Research in progress, Nov 1, 2022
To understand critically the process that makes some directors (and not others) distinguished as star names
Directors, over the course of their careers, develop reputations, which may be short or long-lasting, justifiable or not.
Spielberg Vs. Soderbergh
Directors as Marketing Tools
The filmmaker, groomed, promoted and interviewed, has become a star in his own right.
A particular director can function as a type of brand name
The filmmaker as impresario or self-publicist
When did it start?
After WWII, when more directors were also writers and producers of their work
The image-managering of the director
The director as a factor in the viewer (consumer) choices? A Spielberg movie, A Scorsese movie
Hitchcock had attempted and succeeded in promoting (and even) manipulating film critics to consider him as an auteur, a major talent
After decades of work, Douglas Sirk “remotivated” the meaning of his melodramatic works for critics, in the 1950s.
Orchestrating interviews with directors that oriented later readings of the work
Intersections (felicitous or not) between directors’ vision and critical developments in the field. (Klinger).
Directors: Auteurs (Indie Cinema):
Todd Solondz, Premiere, Oct 1988.
“One of the things you’ve got going for you now is that there’s more publicity for low-budget independent directors…Your name as a director is something that you can develop into a certain kind of value, so you can be less dependent on cast. When you buy a book, you look at the author.”
Dale Pollack has provided validation for the theory of filmmaking as a collaborative effort, when he observed: “I know I shouldn’t say this, but if you surround a first-time director with a great director of photography, editor, production design, and first assistant director, almost anyone can make a film.”
But Pollack did not address the question of what it takes to making of great films, or films as art works.
His statement may highlight the difference between filmmakers as genuine artists and those who are craftsmen, possessing to skills to make a movie.
