Coen Brothers Final Day One: Auteur Theory

1. The categorical designation of MST 527 - Authorship (Auteur) - reminds us that the main focus of the course is the notion of filmmaker as author - the origin of a central voice or vision that leaves its traces ("signature") on every film. Furthermore, this singular and recognizable mark (or brand) should be traceable throughout the body of work produced by a given auteur. Obviously, the question for us is: How do the Coen Brothers fit into the rubric of auteur? To answer this question, address the following points, then add any others you consider important:

• Give a brief summary of the development of the term "auteur"
• Discuss the basic elements that comprise our contemporary understanding of the film author (e.g. likes to work in a particular genre, writes the screenplay, etc.)
• Compare / contrast the Coens and their films with other well-known auteurs.

• Decide whether or not the Coens qualify as auteurs and justify your decision.

The term Auteur remains linked with film theory to this day, despite a concerted effort to refute its meaning near the turn of the century. Its meaning shifted in the 1980s, but the original conception of “Auteur” came from French criticism in the 1940s and 50s. Cahiers du Cinema, a critically oriented magazine that spawned many of the French “New Wave” filmmakers, developed Alexandre Astruc’s theory of the “camera-pen”, a term that likened the director to a novelist as a reaction to the “cinema de papa.” Francois Truffaut objected to the formalism of the France’s cinema, one based in a “tradition of quality”, and instead advocated the “new” film. This new style of film would “resemble the person who made it, not so much through autobiographical content but rather through the style, which impregnates the film with personality of its director” (Stam 84). This “auteur” would “exhibit over the years a recognizable stylistic and thematic personality, even when they work in Hollywood studios” (84).

The early Auteur theory was applied to directors like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, John Huston, and John Ford, who were considered to have an authorship that extended beyond their individual films and create a body of work. Their tendency to work with a consistent creative team, engage in every aspect of filmmaking (directing, writing, editing, etc) and tendency to cast the same actors from film to film lent a consistency across their films that identified their films. A tendency to work within a particular genre (such as Ford’s tendency to work in Westerns, or Hitchcock’s fascination with crime thrillers) also lent credence to a directorial “voice” that instantly linked the audience with its Auteur. The French critics, interestingly, then became a “New Wave” of Auteurs, as Truffaut, Claude Chabrol. Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle moved from writing about American films to create their own distinct styles in the 1960s.

As the Auteur theory moved across the Atlantic, returning to Hollywood, it shifted, all the while coming under criticism. Before long, any successful director capable of amassing a critically praised body of work was “Auteur”-worthy. Meanwhile, writers like Harlan Ellison decried the theory as giving directors the power to declare “the script is merely the ‘floor plan’, the ‘blueprint’, the rough materials from which they, in their photomontagic godhood, fashion the dreams that enoble” (302). Reflecting this critical approach, many directors in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century abandoned the term or openly disassociated themselves from Auteur Theory, even if they their style reflected the original conception. As a result, filmmakers like David Lynch, Steven Soderbergh, Tim Burton, David Cronenberg, and the Coen brothers avoid being called Auteurs whenever possible.

Joel and Ethan Coen, under a “post-modern” representation Auteur (one that embraces the Cahiers du Cinema theory but also acknowledges some of the American adjustments made to include American New Wave directors like Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola) resemble Steve Soderbergh as “author” model: like Soderbergh, the Coens write, direct, and edit their own films, among other roles (often using pseudonyms). The Coens and Soderbergh choose to make films that vary in genre and structure, borrowing loosely from previous cinematic texts as they see fit. Soderbergh once argued that being called an “Auteur” was funny, because “I think you can only know this once a filmmaker has made twenty films. A Huston or a Hawks were never fashionable, and they expressed themselves through a variety of genres… I am not trying to impose my style” (Kaufman, 60). However, Steven Soderbergh and the Coen brothers have shaped a body of work separately that can be immediately identified as in their own “voice”. Soderbergh relies heavily on fractured narrative structures; Joel and Ethan Coen punctuate their source appropriations with a sardonic wit, alternately working within a genre and simultaneously commenting on it.

But are the Coen brothers auteurs? By both versions of the Auteur Theory, one could argue that they fit, despite their unwillingness to be identified as such. Not only do Joel and Ethan direct and edit their films, with only a handful of exceptions, they also write their films. Their creative team remains consistent; the only noticeable change was a shift in cinematographers from Barry Sonnenfeld to Roger Deakins. They freely adapt material in such a way their films defy categorization, with the exception of a recent development that began to classify the “Coen style” as its own genre classification. All of their films subsequent to Blood Simple have at least one returning actor (most frequently John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, or Frances McDormand). Their relationship with Sam Raimi ripples throughout their body of work; if not in “borrowed” camera angles than with the inclusion of Bruce Campbell in cameos (see Fargo, Intolerable Cruelty, and The Ladykillers). Their collaborations with Carter Burwell, T. Bone Burnett, and the Coens consistent use of music as an extension of their themes would also qualify under the Auteur Theory.

In the newer conception of Auteur, the Coen brothers have also demonstrated a “fashionable” quality that Soderbergh noted lacking in Howard Hawks and John Huston. Joel and Ethan Coen, despite making films that straddle mass entertainment and intertextually loaded, have managed to repeatedly to capture the zeitgeist of American culture (if not help craft it). The fascination with Midwestern culture in the mid-Nineties is due in no small part to the success of Fargo, as was the comparable obsession with “roots” music in the wake of O Brother Where Art Thou? The Big Lebowski, despite its relatively amorphous script (an homage to Raymond Chandler) and its lukewarm reception in 1998, has evolved into a full blown cult phenomenon with yearly Lebowski Fests, books, and the Church of Dude-ism. Their adaptation of No Country for Old Men created a newfound fascination with author Cormac McCarthy and earned Joel and Ethan Coen best Director and Best Picture in 2008. Nominated again for A Serious Man, the Coen brothers have found mainstream success – almost in spite of their intentions – in addition to cultivating a consistent body of work, not to mention a host of “Coen-esque” imitators. By this standard, one could argue that Joel and Ethan Coen are auteurs - whether or not they claim to be.