> There are a number of people in any movie who can be working
at their
> full creative energy. Which one of them matters the most, o
r how many
> of them matter, is an aesthetic judgment.
>
> That's why I don't like to say, "Chayevsky is really the aut
eur of THE
> HOSPITAL," or whatever. This is just another way of saying,
"I think
> the film is worthy, and I think Chayevsky is the reason" -
an aesthetic
> judgment, not an act of identification and classification.

Chayevsky is the major creative force behind The Hospital,
but well that´s true to every Arthur Hiller film doesn't
matter who write it. So I guess this says more about Hiller
than Chayevsky. I guess even Chayevsky knows that, he always
carefullt choose his directors, the only two times (if I'm
not mistaken) that he work with directors with some
reputation were Network and Altered States. And Sidney Lumet
was a filmmaker who never made secret of how important he
think writing were; which lefts the Russell film that
Chayevsky himself disowned.

I do think that sometimes a film can survive lousy direction,
which doesn´t mean someone else is really the film auteur. I
have a auteurist friend who wrote once that The Hospital was
the only good Arthur Hiller film, thanks to George C. Scott
(not that Scott was the auteur, only that he beieve his
performance makes for the mediocre direction). I think the
reason why early Marx Brothers is better than the late ones
has little to do with Norman Z. Mcleod being better or worse
director than Sam Wood or David Miller (of course that Duck
Soup is by far their best film has something to do with Leo
McCarey).

Filipe

For me,
> Hiller is the most important person on the set of THE HOSPIT
AL, because
> I needed something from him that I didn't get. But I don't
want to
> convert that statement into "Hiller is the auteur." I don't
feel
> comfortable using the word "auteur" to mean "the most powerf
ul or most
> crucial contributor," because I think that's an aesthetic ju
dgment, and
> should be exposed as such instead of hidden behind an illuso
ry system of
> objective classification.
>
> I consider someone an auteurist if he or she generally consi
ders the
> direction the most important factor in a film's value. If t
here are too
> many films like THE HOSPITAL in your canon, maybe you need t
o think
> about turning in your membership card. But that's no big de
al, really -
> it's not as if all the auteurists in the world have that muc
h in common,
> as we have learned on this list.
>
> - Dan
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>


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