The newest volume in the Film Theory in Practice Series, Auteur Theory and My Son John offers a concise introduction to authorship and auteur theory in jargon-free language. The book goes on to show this theory can be deployed to interpret Leo McCarey's notorious but undervalued film My Son John, which critics deemed a clear-cut failure, and the auteurists declared a masterpiece. James Morrison traces the development of auteur theory through its emergence in the pages of the French film journal Cahiers du cinema and the complex permutations it undergoes subsequently. This history will help students and scholars who are eager to learn more about this important area of film theory. The analysis of My Son John shows how auteur theory enables modes of interpretation and discovers levels of meaning otherwise unavailable.
The newest volume in the Film Theory in Practice Series, Auteur Theory and My Son John offers a concise introduction to authorship and auteur theory in jargon-free language. The book goes on to show this theory can be deployed to interpret Leo McCarey's notorious but undervalued film My Son John, which critics deemed a clear-cut failure, and the auteurists declared a masterpiece. James Morrison traces the development of auteur theory through its emergence in the pages of the French film journal Cahiers du cinema and the complex permutations it undergoes subsequently. This history will help students and scholars who are eager to learn more about this important area of film theory. The analysis of My Son John shows how auteur theory enables modes of interpretation and discovers levels of meaning otherwise unavailable.
Introduction
Section 1: Auteur Theory
Section 2: Auteur Theory and My Son John
Conclusion
Bibliography
An explanation of auteur theory, illustrated through analysis of Leo McCarey’s notorious 1952 film.
James Morrison is Professor of Literature and Film at Claremont McKenna College, USA. He is the author, co-author or editor of nine books, including Roman Polanski (2007) and Hollywood Reborn (2010).
Brilliant … [a] superb history and analysis of auteurist
criticism.
*Jonathan Rosenbaum, Cineaste*
Reading My Son John both as an instance of the Red Scare-era ‘film
rouge’ and a fine-grained text that generates meaning in the
smallest gesture of stay Helen Hayes, leaves little doubt as to the
proper value-even in this empathetic, troubling, mutilated
picture-of McCarey’s artistry.
*Nick Pinkerton, Film Comment*
Morrison's book is the most illuminating discussion of French
auteurism and its influence I've ever read. It's also a convincing
defense of writing about movie directors as authors, capped by a
brilliant analysis of Leo McCarey's seldom-discussed My Son John. I
couldn't put it down.
*James Naremore, Indiana University, USA*
No one currently writing on film has a more beautiful, captivating
prose style than James Morrison. Sentence by sentence, his
commentary on Leo McCarey and the auteur theory is alive—alive with
wit, with continually surprising insights (every paragraph contains
a jewel), and with the unfailing precision and grace of his close
readings. Morrison blows the dust off the fossilized remains of
French and American versions of auteurism—and has startling things
to say about the affiliations of auteurists and surrealists, the
mysteries of the glimpse or “flash” moment, and the valor of defeat
in the work of anointed directors. Morrison’s study builds to its
astonishing centerpiece—a stunning, full-scale analysis of
McCarey’s much maligned rouge, My Son John. Making ample,
sophisticated use of the most intriguing tools in the auteurist
kit, Morrison offers an utterly persuasive case for the film as a
major work. Too often, facile claims are made for new critical
studies as essential reading. Realizing the danger of excess in
proclaiming a study’s merits, I will nevertheless declare this one
of best books of film scholarship I have ever read.
*George Toles, Distinguished Professor of Film and literature,
University of Manitoba, Canada*
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