In the course of recounting his “autobiography” of moviegoing in The World Viewed, Stanley Cavell describes the “clarifying shock” that accompanied his realization of the fact “that films were directed, that some human being had undertaken to mean, or was at any rate responsible for, all the angles of a movie.” Not only does Cavell attest to feeling “rebuked for [his] backwardness in having grown to fatherhood without really knowing where movies came from,” but he examines his “former backwardness” and asks: “How could anyone not have known what the auteur theory forces us to know?” It is a significant historical fact that these words were first published in 1971. At that time, a paradigm shift had occurred. The auteur theory, which at that time had only recently made its way from France to the English-speaking world, provided a new piece of knowledge about film; it allowed for the articulation of something about films that was previously only intuited or spoken about in imprecise terms. The auteur theory forced people like Cavell to rethink how films were made, what films could do, indeed what films are, hence the ease with which Cavell could speak about “what the auteur theory forces us to know.” It also provided a rationale for the reevaluation of classical Hollywood cinema, as a result of which such figures as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, and Nicholas Ray were recognized as unique and skilled artists who worked within the confines of the Hollywood studio system yet who crafted original and personal works of art. In short, the auteur theory marked the dawning of a new age in film criticism.

Today, the state of affairs has curiously been reversed. Where once someone like Cavell could point to his ignorance regarding film authorship as evidence of his backwardness, now scholars would point to Cavell's endorsement of the auteur theory as evidence of his backwardness. Rather than speaking of what the auteur theory forces us to know, it is more common now to speak of what it deludes us into believing, hence it is more common now to ask: How could anyone not have known that the auteur theory was wrong?