David Lynch - An Auteur Essay

In this essay I will be looking into what an auteur is through the work of David Lynch. The definition of an auteur is “a filmmaker whose individual style and complete control over all elements of production give a film a personal and unique stamp”.

Lynch is an auteur as he uses trademark techniques and styles throughout his work, in this essay I will be looking at three of his films Dune(1984), Eraserhead(1976) and Blue Velvet(1986) I will indicate generic conventions, auteristic styles, similarities and differences.

He started life in the field of fine arts, where he used his need for perfection and drive to create pieces of art that were shown at galleries. He then was intrigued by the idea of film and this led him to his first funder, who gave him money to create some shorts, from this his work grew in popularity through the underlying conventions and styles he used and the imaginative, dreamlike sequences throughout his shorts and films made them artistically unusual but good by the standards of the American Film Institute. This was where he established the thematic trait of showing a secret kept under the preclaimed normal lifestyle.

Lynch is passionate throughout his work and this can be shown when he says statements such as “I would rather not make a film than make one where I don't have final cut” and “All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me.”. This shows his intentions of making a film that is true to himself and his audience is greater than taking on any film just for the money, this way of thinking is a clear indicator of David Lynch being an auteur.

In his first feature film Eraserhead it gives the impression of a surreal atmosphere, this is suggests  to me that most of his films he has created have been of a surrealistic nature. He has been reviewed by many reviewers such as Woody Lindsey who in an article he titles “SURREAL ‘LYNCHIAN’ NARRATIVE” where they often comment on the nature of his dreamlike states he puts in the films such as in Blue. and from the three I have analyzed, I would agree with this statement, he also quotes on many occasions that he feels that Eraserhead was his “perfect” film, therefore this was seen as his crux, his project, other things lead to this fact of it being solely his production such as the fact that when he created it. The only funder was the American Film Institute which funded small low budget films. This most likely down to him being a new film maker, and he wanted to keep full editorial and artistic control of the project this limited the amount of options available for fundings.

Lynch likes to create worlds, as he does in Eraserhead it gives the impression of a world where everyday things get changed and turned into frightening things. This is shown in Dune where it shows a train which is driven by a navigator guild, who are changed by the spice. This surrealism and shocking ideas occur in all three of the films I have watched, and as in the film chart(1) the others suggest the same such as The Elepahant Man, More Things That Have Happened. This kind of shocking mix of reality and fiction creates more tension and appears to be the auteristic trait of Lynch.

Most films Lynch has worked on have been his own screenplay, and there are only a few cases of adaptations. One of the best known is Dune, although it appears that the story of Dune would perfectly fit his style and it can be seen when watching the film that you are watching a David Lynch film. In Dune it is seen by the fact that David Lynch changed the credits to say Alan Smithee, this is a occurrence in films that when a director is not impressed or feels the film is not good enough to put to his name he uses the alter ego of Alan Smithee. Although when he uses the alias he is forced to not say why the credits were changed it gives an insight into his feeling of the films, the main difference from his films after Dune which costed a total of $45,000,000 and then a much smaller budget on Blue Velvet with a budget of $6,000,000 and reverted back to his usual auteuristic traits and created his own screenplays again.

Some say Lynch isn't an auteur this is due to one of his most known films Dune, as it was released as a blockbuster, had very subtle connections to his previous work and had let someone else write the screenplay. These issues combined made fans angry as shown in  and this is shown in the box office figures where he got $27,400,000 from the budget of $47,000,000. I disagree as its shown in this quote “The rather well cast 1984 Dune from writer and director David Lynch was derided by many, the changes from the novel and some of the quirks that Lynch bled into the story have become things that really annoy fans of the novel, and some film fans too, although in the beginning it was received rather well.” showing that even though he was adapting a novel that was in the bestsellers list he still changed the plot to make it his own. So although he used his own auteuristic traits of behaviour of space and time, actors, and many others his fans were not keen and at the same time the fans of the novel were not impressed by how he diverged from the original plot and even though his films had been tarnished due to the amount of uproar on this film he carried on created films. We still know though that he had the support of his fans as he asked his fans to help him fund later films and shows

Throughout Lynch's films he uses minimal scripting as he uses a very visual tone in his movies, such as in Dune in shots where they are in the desert, there are large open spaces that make the viewer feel something might happen, this gives the audience more of a companionship with the character Paul Atreides. He also uses the behaviour of time and space to create emotion and atmosphere in his films, as in Dune there is lots of examples but one of them that sticks with me is whenever in a offensive formation there is a close up on Atreides and in the background as if the size of toy soldiers are the rest of the team, this use of behaviour gives the sense that Atreides is more dominant, this in comparison to Eraserhead at the dinner scene where he has put the main character Henry in the furthest corner this gives makes the parents more empowered in this scene and in contrast to Dune creates a hierachy in the scene. The way he creates the characters like Paul Atreides in Dune to make it so much more surreal than it was in the book, but also his most nutorious technique of making the characters either good or bad just by the way he dresses them, His use of costume throughout his films is very easy to spot as in Blue Velvet, Sandy Williams, is shown wearing normal everyday clothes with the colour scheme of pale pastels mostly baby pinks and whites and she is portrayed to be a sweet and innocent woman against Dorothy Vallens who wears lots of black, blues and dark colour scheme. This use of costume almost instantaneously tells the audience what kind of the person they are, which links to the way he narates through visual tones. He would go over details such as in Dune, he looks into the mise-en-scene and makes all of the harkonens ginger therefore showing they belong to the harkonan/ evil tribe of the planet, throughout his films most of the evil characters are ginger which gives and his main leads are brown with blonde women this shows he is trying to use hair as an indicator to whether someone is bad or not, this is yet another indicator of how much control over the casting and elements he had and how he would go over elements carefully.

