John Hess is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington. 

La politique des auteurs was a critical approach to the movies developed by Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and others in the Cahiers du Cinema and Arts between 1954 and 1958. La politique des auteurs revolutionised film criticism by 

establishing the director as the film artist, by concentrating our attention on the art of direction and on visual methods of narration, and by drawing our attention to the metaphysical aspects* of film form. 

* Metaphysics: The study of the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.


"Truffaut and his friends, therefore, placed great importance on the artist (the director) himself; they tried to ascertain the intentions of the director, to find out what the director wanted to do and then compared his intentions with his product. The study of directors and the art of direction was the goal of auteur criticism in France. It was most fruitful to study the art of direction in the films of the best directors, in the films of the true film artists. Thus the auteur critics studied the films of those directors who expressed in cinematic ways, particularly in the texture of their mise en scene, their personal world view. "

"Therefore they turned to the work of directors such as Hitchcock where, as Truffaut has said, "a film-maker is bound to find the answer to many of his own problems, including the most fundamental question of all: how to express oneself by purely visual means. "

"The auteur critics' most important concept was mise en scene. This term could encompass the total composition of the film? scenario, camera angles, lighting, editing, narrative structure, and acting. It referred to all the material things which the director used to create the film and through which he expressed himself. "