Auteur Theory

Wollen's article on auteur theory was quite interesting. I studied this in both Nazi cinema and a German film noir type class I have taken, and I find it very interesting. In the past we only talked about German auteurs and the really emphasized that the auteur was the sole created of the product. The directed, produced, and sometimes even starred in their films. Individuality and personal creativity were stressed at the time that auteurs were allowed in early German cinema. This article focuses on American auteur cinema, and the fact that it cannot be solely one person's idea, but instead that one person has certain motifs or styles that are repeated throughout films. These styles are what we should focus on when calling someone an auteur and not so much the individual movies. This concept was a little confusing to me because for so long when I thought of an auteur I thought of someone who created an entire movie and was able to control almost all aspects of it. However in this article it seems to encourage people to focus more on the repeated aspects of a filmmaker instead of looking at each film individually.