File spoon-archives/film-theory.archive/film-theory_1995/film-theory_May.95, message 31


Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 08:26:45 +1000
From: amiles-AT-netspace.net.au (Adrian Miles)
Subject: Re: theories of authorship.


utty wrote:

>please can someone detail for me why the use of a central stock of
>actors and actresses who reappear in film after film is considered
>to be evidence for the status of director as auteur?
>
>i am considering this question in relation to ford`s use of stock
>fool characters in many of his films - stepin fetchit for instance...

Well, it's one of the things that *might* be considered as part of an
argument for auteurism. Simply it is presumed that the director has what is
in effect an ensemble of actors (so I guess they form a repetory company)
and this leads to a familarity between director and cast that helps produce
those stylistic similarities that is one of the products of an auteurist
analysis/understanding.

One of the consequences of this is that different actors regularly perform
similar roles, or possibly character functions, in different narratives, so
that the discreteness of any particular film dissolves in terms of the
particular set that it is considered a part of. In any auteurist case, this
set is constituted by the director (another set, obviously, would be the
work of the actor, or the genre, etc).

Remember one of the major (and earliest) arguments of auteurism is not only
that the director can be considered the film's author, but that because of
this there are thematic, stylistic, and structural similarities across the
body of the director's work. Identifying a continuity of cast, and possibly
roles, becomes an easy (but perhaps too easy) way of identifying this
continuity. It's a bit like an author writing a series of novels with the
same, or related characters, appearing through the novels.

In Ford's case (I think) there is a history of his preferring particular
actors, and I think in one or two cases of even employing the children of
his older actors (but I am not sure about this), and of simply placing this
'group' in various films. And of course in Ford's case, and in terms of
auteurism, this becomes very interesting because of the notion of community
and culture that Ford describes in the films, has suggestive analogies in
his manner of working.

Hope some of these rather haphazard thoughts provide some starting points.
(There are also problems with thinking using the same actors = auteurism
too, of course.)

Adrian Miles

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
amiles-AT-netspace.net.au
Chris Marker WWW site: http://netspace.net.au/~amiles/ChrisMarker.html
PhD student: Centre of Comp. Lit. & Critical Studies, Monash Uni.
Teach: Cinema/Media Studies, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
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