The New Hollywood era of the late 1960s and early 1970s has become one of the most romanticized periods in motion picture history, celebrated for its stylistic boldness, thematic complexity, and the unshackling of directorial ambition. The Limits of Auteurism aims to challenge many of these assumptions. Beginning with the commercial success of Easy Rider in 1969, and ending two years later with the critical and commercial failure of that film’s twin progeny, The Last Movie and The Hired Hand, Nicholas Godfrey surveys a key moment that defined the subsequent aesthetic parameters of American commercial art cinema. The book explores the role that contemporary critics played in determining how the movies of this period were understood and how, in turn, strategies of distribution influenced critical responses and dictated the conditions of entry into the rapidly codifying New Hollywood canon. Focusing on a small number of industrially significant films, this new history advances our understanding of this important moment of transition from Classical to contemporary modes of production.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (John-F.-Kennedy-Institut), language: English, abstract: In film studies, the term New Hollywood is used in non-conclusive and heterogeneous ways. The discourse does not make explicit what the real New was. However, there appears to be a general consensus as to the actual time frame in which a bigger change happened in Hollywood that stirred up the system – starting in 1967. Scholars have been trying to explain the proclaimed change of the Classical Hollywood Cinema from different perspectives, which, depending on author and release date, point out economical, production-related, societal, or creative-aesthetic revolutions as responsible factors. Coming from the film critic‘s angle towards New Hollywood, the most important factor in the process was the development and success of the American auteur. The auteur theory has been appointed as such by film critic Andrew Sarris, who based his assumptions mainly on the theoretical conclusions drawn by the writers of the French Cahiers du Cinema. Taking the auteur approach to explain aspects of the New Hollywood, some scholars pinpoint the era down to the years of 1967-1976. This national cinematography is hardly discussed consensually within its own historiographical discourse or the boundaries of text analysis. I want to specifically trace the role of the idea of an auteur cinema within the Hollywood industry during this change, and thereby further disentangle the complex relationship of commerce and authorship. My first chapter will therefore be employed with the theoretical background and the discourse around authorship in general, film in particular. Eventually this will lead to a clear idea about the specifics and limitations of the auteur theory discourse. The second chapter will then be occupied with the historical change of the Hollywood system in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, and will aim to define the contributing factors for this change within and outside the industry. In terms of terminology, a historiographical approach will determine the rather different meanings of New Hollywood and Hollywood Renaissance. Chapter three will tie up the loose ends of both previous chapters, striving to identify what kind of influence on film production the auteurs of New Hollywood had in terms of the reinvigorated success of the American film industry or if they were auteurs at all for that matter. What room is there in a system which is based on its own myths of star power etc. for the serious artistic vision of the individual?

Arguably a pioneer of the French New Wave (with Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, 1957) Louis Malle went on to enjoy an acclaimed yet provocative and versatile transatlantic career. This collection of original essays proposes to reassess his richly eclectic and boldly subversive oeuvre and redress the surprising critical neglect it has suffered over the years. It does so through a combination of transversal and monographic analyses that use a variety of critical lenses and theoretical tools in order to examine Malle’s documentaries as well as his fiction features (and, more importantly, the constant shuttling and uniquely persistent cross-pollination between those two cinematic approaches), illuminate the profound, lasting dialogue his films entertained with literature and theater, bring to the fore their sustained, albeit often oblique autobiographical thrust along with their scathing sociopolitical critique, and scrutinize the alternating use of stars and non-professional actors. In addition, the volume features an exclusive interview with the acclaimed playwright John Guare (a close friend and collaborator of Louis Malle’s who scripted Atlantic City) and is bookended by a foreword by Volker Schlöndorff and an afterword by Wes Anderson, two renowned filmmakers who articulate their admiration for, and the seminal influence of, their predecessor.

Once heralded and defined by the likes of François Truffaut and Andrew Sarris as a romantic figure of aesthetic individualism, the auteur is reinvestigated here through a novel approach. Bringing established as well as emergent figures of world art cinema to the fore, The Global Auteur shows how politics and philosophy are present in the works of these important filmmakers. They can be still seen leading a fight that their glorious predecessors seemed to have abandoned in the face of global capitalism and the market economy. Yet, as the contributors show, a new world calls for a new cinema, and thus for new auteurs. Covering a range of global auteurs such as Lars von Trier, Lav Diaz, Lee Chang-dong and Abderrahmane Sissako, The Global Auteur provides a much-needed reassessment of the film auteur for the global age.

The director's authorial role in filmmaking--the extent to which a film reflects his or her individual style and creative vision--has been much debated among film critics and scholars for decades. Drawing on generations of criticism, this study describes how the designation "auteur" has gone from stylistic criterion to product label--in what has always been an essentially collaborative industry. Examining the controversy in regard to Hollywood directors, the author compares directors and would-be auteurs of the classic studio system with those of contemporary Hollywood and its new climate of cultural entrepreneurship.