Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapter 8 of Film: From Watching to Seeing, as well as your instructor’s guidance and lecture materials, and Chapter 7 from Film Genr

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8 Directing and Style Director Lee Daniels discussing a scene for "Precious" with actors Gabourey Sidibe and Xosha Roquemore. © Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection Somebody said if you give a script to five different famous directors, you'd get five different pictures. And I believe that. —Vincente Minnelli (1977) Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to Discuss the role and responsibilities of the director. Compare directors' styles and stylistic movements amid the evolving cinematic landscape. Apply the auteur theory of directing. Analyze the major works and distinguishable style of several pace-setting directors. Assess the relationship among the director, the actors, and the writer. Identify some influential but nontraditional filmmaking styles. Evaluate the relationship between a director's work and its commentary on or critique of social justice issues. 8.1 What Is a Director? Making a movie is a genuinely collaborative effort. Large films employ hundreds of people who work together to create the finished product. Yet, as with any endeavor that enlists the labor of so many people, there must be one person with the power and the overall vision to make sure that all the pieces come together as they should. Like the conductor of an orchestra, someone must be responsible for ensuring that all the players—producers, assistant directors, production designers, directors of photography, actors, and editors—interpret the script and play their roles according to his or her vision. As with musical compositions, paintings, and other works of art, films are constructed according to certain plans using certain techniques and patterns that their creator believes will be both effective and expressive of something of his or her own personality. In making a movie, that creator is the director. Their role is to translate the screenwriter’s story so that the cast and crew can carry it out. And like the conductor arranging every instrument, it’s up to the director to turn the elements they create with—words, images, and sound—into something not just coherent but entertaining, even moving. It’s no accident that when films are described, they’re often talked about as the possession of the director—Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman, and the like. Of the many people who create a commercial movie, and it would be difficult to make one without all of them, the director is the most crucial. Much like the quarterback of a football team, they often receive an outsized measure of credit—or blame. While the director may not personally operate the camera or set the lighting or run the editing machine (though some do), they are still the boss in rehearsals, on the set, in the editing room, and wherever else the movie is made. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that, beyond yelling “Action!” and “Cut!” at the beginning and end of scenes, there is no clear set of rules or regulations that all directors follow. So much of directing is based on feeling, gut instinct, and experience. Some directors are hands on, micromanaging almost every aspect of making the movie. Others are delegators, allowing more freedom among the actors and crewmembers. Some dictate entirely what they want their actors to do, allowing for no improvisation. Others simply offer a loose set of parameters for a scene and let the actors go where they will with it. Some even shoot or edit their films themselves, while others prefer to work primarily with the actors and leave the technical details to specialists they trust. But whether you are talking about Alfred Hitchcock, who was known for his hands-on style, or Richard Linklater, who allows actors to develop their roles organically, or someone in between, the fact remains that the director is in charge of the production and is responsible for the final film. In this chapter, we will look at some of the methods directors use in their many roles, how they shape the film, and how central they are to the overall process. 8.2 The Director as Visionary While the director plays many roles in the production of a film, perhaps the most important is to envision the tone, look, and feel of the final product. Overseeing every aspect of the production is, of course, a massively complicated job, one that requires a detailed level of planning and execution at every level. Unless studio executives meddle too much and take over the project, the film we see in the theater is largely the film that the director wanted us to see—the director’s vision and interpretation and the overarching message they intended for the story to convey. In skilled hands, the director makes a film that takes us out of our world for two hours and into another—a world of the director’s imagining. It is for this reason that directors receive so much credit for a well-received film. Establishing Style We have discussed such cinematic elements as narrative plot structure, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound in previous chapters. Although individual specialists perform the necessary duties in each category, often with their own personal preferences, the director makes sure they work together to create a coherent and appropriate vision of the story on the screen. Each director tends to have favorite ways of arranging actors and props on the set, favorite types of camera angles and lighting schemes, favorite patterns of editing long or short takes into scenes, and favorite habits of using sound and image to reinforce or clash with each other. When we can recognize similar uses of techniques from one film to another, we are recognizing a style. Film still from "Shame," picturing actor Michael Fassbender standing in the rain with a cityscape