Auteur

An auteur (; French: [otœʁ], lit. 'author') is an artist with a distinctive approach, usually a film director whose control is so unbounded, the director becomes the "author" of each film, and can manifest a personal style, vision, and thematic focus across a diverse body of work. The concept of auteurism originated in French film criticism of the late 1940s and '50s, and derived from the writings of André Bazin, Alexandre Astruc and François Truffaut. In 1962, American film critic Andrew Sarris popularized the concept in the United States, calling it the auteur theory. In the 1970s, partly due to the wide acceptance of the auteur theory, the New Hollywood era emerged with studios granting directors greater leeway.