with the emotions that traverse his entire being. We must imagine what is going on, we cannot see it. Although this is the only area where Mann improves on the screenplay's final scene, it is decisive in terms of giving viewers access to a more subtle descriptive style. Indeed, what Mann actualizes here is a departure from a narrative mode that assumes that everything is accessible to viewers at all times. Instead, a mediating space is inserted between the action and the spectators. The unexpected camera angle, therefore, is far from gratuitous and it is not surprising that the Cahiers du Cin ma critics rejoiced when they witnessed achievements such as this. Such moments of bravura in effect broke down the routine of the commercial cinema, its repetitive dullness, its bureaucratic programming. It is, however, uncanny to think that, had Ince's format managed to live on, Truffaut and company would have had to pin authorship on gifted writers instead. 17
V
To the surprise and resentment of writers in this country, directors were now recognized everywhere as the auteurs of the films they directed. The furor reached its apex "when Otto Preminger had the temerity to advertise The Man with the Golden Arm as a film 'by Otto Preminger.' Novelist Nelson Algren and the Screenwriters' Guild raised such an outcry that the offending preposition was deleted."18 The situation has not gotten any better since. Witness for instance the recent vicious attack against writers by John Carpenter in the Directors' Guild magazine: "As a director, I am the author of my movies. If the writer thinks he's an auteur, then let him thread up his screenplay in a projector and we'll take a look at it."19 As for writers, Harry Brown didn't mince his words either when he complained that "most directors have about as much story-sense as a sick mink. . . . I've met damned few who didn't have a top-sergeant's mentality combined with the sensitivity of a Port Said whore."20
Humor aside, the rise of the director as a bankable author of the film had unexpected consequences of its own. Although outwardly the script is still conceived with a movie in mind, in practice, with the help of the Writers Guild of America, the dialogue-driven narrative is now being peddled as a distinct, concrete "property" to be auctioned by agents to the highest bidder. Although this has benefited many writers who can now command a high price for their work, it is not clear that the end