in the background. Abbot Genser/TM and © Copyright Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection Film still from "12 Years a Slave," picturing actors Lupita Nyong'o and Chiwetel Ejiofor sitting on the floor and clasping hands. Francois Duhamel/TM and Copyright © Fox Searchlight Pictures. All rights reserved./Courtesy Everett Collection Director Steve McQueen conveys his characters' struggles through the use of single-color palettes in his films. A muted color palette is used in both Shame and Hunger, and a much warmer palette is used in 12 Years a Slave. When we talk about style, we’re talking about a very subjective element of film: the aesthetic, symbolic, and thematic tendencies of a director. Most—though not all—films, even if they play with the form, follow the basic tradition of narrative storytelling. We meet the characters, there is some form of conflict, and then there is a resolution. However, there is plenty of room inside that basic format for the director to impose a personal style upon the film. In Steve McQueen’s films Shame, Hunger, and 12 Years a Slave, we can see his reliance on a consistent color palette to enhance and emphasize themes of physical and psychological human struggle. Tim Burton, one of the most stylistically recognizable directors, also relies on highly symbolic color palettes and elaborate, exaggerated sets. These are visual cues a director uses to imbue a story with his or her singular voice. These are elements of style. The concept of a director’s style dates back to the early 20th century, if not before. In 1925, for example, Russian director Sergei Eisenstein directed the enormously influential film Battleship Potemkin. As discussed in Chapter 6, Eisenstein was a champion of the montage, the cutting between perspectives and shots in a scene to either heighten the dramatic effect or, in some cases, alter it. The most famous, and most copied, example of this is in the Odessa Steps segment of Potemkin, in which Cossacks open fire on civilians, including women and children. The part of the scene in which a baby carriage rolls precipitously down the long line of steps after the mother is brutally murdered is positively iconic; it has been quoted in near-countless films, most explicitly in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). Eisenstein constantly cuts back and forth between scenes of terrified citizens and the advancing Cossacks. His theory was that juxtaposing dynamic shots one after another to establish meaning was more important than adherence to conventional continuity editing guidelines. Montage is an essential element in Eisenstein’s concept of style, and it helps define his films. Film poster of actor John Nance from David Lynch's "Eraserhead." Courtesy Everett Collection Director David Lynch employs black-and-white cinematography, haunting special effects, and more in Eraserhead. Other examples rely less on technique and more on mise-en-scène and overall atmosphere. David Lynch uses creepy, sometimes surreal images and sounds to shape the style of his films. Note the bizarre noises in the background throughout much of Lynch’s surreal film Eraserhead (1977), which add to the unease and overall weird vibe of the movie. (That Lynch shot the film in black and white adds to the effect.) Even in a film that is, at least on the surface, more mainstream, such as Blue Velvet, Lynch manages to create a subversive atmosphere. The opening shot famously captures the idyllic small town, with flowers and picket fences, but the camera delves in more and more closely, finally showing the insects burrowing underground. Thus, Lynch immediately establishes that he will explore the ugliness beneath the happy exterior, a recurring theme with Lynch that he accomplishes through a strong sense of style. The style consistent throughout his films includes choices in sound effects, colors, wide-angle lenses, placement of actors within settings, and often-dreamlike logic in character interaction. One might also look to directors such as M. Night Shyamalan for consistent style in the way he tells a story in such films as The Sixth Sense, The Village, and The Visit—there’s always a twist. Patty Jenkins focuses on compelling female leads as the basis of her stories, despite their polar opposition in character, in both her debut film, Monster, and the recent blockbuster Wonder Woman. It would be hard not to discuss the style of Quentin Tarantino, whose films regularly display a pastiche of genres and hyper-graphic violence. For instance, Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2 use the tropes of both western and samurai film genres, but most of the main characters are strong women struggling for survival and seeking revenge. Style isn’t just a visual element; it’s also shaped by the story’s subject matter and intended themes. How the director achieves his or her stylistic vision varies from person to person and from film to film. It’s also sometimes a function of the studio or a powerful producer, for example a David O. Selznick or a Jerry Bruckheimer. In early films, the director often truly served as a facilitator, and not much else. But visionary directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Erich von Stroheim, and, more recently, Steven Spielberg, Jordan Peele, and Patty Jenkins bring an artistic sensibility to the job that moves it far beyond that of a technical functionary. They and others help establish the director as not only an equal partner to the on-screen (and behind-the-executive-desk) talent but also as the true author of a film. See the following You Try It feature box for more information about a director’s style. You Try It: Hallmarks of Style When looking at what distinguishes a director’s style, we must evaluate at least a few of his or her films to pick up on repeated tropes, themes, and techniques. An easy example is J. J. Abrams’s affinity for the lens flare, which has divided critics and viewers. