SSC Film Studies

Auteur theory – Quentin Tarintino

“Without one vision to guide them, films basically collapse, so the director’s input into a film is absolutely essential”

- Wheelen Winston Dixon, Professor of Film Studies, UNL

Auteur Theory is the theory that directors lead to the overall style and design of a film, by giving them unique characteristics. According to Sarris’s Auteur Theory, Auteur has three key meanings or criteria, these are:

1.     “The director must have technical competence”

2.     “Films must have characteristics that can link it with over films in his/her oeuvre.”

3.     “Film must display interior meaning”

I believe that Quentin Tarintino possess all of these features as when he directs a film they all become apparent.  He clearly has technical competence as he’s directed 16 films and won 2 Oscars for his work.

The films he directs too also seem to have a lot of common themes, the main one’s being: violence, money, drugs, revenge, redemption and forgiveness. There is also a lot of colourful language about absurd topics in any Tarintino film, it sometimes drives the plot forward but confuses the audience on the meaning for the seemingly unnecessary conversation. For example in Pulp fiction when Vincent and Jules are in the car talking about what a quarter pounder is called in France, doesn’t seem to progress the storyline at all.

It’s not only what appears in directors films that should be analysed, it’s why they appear, for example: