Auteur Theory - Criticism

Criticism

Starting in the 1960s, some film critics began criticising auteur theory's focus on the authorial role of the director. Pauline Kael and Sarris feuded in the pages of The New Yorker and various film magazines. One reason for the backlash is the collaborative aspect of shooting a film, and in the theory's privileging of the role of the director (whose name, at times, has become more important than the movie itself). In Kael's review of Citizen Kane, a classic film for the auteur model, she points out how the film made extensive use of the distinctive talents of co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and cinematographer Gregg Toland. But Kael's objections to the "auteur theory" were many and are best learned by reading her essay "Circles and Squares".

Notable screenwriters such as Ernest Lehman, Nicholas Kazan, Robert Riskin and William Goldman have publicly balked at the idea that directors are more authorial than screenwriters, while film historian Aljean Harmetz, referring to the creative input of producers and studio executives in classical Hollywood, argues that the auteur theory "collapses against the reality of the studio system".

The auteur theory was also challenged by the influence of New Criticism, a school of literary criticism. The New Critics argued that critics made an "intentional fallacy" when they tried to interpret works of art by speculating about what the author meant, based on the author's personality or life experiences. New Critics argued that information or speculation about an author's intention was secondary to the words on the page as the basis of the experience of reading literature.

In 2006, David Kipen coined the term Schreiber theory to refer to the theory of the screenwriter as the principal author of a film.