Authorship is a long-standing, albeit often controversial, lens through which films can be approached and read, as well as a concept that aids in the marketing and promotion of some films. The author figure tends to be more overtly present in various discourses related to American independent cinema – such as criticism, theory, promotion – than it does in Hollywood cinema. This is not to argue that authorship is ignored within Hollywood cinema but that, relatively speaking, it is more prominent within the sphere of American indie cinema. Michael Z. Newman (2017: 28–9), for example, has argued that independent cinema is often distinguished from Hollywood cinema through discourses that stress the greater autonomy of the former in contrast to the latter, and that the figure of the auteur is a prominent filter through which such autonomy is constructed. For Newman, this does not necessarily reflect the actual, material differences between independent and Hollywood production (spheres that can often overlap), instead referring to the ways in which distinctions between these spheres are imagined.

Authorship has traditionally focused on visual style rather than the soundtrack. While some of the more radical approaches to the soundtrack have previously gained attention due to their links with director-authors – including Eisenstein and Godard – attention towards how auteurs use music distinctively is a relatively recent development. A key piece in establishing this line of study is Claudia Gorbman’s ‘Auteur Music’, in which she argued that some directors’ use of music can constitute part of their directorial style: ‘music participates forcefully in what used to be called, in the simpler days of auteursim, the director’s worldview’ (Gorbman 2007: 150). This article was symptomatic of a burgeoning interest in auteurism and music, which stimulated further such investigations (e.g. Wierzbicki 2012, Ashby 2013). Gorbman calls directors with a distinctive musical style mélomanes (‘music lovers’) and argues that this is a relatively recent trend (beginning around the 1960s). While she admits that directors who started making films earlier – such as John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock – often used music in interesting ways, she sees the beginning of a new kind of music-obsessed director emerging in the work of directors such as Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard.