie business's great popularity and expansion. The fact that other popular media such as television, video games and comic books have their own censorship systems, and that TV especially in the The New '10s has broken boundaries in nudity and violence and still maintained its mass viewership, proves that moral censorship has little or no relation to viewership as opposed to technology and accessibility.

Compare this with The Comics Code, which enforced similar restrictions on the Comic Book medium.

Alternative Title(s): Hays Morality Code, Hays Production Code, Hays Code

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The Hays Code / Useful Notes - TV Tropes

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The Hays Code was the informal name for The Motion Picture Production Code, adopted in 1930 but not seriously enforced until 1934. The Code was a set of rules governing American filmmaking that shaped-and in many ways stifled-American ...

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Small-time crook Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) tries to steal a car and winds up with its owner's daughter, dissatisfied small-town girl Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway). Their crimes quickly spiral from petty theft to bank robbery, but tensions between the couple and the other members of their gang--hapless driver C.W. (Michael J. Pollard), Clyde's suave older brother Buck (Gene Hackman) and Buck's flibbertigibbet wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons) --could destroy them all.

Initial release: 13 August 1967 (USA)

Director: Arthur Penn

Producer: Warren Beatty

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Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), who owns a nightclub in Casablanca, discovers his old flame Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) is in town with her husband, Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Laszlo is a famed rebel, and with Germans on his tail, Ilsa knows Rick can help them get out of the country.
Date Produced: 1942

Release date: 3 July 1992 (United Kingdom)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Featured song: As Time Goes By

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Certain filmmakers are know as auteurs because their artistic sensibilities are so apparent on the screen. But what is an auteur?

Who decides which directors become one?

What are the criteria?

Why is it only for directors?

Where did this whole auteur theory come from?

And why does any of this matter?

Let's answer that last question first. Learning from the past, and the classics, is one of the very best ways to master visual storytelling. Don't believe us? Just ask Steven Spielberg:

Wow. I wish Steven Speilberg would pay me 10 bucks to watch Red River.

So as you can see old films can teach us a lot. Auteur theory and questions about it are pretty core to understand some of the greatest older movies, and the people who made them.

All this gets covered pretty heavily in film school. But here at No Film School we'll save you some tuition money and give you a comprehensive understanding of auteur theory for free.

Let's start at the top.

What is An Auteur?

The auteur definition is author. The word is french for author. Which gives you an idea about where auteur theory comes from.

The auteur meaning when it comes to film and cinema is a specific kind of director who has such a strong signature sensibility that you know immediately who's film it is.

The director's fingerprints are on everything.

Filmmaker IQ released a video hosted by John P. Hess to explain the auteur theory, where it came from, how it affected the cinematic culture, and why it's still important today.

It might seem like a silly thing to talk about -- "Just go out and make movies and stop arguing about who's responsible for what," but this topic can still ruffle plenty of feathers. In fact, one of the most explosive arguments I ever witnessed in college was over whether the director really is the "author" of a film, or if the other artists (DPs, writers, editors, etc.) are equally responsible for its success.

And all that is to ignore that ACTUAL author of a film...

Isn't A Screenwriter The Auteur By Definition?

Yes and no.

I mean, sure. The screenwriter, or screenwriter(s) as is often the case in Hollywood, is the author of the movie.

Consider this: Casablanca, often considered one of the top three movies ever made, had 5 credited writers. At least one more was uncredited.

So it's a bit hard to call those named and unnamed folks the authors, when we're looking for someone to give credit to.

Studios used to have a bigger influence on what a movie was. Producers and moguls like Irving Thalberg, had their hands in every element of the process.

Thalberg, who barely is credited on any movie at all, practically built what a movie is. He helped forge model that we still use to this very day.

He wasn't even a producer. He was the whiz kid head of production at MGM, back when MGM had "more stars then there were in the sky." Thalberg famously said about his lack of credits "a credit you give yourself is not worth getting."

He was the prime mover behind the biggest hits of the early 1930's, and he groomed the biggest stars. He was a kind of "auteur."

Eventually the idea of the studio and studio mogul defining the movie drifted away.

So who was the one steering the ship? The person that all the other collaborator's efforts were synthesized through?

Auteur Directors

Yep, you knew we were headed here eventually.

The auteur is the director. That's what people are talking about when they define auteur.

But wait... not ever director is an auteur. They have to fit into a special box as outlined by the auteur theory.

Over time some of the original details on auteur theory have been set aside or forgotten. But we're going to get back to the very original concept so you know the whole picture behind the auteur theory.

Auteur Theory Origins

Auteur theory started with a French publication in 1954 of Cahiers Du Cinema. Of course, "cahiers" definition in English is "book".

It all started when groundbreaking director to be Francious Truffaut railed against the current state of French cinema, and pointed to the work of certain American directors as being a model for better work. And yes, Truffaut also starred in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

In his writing, he zeroed in on the movies of Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks.

Why?

Because these directors signature qualities came through in every movie they made. Hawks arguably more than Hitchcock.

What made Hawks such a perfect auteur definition?

Well, he made every kind of movie. When you think about Hitchcock, he made a particular kind of movie. You know a Hitchcock movie from the moment it begins, and from almost any moment even out of context. But aren't they all suspenseful thrillers?