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Abrams said, “The reason I wanted to do it was I love the idea that the future that they were in was so bright that it couldn’t be contained and it just sort of broke through” (as cited in Acuna, 2015, para. 6). Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, is noted more for the style of story he tells—of small-scale human relationships in large-scale, world-changing events—than for a particular technical signature. Look at a couple of films by one of your favorite directors and try to identify the stylistic signatures that recur throughout his or her body of work. Hollywood’s Best Directors Choose Their Best Movies: Blue Velvet Director David Lynch’s discusses how his early ideas for Blue Velvet came from specific sensory images. Actor Dennis Hopper recalls memories of Lynch’s direction. Critical-Thinking Questions What are some of the distinctive features of the film Blue Velvet? Do you think that director David Lynch can be classified as an auteur? Why or why not? Changing the Cinematic Landscape Throughout the history of cinema, we find a handful of directors who have changed the concept of what is possible within the medium. It is worth noting here that many of these directors are white men. However, as the landscape of the United States has changed, so too has the diversity of those behind the camera. This will become evident as we discuss notable directors later in the chapter. D. W. Griffith and Orson Welles Film still from "The Birth of a Nation," picturing a scene of men fighting during the Civil War. Courtesy Everett Collection D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation portrayed the battles of the Civil War with a level of detail never seen before. Hundreds of extras were mobilized and shot to convey the impression of thousands at war. No discussion of directors—indeed, of film itself—is possible without D. W. Griffith. Enormously gifted as well as hugely controversial, he in many ways set the stage for what we think of as the modern film director, as well as the modern film itself. Griffith started making movies in 1908 and directed more than 400 short films over the next 5 years, experimenting with a wide variety of story content and developing different filmmaking techniques that made his work stand out from that of most other filmmakers, especially those in America. His three-hour epic The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, had a huge impact on film production and styles of cinematic storytelling, as well as on distribution and exhibition. Countless film historians agree that the popular and critical success of this film changed the industry forever, despite the film’s complicated legacy and overt racism (the film was used as a recruiting tool for the Ku Klux Klan). The Birth of a Nation told a story full of action, romance, suspense, terror, and heroism, as other films had done, but Griffith’s exuberant technical style and mastery of cinematography and editing was able to both inspire filmmakers and captivate audiences of all social statuses for an entire evening’s entertainment. Indeed, before The Birth of a Nation, movies typically lasted about an hour or less and appealed primarily to lower-income audiences who could not afford live theater. Without Griffith’s magnum opus, Orson Welles might not have conceived Citizen Kane, which today sits at number one on the American Film Institute’s (AFI) Top 100 Films list (https://www.afi.com/100years/movies10.aspx). Welles set out to make film an art form from within the nascent Hollywood machine. With Citizen Kane, he showed the immense power a director could wield over a film. Despite the film’s relative failure at the box office, the impact of Welles’s work on the history of filmmaking is still felt today. In short, he turned the medium of film from simple entertainment (film’s typical role in the culture up to this point) into cinematic art and social commentary. Welles would write, direct, and act simultaneously in Citizen Kane, taking the role of facilitator about as far as one could. He was neither the first nor the last to tackle three or more creative roles in a single film (just look at Charlie Chaplin, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, and Clint Eastwood, to name a few), but there may be no greater example than Welles, and some believe no greater movie than Citizen Kane. After Griffith, directors from Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock to Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Tim Burton have established their own names as far more important than their films’ stars and titles in the mind of the public. However, it was Griffith who set the standard, and Welles who solidified it, for imposing their personal style on every movie they directed. Jenkins’s Wonder Woman is by all standards a major blockbuster. Based on the titular comic book superhero, created in 1941 by William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman pays clear homage to the character’s early feminist inspirations, all while tackling history, mythology, race, and sexism amidst the backdrop of World War I. A film of this scope and scale could not have been imagined were it not for the controversial model of Griffith, Welles, and those other directors who followed. A More Diverse Future Director Ava DuVernay giving direction to actor David Oyelowo (who plays Martin Luther King Jr.) on the set of "Selma." Atsushi Nishijima/© Paramount Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Note the intention and trust apparent in this image of actor David Oyelowo, as he takes direction from Ava DuVernay on the set of Selma. As may be gathered from the discussion so far, the most lauded directors have historically been male. However, female directors with strong personal visions have emerged throughout film history (such as Lois Weber, Dorothy Arzner, and Ida Lupino) and have become more common in recent years (including Julie Dash, Andrea