practice essay for VERTIGO and OFOCN about the auteur in the film

Compare how far your chosen film reflect the auteur signature features of their filmmakers

In vertigo Alfred Hitchcock is the very clear auteur with his signature traits such as a blonde and a cameo from himself. Additionally his attempts to always push the boundaries of filmmaking make him stand out as a director this is shown in Vertigo through the flashing of red and other bright colours during the scene where he dreams about Madeline, this new technique was one of many done by Hitchcock that awed audiences around the globe. Some other auteurs like Michael bay leave an imprint on their films but Alfred Hitchcock has a stronger more obvious style.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (OFOCN) also has an auteur in its film but this time instead of the director the actor Jack Nicolson plays with a specific style to his work this includes being over dramatic and having a manic expression in this film and others like Batman and the Shining. His portrayal of certain characters may create tension between him and the collaborative process of filmmaking.

These two films have obvious contrasts between the auteurs the biggest one being one is an actor and the other a director the common auteur is often a director but it can fall under an actor if he/she is distinct enough in their acting. As auteurs they are similar as they both try and bring a new perspective towards the scene with Hitchcock using abstract ideas that are intended to extend cinema, and Jack Nicolson’s manic performance is meant to bring excitement and a different angle to the role he is playing. Furthermore, these two people wouldn’t work well together in a film this is because Alfred Hitchcock doesn’t like the actors to act, this heavily contrasts Nicolson’s approach as he likes to stray away from his lines and quite often will improvise scenes, for example often in OFOCN the cameras would be rolling when there wasn’t an actual scene playing because they where often always in character and it would be easy to get a lot of great filling for scenes . Whereas in Vertigo there is a scene where Midge is told exactly when to look up and down in the scene taking away all individuality she has as an actor.

Finally, the editing in both films contrast each other this is because, as said before, Hitchcock likes to push the boundaries of film in his scenes with advanced techniques that he is able to play around with    in his film, as it is a Hollywood film he was able todo whatever he wanted which was very rare for a Hollywood film  at the time but because the companies knew they would make their money back no matter what he did they didn't mind letting him do what he wanted.Within Vertigo Alfred Hitchcock was able to create the 'Vertigo effect' where the audience would feel dizzy and disoriented when looking at it, This technique left audience members amazed by the idea, it had a similar reaction to one of the first ever films made with was of a train coming closer and closer to the screen and the audience members would scream because they found it so realistic. This Is not the same case for OFOCN as they had a very small budget for their film and even though it was made many years after Vertigo it struggled to push the boundaries of cinema through editing like Vertigo, this meant that the actors had to work really hard for the film to become a success this turned out to work as the film won the big 5 awards at the Oscars that year which included best actor and actress this has only been done by one film after to date which is The Silence Of The Lambs.