DIRECTOR'S CUT.('A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking')(Book Review)

"They love me in France" is the last, best hope of a Hollywood filmmaker in search of a second act. This refrain is the farcical residue of an aesthetic revolution that shook France half a century ago. In the nineteen-fifties, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and their fiercely intellectual circle of young Parisian film critics hailed certain Hollywood directors who were generally considered craftsmen (like Howard Hawks) or showmen (like Alfred Hitchcock) as artists of the first order and--despite the compromises inherent in studio filmmaking--as the sole "authors" of their films. The controversy provoked by this paradoxical politique des auteurs helped these critics ...