In all his films he uses narrative and keeps the audience always a step behind, as you think you understand the story Lynch finds a way to make that theory incorrect and ultimately makes you want to guess how it will work out, as he feeds the information slowly until the end where he decides whether to give you last piece and whether you link the point or not. In Eraserhead, as soon as you catch up that he  is going to visit the parents of his girlfriends house, he adds the surprise of the chicken oozing a dark liquid, adding yet another piece to the story this leads it from being a realistic story to becoming surreal, another example of holding narrative back is when at the end you find that he is about to kill the baby it then creates a scene where it seems as though Henry know what is happening yet you are in the dark until you see the moment where his head is churned into eraserheads. In my personal opinion I think that Lynch likes to create films where you have to watch more than once, to completely understand the story, this also shows he is an auteur as if he was in it for the money, he would just want to reach a large audience, he wouldn't be limiting it to people who want to play the game and figure out the clues and watch more than once.

In my opinion I feel that Lynch is clever when making his films as he tries to create a subvert (to undermine the moral principles of (a person, etc); corrupt, in this case undermine the rules of a society.) version of the american dream, by taking one thing in life such as in Blue Velvet the ear, or in Eraserhead the baby you find yourself in an unfamiliar context yet it shows you the ways of society and how fragile our system is and how just with a small change it can be changed into something completely surreal. It is said that he is one of the leads of bringing in different plots into the mainstream films around the second half of the 20^th century as stated in this quote “One filmmaker who has lead the way in this fundamental shift in cinema is David Lynch. Lynch has, for nearly thirty years, stood out as a remarkably postmodern, independent filmmaker. He is largely responsible for ushering in a new breed of independent film, in which the simultaneous subversion and celebration of mainstream metanarratives creates endless cinematic possibilities.”

Throughout his films he uses a variety of studios and companies, The main support he gets is from Assymetrical Productions which is his own company which is the case for most of the companies, although when he first started he was funded by the “Pensylvania academy of fine arts” which is a museum, and also a school which seemed to take a liking to Lynch's style and therefore this gave him the leap into the film industry. There are many reasons that David Lynch could have behind choosing to create his own production companies. In my opinion I feel the main reasons are that he wants complete control, if he is the head of the company which is funding the film and he is the person who is creating the film there are no studios involved that would try and take it artistic license from him. Another reason is that he can bring in the amount of money he wants instead of being told how much he can have this would stop him having to go through a situation like when he made Dune and was given a large budget but lost his artistic style for that. Lastly, I feel that analysing his films that he has a need of being in control and this is one of the best ways to have complete control.

As you can see below in the Film Chart(1) most of his films were made and didn't make a profit and the first three were never publicly released until later when it went straight to DVD which is not the exactly the best way to get it publicised to make a profit yet more evidence towards him being an auteur.

My conclusion is that Lynch is a very determined and intelligent film maker that has a passion for his work, who makes his mark on his films and gives an individuality to work he has created. Lynch is also very

Film Chart (1)

Film	Year	Budget est.	Gross est. (USA)	Genre	Studio
The Alphabet	1968	...	...	...	Pensylvania Academy of fine arts
The Grandmother	1970	...	...	...	American Film Institute
The Amputee	1974	...	...	...	Raro Video
Eraserhead	1977	$20,000	$7,000,000	Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Sci Fi	American Film Institute Libra Films
The Elephant Man	1980	$5,000,000	$26,010,864	Biography, Drama, History	Brooksfilms
Dune	1984	$45,000,000	$27,400,000	Action, Adventure, Sci Fi	De Laurentiis
Blue Velvet	1986	$6,000,000	$7,200,346		MGM
Wild at Heart	1990	$9,500,000	$14,560,247	Crime, Romance, Thriller	Polygram Filmed Entertainment, Propaganda Films
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me	1992	$10,000,000	$4,160,851	Crime, Mystery, Drama, Thriller	New Line Cinema CiBy 2000
Lost Highway	1997	$15,000,000	$3,796,699	Drama, Horror, Thiller, Mystery	October Films CiBy 2000 Asymmetrical Productions Lost Highway Productions
Mullholland Drive	2001	$15,000,000	$7,219,578	Drama, Mystery, Thriller	Asymmetrical Productions Les Films Alain Sarde Babbo inc. Canal + The Picture Factory
Rabbits	2002	...	...	Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Thriller	Davidlynch.com
Inland Empire	2006	...	$849,055		Studio Canal Fundajca Kultary Camerimage Festival Absurda Assymetrical Productions Inland Empire Productions
More things that have happened	2007	...	...		Rhino
Lady Blue Shanghai	2010	...	...		Christian Dior Productions

References

Dictionary (no date) ‘The definition of auteur’, in Available at: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/auteur (Accessed: 20 March 2011).

Lynch, D. (1946) ‘David Lynch’, in Available at: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000186/ (Accessed: 20 March 2011).

Blue velvet articles (no date) Available at: http://www.lynchnet.com/bv/movies.html (Accessed: 21 March 2011).

Collins, N. (2010) David Lynch fans to fund latest film. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/7884717/David-Lynch-fans-to-fund-latest-film.html (Accessed: 21 March 2011).

Filmstalker: Dune is dead, has it had its chance? (2011) Available at: http://www.filmstalker.co.uk/archives/2011/03/dune_is_dead_has_it_had_its_ch.html (Accessed: 21 March 2011).

Hartmann, M. (1996) The city of absurdity: The David Lynch quote collection. Available at: http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/quotecollection/message.html (Accessed: 21 March 2011).

Alan Smithee (no date) Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlanSmithee (Accessed: 22 March 2011).

David Lynch (creator) (no date) Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DavidLynch (Accessed: 22 March 2011).