Abstract

This study explores the notion of film authorship as a transitory, fluid concept, one that is capable of acquiring new meaning and connotations as it shifts between different national, cultural, and cinematic contexts. It offers as its theoretical point of contextualisation the transnational practice of cross-cultural cinematic recycling, specifically popular European cinema into post-New Hollywood cinema. This study argues for the viability of the remake as a topic of research through which to consider the (re)positioning of concepts of authorship and the (trans)national, at the interface of postmodern, global/local concerns in film production, reception and interpretation. In particular, this study calls for the recognition of contemporary film authorship, specifically auteurism, as two-tiered ("traditional" and "popular" auteurism as necessarily separate yet interconnected concepts). Following this socio-cultural theoretical discussion, presented in its first two chapters, this study then applies the notion of authorship as a shifting, transitory concept to a case study of Alejandro Amenábar's Abre los ojos (1997) and its recycled version, Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky (2001). This particular instance of cross-cultural cinematic recycling provides a pertinent illustration of the way in which contemporary authorial modes are both aligned and demarcated by their distinct cultural, cinematic contexts.