Theories of Authorship - Chapter 1 (Research)

Theories of Authorship is a book edited by John Caughie and published by Routledge in 1981, containing academic essays on auteur theory from a variety of sources.

Key Quotes

"...a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel." 
                                                                                                                       - Alexandre Astruc (1948)

"Traditionally, the reference to the auteur in French film criticism had identified either the author who wrote the script, or, in the more general sense of the term, the artist who created the film. In the work of Cahiers the latter sense came to replace the former, and the auteur was the artist whose personality was 'written' in the film."

"...that a film, though produced collectively, is most likely to be valuable when it is essentially the product of its director."

"...meaningful coherence is more likely when the director dominates the proceedings." 
                                                                                                               - Andrew Sarris

"...in the presence of a director who is genuinely an artist a film is more than likely to be the expression of his individual personality; and that this personality can be traced in a thematic and/or stylistic consistency over all." 

"...the auteur...the one consistently expressing his own unique obsessions,"

"...film is an art, and art is the expression of the emotions, experience and 'world-view' of an individual artist."