French film theory: director as author of both image and text — Godard, Varda. Personal vision supersedes studio mandate or tradition.
The French Nouvelle Vague popularized a strikingly simple thesis: the director not only writes down but authors their film—from the initial idea to the final cut. This is not marketing, but a craft philosophy. Godard shot with pencil notes instead of a screenplay, Varda filmed her own diaries, Truffaut adapted his memories. The camera became the writing pen, the editing suite the typewriter. This fundamentally differs from the classical studio system, where producers, screenwriters, and directors worked like in a factory—each with their role, finished.
Practically, this means something very concrete on set: improvisation is not a contingency, but a method. The auteur cinema style requires freedom because the final meaning often emerges during shooting—not beforehand. An actor whispers a line differently, the light falls just right, a camera move is extended by five meters—and this becomes part of the story, not just its illustration. This requires courage from cinematographers and gaffers: the next take might look completely different because the director has just reinvented the scene. Truffaut's The 400 Blows or Day for Night were not born from strict specifications, but from a continuous dialogue between direction, actors, and visual material.
The difference from classical adaptation is essential: a literary source is interpreted, an auteur cinema work is written. This means the director's personal handwriting is not a matter of taste, but a constitutive element. Every formal decision—framing, editing rhythm, even the imperfection of an acting performance—carries meaning. This sometimes makes such films uncomfortable to watch: they refuse to hide their intentions.
In the editing room, this becomes radically visible. While classical cinema chooses between takes, auteur cinema rewrites through montage. Sequences are rearranged because the story can be told differently. The raw material is not a building block of a predefined plan, but raw material for an idea that is only completed when assembled. Godard's anarchic jump cuts or Varda's essayistic image sequences are not errors in the classical sense—they are sentences. Anyone adopting this approach must understand: directing is not a service to the screenplay, but authorship of the moving image.