Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film
Following World War II, a new generation of critics
challenged the definition of film artistry posited by early
theorists and historians, embracing cinematic realism and
expanding the orthodox canon. Such writers as Andre´
Bazin (1918–1958) and Roger Leenhardt (1903–1985)
located the essence of cinema in its capacity to record,
preferring an aesthetic that respected the specificity, continuity, and ambiguity of the world in front of the
camera rather than one that transformed it. Where earlier
critics attempted to define cinema as a unique art form,
Bazin described it as an impure art, acknowledging its
links with theater and literature. Bazin celebrated the
cinema of the 1930s and 1940s, elevated the reputation
of commercial Hollywood films, and together with
Alexandre Astruc (b. 1923), laid the foundation for the
rise of auteurism. Bazin’s influence canonized La Re `gle du
jeu (The Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir, 1939) and Ladri
di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, Vittorio De Sica, 1948),
while his praise for Citizen Kane (1941)—as well as the
self-promotion of director Orson Welles (1915–1985)
and cinematographer Gregg Toland (1904–1948)—
established the film’s reputation as one of cinema’s greatest achievements. Citizen Kane has subsequently topped
Sight and Sound’s critics poll of cinema’s top ten movies
every decade since 1962.
New outlets emerged in the postwar years for the
promotion and exhibition of cinema, reinforcing the
reputations of some directors while introducing others
to critical tastemakers. Film publications and cine´clubs
expanded, while the Venice Film Festival was revived in
1946 and international festivals began in Berlin,
Germany; Cannes, France; Karlovy Vary, Czech
Republic; and Locarno, Switzerland. Screenings at
Venice of Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) and Ugetsu
monogatari (Tales of Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
entranced Western critics and initiated the entry of
Japanese films into the established canon.
The rise of auteurism in France, Britain, and the
United States in the 1950s and 1960s hastened the comparative evaluation of films and filmmakers at the same
time as a growing number of young people embraced
international film culture. Proponents of the auteur policy argued that although cinema is a collaborative
medium, its most significant works are the expression
of the director, in whose films appear original thematic
and stylistic consistencies that transcend production circumstances and assigned screenplays. Auteur critics utilized its principles to attack mainstream critics and
celebrate the work of previously unheralded filmmakers.
As auteurism became the dominant critical approach to
cinema in the 1960s, film journals, cine´-clubs, and university film societies multiplied, while film studies programs were widely instituted across American college
campuses. Steeped in auteurist principles from their
youth, some members of this generation would later
carry auteur principles into mainstream film criticism,
while others eventually championed filmmaking practices
that challenged classical conventions.
The missionary zeal of many auteur devotees invariably led to new canon formation. The young writers at
Cahiers du cine ´ma formed the vanguard of auteur
criticism, elevating Max Ophu¨ls (1902–1957), Jacques
Tati (1909–1982), Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980), and
Howard Hawks (1896–1977) over the Tradition of
Quality directors favored by the contemporary French
press. The critics writing in Cahiers du cine ´ma reassessed the significant works of directors previously canonized,
rating Welles’s Mr. Arkadin (1955) higher than Citizen
Kane and Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
(1927) above The Last Laugh, while also embracing
Mizoguchi’s Saikaku ichidai onna (The Life of Oharu,
1952) and Tales of Ugetsu for their long-shot, long-take
aesthetic.
In the United States, Andrew Sarris (b. 1928) railed
against native critics who favored foreign, experimental,
and documentary films over commercial Hollywood productions. In The American Cinema (1968), he offered a
reassessment of American film history based on auteurist
principles, analyzing the work of over a hundred directors
and sorting them into hierarchical categories ranging
from ‘‘The Pantheon’’ to ‘‘Less Than Meets the Eye’’ to
‘‘Subjects for Further Research’’; the result was a personal
canon that served as both a model for critical assessment
and a lightning rod for debate. The values underlying
auteurism revolutionized the way critics conceived of
artistic significance, opening the door for more lowbudget, transgressive, and idiosyncratic directors to be
endorsed by the critical mainstream.