%0 Book
%A Emma Hamilton
%A Alistair Rolls
%D 2018
%C Oxford, United Kingdom
%I Peter Lang Verlag
%@ 9781787071568
%T Unbridling the Western Film Auteur
%B Contemporary, Transnational and Intertextual Explorations
%R 10.3726/b13339
%U https://www.peterlang.com/document/1113407
%X According to Jim Kitses (1969), the Western originally offered American directors a rich canvas to express a singular authorial vision of the American past and its significance. The Western’s recognizable conventions and symbols, rich filmic heritage, and connections to pulp fiction created a widely spoken «language» for self-expression and supplemented each filmmaker’s power to express their vision of American society. This volume seeks to re-examine the significance of auteur theory for the Western by analysing the auteur director «unbridled» by traditional definitions or national contexts. This book renders a complex portrait of the Western auteur by considering the genre in a transnational context. It proposes that narrow views of auteurism should be reconsidered in favour of broader definitions that see meaning created, both intentionally and unintentionally, by a director; by other artistic contributors, including actors and the audience; or through the intersection with other theoretical concepts such as re-allegorization. In so doing, it illuminates the Western as a vehicle for expressing complex ideas of national and transnational identity.
%K Western film genre, film theory, auteur theory
%G English