Five Directors: Auteurism from Assayas to Ozon (French Film Directors)

Auteurism--the idea that a director of a film is its source of meaning and should retain creative control over the finished product--has been one of film studies’ most important paradigms ever since the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the adoption of the term auteur by Andrew Sarris. Through the popular, controversial and critically acclaimed films of Olivier Assayas, Jacques Audiard, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke and Francois Ozon, this book looks into how the meaning of ‘auteur’ has changed over this half-century, and assesses the current state of Francophone auteur cinema. It combines French philosophical and sociological approaches with methodologies from the Anglo-American fields of gender studies, queer theory and postmodernism. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students of film studies, European cinema and French and Francophone studies, as well as to film enthusiasts.

Auteurism--the idea that a director of a film is its source of meaning and should retain creative control over the finished product--has been one of film studies’ most important paradigms ever since the French New Wave of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the adoption of the term auteur by Andrew Sarris.

Through the popular, controversial and critically acclaimed films of Olivier Assayas, Jacques Audiard, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke and Francois Ozon, this book looks into how the meaning of ‘auteur’ has changed over this half-century, and assesses the current state of Francophone auteur cinema. It combines French philosophical and sociological approaches with methodologies from the Anglo-American fields of gender studies, queer theory and postmodernism.

This volume will be of interest to researchers and students of film studies, European cinema and French and Francophone studies, as well as to film enthusiasts.

Front matter 1 Contents 6 Series editors’ foreword 8 Acknowledgements 10 Introduction 12 Olivier Assayas and the cinema of catastrophe 28 Jacques Audiard: contesting filiations 49 Ethics in the ruin of politics: the Dardenne brothers 70 Close encounters with distantsuffering: Michael Haneke’s disarming visions 95 François Ozon’s cinema of desire 122 Conclusion 146 Filmography 149 Index 166 Auteurism - the idea that a director of a film is its source of meaning and should retain creative control over the finished product - has been one of film studies' most important paradigms ever since the French Nouveau Vague of the late 1950s and early 1960s. This book describes the relevance of the auteur to film-making in French. Olivier Assayas and the cinemna of catastrophe / Paul Sutton Jacques Audiard : contesting filiations / Julia Dobson Ethics in the ruin of politics : the Dardenne brothers / Martin O'Shaughnessy Close encounters with distant suffering : Michael Haneke's disarming visions / Libby Saxton François Ozon's cinema of desire / Kate Ince. This volume contains profile-style essays on five of the most popular or controversial directors - Olivier Assayas, Jacques Audiard, the Dardenne brothers, Michael Haneke and François Ozon