Reviewing Arnheim’s ‘Who is the author of a film?’

It is hard to tell what and who did Arnheim have in mind while writing this nine page article.

We might wonder who the real author of a film is. Director or the script writer? A film uses more than just words, making director a lot more important. Arnheim proves film making to be a very ‘director’-ial endeavor. He explains how a different media warrants a different type of author or creator. Authors are not writers but organizers. Now being a totally different media, films have their artist in director who can be called not a writer but the ‘’organizer.’’ A scriptwriter’s task is definitely very crucial and indispensable for a good movie but it is the vision of the director which matters when words are rendered visual. That is the director’s job and totally his world and work field.

Creative process is visual; effort is filmic from the beginning. Role and operation of montage is always there.

Splitting up of functions between the director and scriptwriter is mandatory as are many jobs in so many systems. One man cannot handle it all even if he has the merits and is multi-talented. It is just not feasible.

Writers have learnt more and more over time about the filmic process and keep in mind the film aesthetics while writing a script. So, they have their share too in authorship.

Arnheim in this essay might be generalizing because the equation between authorship of a scriptwriter and director is always a variable and hence different for each movie.

The suggestion and advocacy of the point that a writer should be creative as a director too is correct. But this might lead you to think that he shall still have his own views and that might prove as much dividing and distracting as fruitful and consolidating.

And that’s the next point he comes to: The question of partnership- individualist and collectivist.

An anticipated argument says that necessary unity is achieved when all the work is done by one mind but the social structure of a movie needs contribution from everywhere. It is not a one man adventure, so it is feasible too that multiple minds might make it good and has been proved time and time again that two points of view hold broader views and fresher perspectives.

Only one mind might make it a visually dogmatic film you think and even that is discussed in next argument.

I agree with the collectivists’ notion of work ethic who recommend collective work.

The pyramid of dependency model analogy seems redundant and inaccurate.

The end tells precisely where the question in first place should have been left at. We understand it’s a collective effort and the share of authorship changes from movie to movie and that’s where the query should be left at. There does not have to be an ultimate, universal and singular answer for everything. I find some of the questions very esoteric. The whole article follows that same redundant line of discussions. The discussion seems to my mind of very little consequence.

Who are these devotees of tidy setups! Creation is mainly manifold. In this post-modernist era, nothing is tidy, art in the least.

This is one of the simplest but least instructive and most redundant works I have read till date and that too by Arnheim.