Revising the metaphor: the need for Aural Auteur analysis and the Australian Auteur film-maker, Rolf de Heer

The branch of film study known as auteurism has, since its inception in the 1950s by the critics of Des Cahiers du Cinéma, neglected the potential role of sound in deference to the visual mise-en-scène: the auteur is literally defined by Alexandre Astruc’s metaphor of the caméra-stylo, by which he meant that the camera could potentially be wielded by the director as a novelist might wield a writing pen. Hence, film critics spend more time and effort reading the visual text than hearing it. This paper argues that the subsequent globalization of auteurism means a review of the role of the aural in the practice of the auteur is both overdue and necessary, and also suggests a further role for nationality when considering the kind of auteur a film-maker may be. Australian film-makers may be characterized by the combining of a European auteurist interest in what Jonathan Rayner calls "personal writing" and an American auteurist interest in "genre revision" (2003: 12). With this realization the paper concludes by suggesting a typically Australian sonic signature may - with detailed aural auteur analysis - be detected in the work of Rolf de Heer and proposes the incorporation of the analysis of a film-maker’s use of sound in any conceptual framework for the methodology of auteur analysis