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Paragraph 2
This, then, 
(1)
was the basis of the auteur theory. The
director became the ‘author’ of the film, just as the
novelist was the author of the novel or a painter was
the creator behind a work of art. Indeed, according
to the critics who proposed the theory, the greatest
directors were artists in their own right, despite the
fact that they were working in an industrialised art
form aiming to create product for a mass world-
wide audience. Perhaps the major studios of
Hollywood were operated like factories, churning out
film after film to fill the programmes of the
thousands of cinemas that needed their product, but
individual ‘geniuses’, such as those mentioned above
and others that included Alfred Hitchcock, Samuel
Fuller, Otto Preminger, George Stevens and Robert
Aldrich, could manipulate the studio system to
impose their own vision on the raw material they
were presented with. 
(2)
The making of a film might
well be a collaborative exercise involving the talents
of screenwriters, actors, cameramen, composers and
all kinds of technicians, but to the proponents of the
auteur theory, there was only one guiding genius:
the director. 
(3)
If the director was a mediocrity, then
the film would be mediocre. If the director, however,
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was one of the chosen geniuses, then the film had
every chance of turning out to be a masterpiece. 
(4)
Paragraph 3
It can safely be asserted
(1)
that the auteur theory
arose partly out of the need of these French critics to
promote the role of the director for their own
personal reasons. 
(2)
After all, when they were writing
as critics, they were frustrated directors. They
wanted to direct films themselves and by
establishing their critical reputations via their
advocacy of the auteur theory, they were making
names for themselves in the film world and
convincing people that the creation of worthwhile
films depended on the overall vision of individual
directors, which they fervently hoped to become
themselves. Thus, the case that they made for
individual Hollywood directors to be taken seriously
as artists was exaggerated in the claims made for
these ‘geniuses’. 
(3)
Indeed, it came as a great
surprise to many of these directors that they had any
kind of ‘universal vision’ and underlying themes
that linked all their movies. Vincente Minnelli, for
example, the talented director of musicals such as
‘Meet Me in St Louis’ and ‘The Band Wagon’ found
himself elevated to auteur stature because these
critics, unlike the rest of us, could discern the
‘philosophy’ that underpinned the movies he
directed. 
(4)