Auteurism In Film

In film, a genre is a way of putting movies into categories where they share similar narrative elements. Auteurism, as previously mentioned, is when a filmmaker’s distinctive style and personal vision is reflected in their work. In the New Hollywood era genre and auteurism started to intersect due to the fact that auteurs were able to make their mark in genre films. They were able to put their personal spin on a formulaic genre film. Coppola did a lot of what we would call genre films over the course of his career, but due to his label of auteur, none of these films seem to carry any classic tropes of the genre they belong to. 70’s cinema, or the New Hollywood era, was the renaissance of American Cinema. These films primarily had open or tragic endings, were centered on the loss of faith in the heterosexual couple or nuclear family, and contained violence and sex. Films were deviating from classical Hollywood conventions during this time, which is noticeable in Coppola’s films. It’s possible to look at “New Hollywood” as a film genre all of its own, with unique traits that led to the unconventional style of the films released during this period. …show more content…
Unlike other gangster films of the past, Coppola’s own Italian-American heritage helped him created an authentic representation in the film. The film represents ethnicity in a positive way, using new genre conventions. In Vera Dika’s article, “The Representation of Ethnicity in The Godfather”, she states, “The Godfather’s Italians are different from other film representations of this ethnic group because the embody a return to “La Via Vecchia” or to the old Sicilian ways” (88). The Godfather seeks to break stereotypes of Italian-Americas featured in most gangster genre