Arnold, Julie Taymor, Kathryn Bigelow, Ava DuVernay, Karyn Kusama, Sofia Coppola, Chloé Zhao, Dee Rees, and the aforementioned Patty Jenkins, among others). It is worth noting that in the 90-year history of the Academy Awards, only six women have been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties), Jane Campion (The Piano, The Power of the Dog), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland). Gerwig was the first female director to be nominated for her debut film, and only Bigelow (2010) and Zhao (2021) have won the Oscar, with Zhao being the first woman of color ever to be nominated or win the award. So, too, have more diverse directors found acclaim and helped shape the landscape of cinema. Though he was not the first, Spike Lee is, perhaps, the single most influential African-American director in contemporary filmmaking. His films School Daze, Do the Right Thing, and those that follow explore the African-American experience, while confronting issues of racism head on. Lee’s work in the 1980s still stands as a touchstone for many younger directors today. His contemporaries, John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood), Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), and Antoine Fuqua (Training Day), echo these themes in their own unique ways. Yet a younger generation continues to push further. Steve McQueen won the Academy Award for Best Director for 12 Years a Slave (2013), while Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014) was nominated for Best Picture, and Ryan Coogler became the first black director to helm a Marvel blockbuster, Black Panther (2018). Jordan Peele's wildly successful films Get Out and Us added an overt sociopolitical message to the horror genre, while Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You and Justin Simien's Dear White People took similar messaging to off-beat comedy and coming-of-age drama. Still more young directors, inspired by those who have come before them, are changing the broad landscape of film as a whole, including directors such as Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency), Shaka King (Judas and the Black Messiah), Nia DaCosta (Candyman), and Mati Diop (Atlantics), among numerous others. Though not all directors are capable of, or interested in, making films that reach the status of art and convey a powerful message, the influential directors discussed in this section have shown that the director can make the film her or his own, an artistic statement as personal as a novel, a poem, a painting, or a symphony. This concept gave rise to a theory of film criticism that focused heavily on the director: auteur theory. 8.3 Auteur Theory Director François Truffaut giving direction to a cameraperson on the set of "Day for Night." Mary Evans/Les Film Du Carrosse/PECF/PIC/Ronald Grant/Everett Collection French New Wave directors such as François Truffaut, whose set for the film Day for Night is pictured here, began as critics who championed the director as the author (auteur) of the film. Given the importance of the director’s role in the making of a movie and how easily identifiable certain cinematic styles can be throughout the work of some directors, it is often convenient to discuss a film as though the director were the sole creator, like the author of a book. Auteur is the French word for author, and therein lies the meaning of auteur theory. When applied to film directing, auteur theory posits that the director is indeed the author of the film, imprinting it with her or his personal vision. This can be an excellent starting point for analyzing certain films, both thematically and stylistically, and is in fact exactly how the auteur theory got started. Film critic and future director François Truffaut put forth the theory in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma (Notebooks on Cinema) in 1954. The theory gives enormous, almost total responsibility for a film’s success or failure (artistically, not at the box office) to the director. The theory was not, and is not, universally accepted. Film critics Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris kept a running feud going in various magazines about the validity of the theory well into the 1960s. Sarris championed it, while Kael, always opposed to the over-intellectualization of movies, attacked it, writing in Film Quarterly in 1963, “‘Interior meaning’ seems to be what those in the know know. It’s a mystique—and a mistake” (p. 20). Film studies professor Raymond Haberski (2001) summarized Kael’s argument: “How was one to guess what art was and was not based on a logic that seemed hidden to all other critics?” (p. 129). (It is quaint, and somewhat romantic, to think back to a time when film critics were such an important part of the conversation regarding movies and their cultural impact.) When we apply auteur theory as the lens through which we analyze films, we must always keep in mind that film is a visual art form, and it is therefore artistic. See Table 8.1 for examples of some directors who can be considered auteurs. Table 8.1: Notable auteur directors and key films D. W. Griffith The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, Trueheart Susie, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East, Orphans of the Storm, America, Isn’t Life Wonderful?, The Battle of the Sexes, The Struggle Frank Capra American Madness, It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Lost Horizon, You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, It’s a Wonderful Life Alfred Hitchcock The Lodger, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Family Plot John Ford The Iron Horse, Hangman’s House, Pilgrimage, The Informer, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, They Were Expendable, My Darling Clementine, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Akira Kurosawa No Regrets for Our Youth, Drunken Angel, Stray Dog, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, High and L