The Immoral Mr. Auteur
The following originally appeared in the GRAND JUNCTION FREE PRESS:
In 1954, when French filmmaker and critic Francois Truffaut launched the so-called “auteur theory” of filmmaking in the pages of CAHIERS DU CINEMA, he lobbed the first volley in an argument that has transfixed cinema buffs ever since. Can a film that is produced through the collaboration of dozens of actors, artists and craftsmen be properly judged as the work of a single author?
Without question, cinema history has seen dozens if not hundreds of directors whose blandly competent works defy auteurial analysis. Deprived of screen credits, could even the most perceptive film buff discern the difference between the work of journeymen like, say, Chris Columbus and Charles Shyer?
But every once in a great while, there emerges that rare movie-maker whose personal vision so resonates in his or her work that it’s as if the director’s fingerprints are stamped into the celluloid between the sprockets. Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Preston Sturges, Akira Kurosawa, David Lynch… these are a few of the directors who have imbued their works with their own unique, utterly individual personalities.
Not all such auteurs have occupied respectable Hollywood studio offices, however, or basked in the glow of industry accolades. Not all have mingled with the rich and famous at post-Oscar parties, or shared rostrums with politicians and community leaders. Some have patrolled the outer fringes of filmmaking, thumbing their noses at the arbiters of taste and doyens of culture.
Take, for example, the late Russ Meyer.
For the average film fan, the mention of Meyer (who died in 2004 from pneumonia after battling Alzheimers) conjures images of the anatomically astonishing actresses who populated the sexy features he helmed between 1959 and 1979. Certainly, the filmmaker dubbed as “King Leer” by the WALL STREET JOURNAL will never be popular with the proper, the prudish and the politically correct. Meyer’s movies gleefully skewer sacred cows and poke persistently at the boundaries of the acceptable.
But if ever a director personified the auteur theory, it was Meyer. His movies could never be confused with the work of any other director. From 1965’s FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! — which unspools like a noir thriller shot by and starring the gods of Olympus — to his steroidal sudser BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (one of three Meyer flicks that benefited from a script penned by Roger Ebert), Meyer’s movies are unmistakeably, indelibly Meyer.
That these films, which relentlessly revel in the rude and raunchy, were the work of a celebrated WWII veteran (who also played a part in the creation of THE DIRTY DOZEN) is but one of the many contradictions that riddle the life-story of Russ Meyer, a story that is well-told in the pages of BIG BOSOMS AND SQUARE JAWS (Crown Publishers), Jimmy McDonough’s 2005 biography of Meyer.
In upcoming weeks, we’ll look at the music of Russ Meyer’s films in this space. Join us then when we learn what the gender-boggling record producer Z-Man of BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS meant when he said: “It’s my happening and it freaks me out!”