Oscar Micheaux

In auteur theory, a frontier originated by choose critic Andrew Sarris in his essay, Notes on the Auteur Theory16, thither is a disposition to outline the personal vision of the director. This is said to be the key instrument to understanding selectmaking. In addition, he writes the question is how does a director express personal vision? The concern is how this theory is apply to examine the initial obsessions and thematic preoccupations of the director versus the original creator or author. This essentially becomes a study or attempt to outline the directors desire and/or personal statement.The purpose of the auteur theory is then to analyze films if not to understand the characteristics that identify the director as auteur. In the study of film criticism, during the 1950s, the al-Qaida croupe auteur theory studies how a directors film reflects the directors personal and imaginative vision, as if the director was the original creator or author. Francois Truffaut, the famous French film director and critic, maintains that a good director (including the bad ones), exhibits such(prenominal) a distinctive sprint if not promotes a consistent ancestor that his or her influence is unmistakable in the body of his or her escape. equivalent Truffaut, Andrew Sarris believed through analyzing film, an auteurist becomes appreciative of directors whose work outs detail a marked optical style as well as those whose visual style was slight noticeable but whose photos reflected a consistent theme. As a force of this influence by critics like Truffaut, the auteur theory and auteurism have become a very crucial and influential aspect of film criticism since 1954. African American Film Producer-Director Oscar Micheaux is an often overlooked auteur in contemporary film criticism.He created films depicting mysterious life from 1908 to 1950, on what he matt-up were realistic terms, while also providing entertainment for the grim movie button audience during that time. His films, unlike previous depictions, contained a range of types and attempted to surface that blacks were often just as rich, educated, sophisticated and cultured as whites. 1 His films embodied who he was as a black man during bitter racial prejudice in America. Beca intention of this particular style and the heart and soul behind his films, Micheaux has been criticized primarily for presenting a class system found on colour in in his ovies. A possible sacrifice he was forced to reach out after his films depended on white financing after the Great Depression. 3 As Sarris noted, the classification of an auteur, is that a director must accomplish skilful competence in their technique, personal style in terms of how the movie looks and feels, and interior meaning. In order to classify Oscar Micheaux as an auteur, these three exposit as Sarris defines them, will evidence Micheauxs work as an auteur based upon the process he utilized to create these films, their negative and positive reply by audiences and critics.In addition, the further study of how African American celluloid has been received and contributed to understanding black cultural traditions will evidence the basis and criteria behind his work. Micheauxs films, were unmistakable allegories of his own life, just as movies by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Orson Welles and otherwise notable directors at that time, depicted their vision of America. 15 In order to understand and better examine the works of Micheaux, it is classical compare the reception of two of his best received films.Based upon a story he had written, the film Homesteader was chronicled by the Chicago guardian to define the new negro whereas the critiques by both white and black audiences differed about his film Within Our Gates, which was his response to D. W. Griffiths conduct of a Nation. Oscar Micheauxs body of work along with other films of the lavation movie film genre, often called race films, existed in t he United States well-nigh from 1915 to 1950. These films primarily consisted of movies produced for an all black audience, featuring black casts.These films were often low-budget and technically inadequate, due to very little or no backing from all of the major Hollywood Studios. Like other independent black filmmakers of the time, his work and films were considered rough. 1/11 Financial limitations, typically impacted his style and work. 13 Micheaux wanted his brand of films to contrast and differ from earlier depictions of blacks as demonstrateed in minstrel shows, subservient, happy-go-lucky or as savages.By utilizing what author Gladstone Yearwood defined as an afrocentric model, understanding the body of work created by Oscar Micheaux, will evidence his pioneering endeavours to create and develop the aesthetic of African American thought that reflected cultural priorities that delineated from the dominant society. 17 redundant references from articles, journals and critique s of his work will be used to examine the strategies and techniques he invented and sit downisfactory to use motion pictures as a means to create his films.For his black audiences, Micheaux believed in emphasizing black themes. The themes he often focused on included blacks passing for white, intermarriage, injustice of the courts against blacks, and even the sensitive subjects of lynching and the Ku Klux Klan. 3 Micheaux used his movies to deliver a message. Because of this, Micheauxs films were often contentious and censored. patch they were shown nationally, his movies were either screened at special matinees or midnight viewings, when and where blacks could attend. The third and last premise of the auteur theory by Sarris pertained to and concerns with the interior meaning. Sarris defined interior meaning as an extrapolation from the tension between a directors constitution and his material. 6 Ossie Davis, an African American film actor, stated, There were black mountain behind the scenes, telling our black story to us as we sat in black theaters. We listened blackly, and a beautiful thing happened to us as we maxim ourselves on the screen.We knew that sometimes it was awkward, that sometimes the films behaved differently than the ones we saw in the white theater. It didnt matter. It was ours, and even the mistakes were ours, the fools were ours, the villains were ours, the people who won were ours, and the losers were ours. We were comforted by that fellowship as we sat, knowing that in that location was something about us up there on that screen, controlled by us, created by us our own image, as we saw ourselves6 Micheaux produced seven novels and approximately forty films, all for black audiences from 1913 to 1948.The influence of Oscar Micheauxs earlier film career is evidenced by his jailed to present positive images of African American life that no other filmmaker was showing at that time. Often considered technologically inferior, Michea uxs use of editing and film techniques helped him to depict and present some of the most controversial issues of that era. Micheaux had to overcome his own objections, and then proceeded to use film as a means to communicate his ideas, and to do what had not been done before him. That was to portray blacks with dignity and respect.