Oooh, why haven't I seen this one before... !!!!
The auteur teory started in France in the late 50's and it is really about uplifting the director to the same artistic status as painters and writers. They worshipped the obvious art filmmakers like Fellini and Bergman but they also adored the Hollywood studio system directors like Hitchcock and Ford.
An auteur has a vision, and has the power and the artistic power to realize that vision in his/her film. The auteur theorists were of the opinion that true auteurs really only make one film and then they make the same film over and over again, realizing the inner vision and moving towards perfection. An auteur has an original and unique style as well as complete artistic freedom.
The cool thing with the founders of the auteur theory was that they hailed the Hollywood studio system directors as heroes during a time when most critics, not unlike nowadays, thought that everything coming out of Hollywood was garbage (Look at the french critic turned director Goddard's
Breathless) .At the same time, directors like Hitchcock and Ford didn't consider themselves being artists or their work being art. They though about it as a way to make a living. During the shooting of a scene in a Hitchcock movie Ingrid Bergman was having trouble with the scene and when asking the master what her motivation was in this scene, he simply replied: "Ingrid, for god's sake! It's just a movie!".
So who are the american auteurs of today? I think there are a couple besides the really obvious ones like Scorsese, Allen, Lee, Altman, Jarmusch, Lynch and so on.
Firstly, I think there are a few that are auteurs of the "old school". I mean, like with an own style and similar themes in all of their films. Filmmakers that you can recognize after five minutes.
For example there is Michael Mann who seems to be making films about men put in emotional conflicts. The men in Mann's film are almost always being torn between a dedication or a obsession for a job or a career or something like that and the lovelife and the family life. (Both the De Niro and the Pacino characters in
Heat, Crowe and Pacino in
Insider, the main characters in his earlier films
Manhunter and
Thief). And ever since his Miami Vice days you can spot a dualism between a glossy glamourous look and a gloomy feeling. The story is often set at night in Mann films and if it isn't, he uses tools to remind you of the darkness (use of blue filter in sunny scenes, etc.).
Paul Thomas Anderson is probably the brightest shining star on the american auteur heaven.
His films are always about loneliness and being misunderstood or not seen at all and how lonesome people someway find their way to love of friendship or feeling of belonging, and how they do this in remarkable ways. His films also deal with the idea of things that never would happen in a million years that sometimes happen anyway. His characters are often ordinary people that for some reason are viewed as weird and that are emotionally trapped. Technically speaking, Anderson is a true master using source light skillfully and with weightless camera movements. I am sure he will be regarded as one of the best directors that ever lived if he keeps making films like the ones he's made so far.
Steven Soderbergh is a little different than Mann and Anderson. He makes films that sometimes are artistically adventurous and sometimes plain and consciously commercial. But somewhere I sense a typical Soderbergh feel. I saw
Erin Brockovich the other day, which is one of his on many levels more successfull commercial films, and for some reason it reminded me of
The Limey - a critically acclaimed film but definately a small indie. I think there is something in the lighting. It's also the same feel in
Traffic. I can't find a theme that comes back again and again in his films so in terms of Soderbergh being an auteur or not, I guess I don't know. He doesn't really seem to have a vison on what his films must be about but certainly on how to make them.
When it comes to directors like Tarantino and the Coen brothers I think their trademark is that they can borrow stuff from old movies and put it together to something new.
Tim Burton is another director I would consider to call an auteur. Isn't his films always about outcasts? And they have a gothic feel over them too.
Finally, I would have to defend old Spielberg a little here. I have always had a kind of love-hate relationship to his films. I think they are drenched in a sentimentalism that threatens to sufficate me and he always work too hard to rub the audience the right way, but at the same time I believe his films are exactly like he wants them to be and that he has some kind of vision that he brings to reality over and over again. Technically, he is also flawless. There are a lot of things that are typically Spielberg too, but this post is getting long allready....