Hawks, on the other hand, slipped between genre with ease. Let's go down the list of Howard Hawks movies and you'll see quickly what makes him king of auteur filmmakers.

Scarface (1932) is one of the earliest and most influential gangster movies. Yes, it's the original for THAT Scarface.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) is the quintessential screwball comedy, which would later morph into the romantic comedy, starring Cary Grant and resurrecting the career of Katherine Hepburn.

A year later he made Only Angels Have Wings (1939) a classic adventure movie about flying aces. Then His Girl Friday, a fast talking newsroom comedy. Both also starring Grant.

Sergeant York, a war movie and true story.

The Big Sleep, one of the great detective film noirs starring Bogart.

Red River, a John Wayne western.

In the 50's he'd made a few Marilyn Monroe vehicles.

Hawks made movies in every genre, with every major star and icon spanning Hollywoods golden era. And yet they were all easily identifiable as Howard Hawks movies.

When you stop and consider all that, it's pretty crazy. Consider how much POWER a star had back then over their projects, or a studio. Yet this director managed to make all those movies his own.

That's where auteur theory really comes from. It was a rallying cry for directors as artists to say "we can influence what these movies are."

We can make this an artistic expression.

And so they did.

Auteur Meaning By The Books

We'd be remiss if we didn't get into a little more granular detail on this.

Andrew Sarris provided the official definition auteur definition:

"A Filmmaker whos individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film its personal and unique stamp."

Sarris also gave us some rules.

"A great director has to at least be a good director." Wrote Sarris. Which means you can't be considered an auteur if you directed Manos The Hands Of Fate. You have to have all the basic competency, as he called it, down.

Sarris added, "Over a group of films a director must exhibit certain recurrent characteristics of style which serve as his signature."

Okay, all this means is that you need to know that it's the directors movie by stylistic choices. Is JJ Abrams an auteur because of his use of lens flares?

*RECORD SCRATCH*

Nope, but that's for other reasons we'll get to later.

Last rule from Andrew Sarris?

"Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a directors personality and the material."

Ok whatever you say, Andy.

What we think Sarris is after here is the idea that the director really must come through in his or her work. The way to determine this would be the challenges faced in the process. If the director put their own personality on the screen even if it wasn't the right thing for the movie.

Which maybe even hurst the movie. So what are we even celebrating anymore?

Yeah, auteur theory gets weird and complicated. And it leaves us in a strange place. We don't always really know what is from the director and what is from say the cinematographer, or a writer, or a producer. Or a comment card from a test screening.

Film is collaborative.

But we are all still left to ponder and argue about...

Which Filmmakers Are Considered Auteur Directors?

On guiding principle is that a TRUE auteur in the strictest sense of the auteur definition would be a director who is not also a writer on the project.

This is a weird one and it takes a lot of the greatest talents out of the conversation. Many people would put Billy Wilder, or Quentin Tarantino atop a list of auteur directors.

But the problem is we know those directors have a profound influence over every element of their movies because they wrote AND directed them. And in many instances also produced them!

Billy Wilder managed to ace every genre just like Hawks. So should he be any less celebrated?

The answer is probably that we shouldn't be too strict about how we use the auteur theory definition, or who we celebrate and why. After all, the original goal of the thing was to celebrate great moving making, and movie making artists.

We should celebrate and honor the contribution of people who become invisible to the process just as much, if not more in some cases, than those who get all the credit. Fair or not.

Auteur Theory Fallout

Understandably some people don't like the idea of auteur theory, chief among them for a time was critic Pauline Kael. She and Sarris went at it for some time over the value of the auteur theory.

The end result?

Probably doesn't matter because it's of course inconclusive. A lot of young filmmakers came up around this conversation: Lucas, Speilberg, Scorsese, and Coppola to name a few. This debate had a big influence on them, and they had a big influence on how we make movies now.

Auteur theory did sort of lead to an era of the director, which resulted in some crashing and burning in the late 1970's when directors like Michael Cimino and Peter Bogdanovich were perhaps given too much control.

The reality is directors like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Howard Hawks were somewhat blue collar.

They were just trying to tell good stories efficiently. They weren't trying to be artists who shaped the culture. In every interview with them, you can tell as much.

Ford almost comes off as insulted that anyone would waste time asking such questions about movie making.

Maybe their focus on simply doing a good job and trying to entertain people is what made them artists in the first place. It's what helped them elevate the craft.

Wrapping Up Auteur Theory

Without wanting to start WWIII right here in an article on an indie filmmaking website, I'll just say that of course directors have an incredible influence in their films, and of course they couldn't do it all on their own.

Of course a director is an artist, and of course the writers, cinematographers, and editors are too.

Perhaps at the end of the day, it's not directors, necessarily, that make great movies, but artists. That's the spirit of the auteur theory -- it's not to put a crown on a hierarchical figure, but to celebrate and honor those who love, respect, and create movies.

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What is an Auteur? A Complete Guide To Auteur Theory And Directors

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Certain filmmakers are know as auteurs because their artistic sensibilities are so apparent on the screen. But what is an auteur? Who decides which directors become one? What are the criteria? Why is it only for directors? Where did this whole auteur theory come from? And why does any of this matter?