Talk:Auteur/GA1

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Nominator: Sddarealone (talk · contribs) 19:36, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: ABehjat (talk · contribs) 23:34, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

I'll be the experienced reviewer to oversight the review process as part of the June 2026 GAN Backlog Drive. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 01:16, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi there! I'll review this article and will provide an update hopefully in the next few days - ABehjat (talk) 23:34, 19 June 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: Thanks for starting the WP:GAN review. I will be looking forward to any of the edit suggestions in accordance with preliminary findings and in WP:GACR6 that you might have. Cheers! Sddarealone (talk) 06:03, 20 June 2026 (UTC)

Thanks again for the nomination, Sddarealone. There's a good article in here — the theory sections (Origin, Development, Popularization, Criticism, Law, Popular music) are built on a reliable book spine and quality press, the tone is neutral, and the images are fine.

But after a full read I'm not listing this at GA, because the problems are extensive across three of the six criteria and go beyond what a seven-day hold can fix:

• The lead is built around a ~40-director list that the body never discusses, sourced to blogs/listicles, and assembled by the editor from "multiple lists" and "primary sources" (per the hidden note and the talk page): that's a WP:LEAD, WP:EMBED and original-research problem at once.
• The Video games section is a bare, unprosed name-list of ~17 developers with no connecting analysis, much of it on unreliable sourcing (1b / WP:EMBED / 3b).
• A major academic aspect (the genre-theory counter-position) is missing entirely (criterion 3a).

I think the article needs more than a week's worth of re-sourcing, restructuring, and consensus work. I'd encourage a renomination once the items below are addressed. More below...

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)
It is reasonably well written. a (prose, spelling, and grammar): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists): It is factually accurate and verifiable, as shown by a source spot-check. a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR): d (copyvio and plagiarism): It is broad in its coverage. a (major aspects): b (focused): It follows the neutral point of view policy. Fair representation without bias: It is stable. No edit wars, etc.: It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate. a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall: Pass/Fail:
· · ·

Verifiability and sourcing (criterion 2) — fails 2c

2a is fine (proper Citations + General and cited references sections). The body's theory sections rest on a solid scholarly spine: Caughie, Sadoul, Kamina, Santas, Bloem — plus The Atlantic, New Yorker, NYT, The Guardian. No problem there.

But 2c fails, and not just on reliability — there's original research:

• Original research in the lead list. The ~40-director roster is an editor-assembled set: the hidden note reads Please do not remove this, I have checked multiple lists on many sites for this information, and on this talk page the nominator states they compiled the list of auteurs with as many reliable primary sources as possible. Determining who does or doesn't qualify as an "auteur" by aggregating multiple sources and primary sources is original research/WP:SYNTH. No single reliable secondary source presents "these are the auteurs."  Done; I have replaced the roster with the ones selected from film section.
• Failed verification. Several cites don't appear to support the auteur attribution they're attached to: the screenrant.com cite for Sergio Leone is a Clint Eastwood listicle; the faroutmagazine.co.uk cite for Tim Burton is about his "favourite creature feature"; the Tarantino cite is a "10 best characters, ranked" listicle. Citing an unrelated mention to support "X is an auteur" compounds the OR problem.  Done; I have cited reliable secondary sources (book review and journals) to support the auteur claims.
• Unreliable sources propping up the lists, several WP:RS/WP:RSP failures: indiefilmhustle.com (Nolan, Scorsese), filminquiry.com (S. Coppola), cinema-fanatic.com, a self-described "diary of a film history fanatic" blog (Luhrmann), movieweb.com (Tarantino), theculturetrip.com (RSP: generally unreliable; Jodorowsky), artofthemovies.co.uk — a movie-poster retailer's blog (P.T. Anderson), a College of DuPage undergraduate student essay at dc.cod.edu (the Coens); and in the video-game list a medium.com self-published post (five-plus names), screenrobot.com (the "Kojima ... first recognized auteur" claim), geek.com, digitallydownloaded.net.  Done; I'm sure by Nolan, Scorcese you were referring to Martin Scorsese. I changed the source for this director to a more WP:RS one; Also checked the video game sources and made appropriate corrections. digitallydownloaded.net is reliable as per WP:VG/RS.
• Weakly sourced body claims: Kael's central counter-argument is cited to filmmakeriq.com and a YouTube video essay (anchor it to Kael's "Raising Kane" / Sarris's "Perils of Pauline", already cited alongside); Adam Sandler's "producer auteur" status leans on a student film-society blog (bijou.uiowa.edu). Use the cited Dispatch piece instead.  Done

Two smaller 2b items (these alone would only be a hold): the body says Truffaut coined "la politique des auteurs" in the 1954 essay context but Popularization says it was "first used...in 1955". Please reconcile this; and the lead names Alexandre Astruc as an originator but he's never mentioned or sourced again in the body.  Done

Spotcheck / source verification

I had no source access during this pass. Source verification is the nominator's burden (WP:BURDEN); these are flagged for resolution rather than treated as reviewer to-dos, and the article does not turn on them given the criterion-1/2/3 failures above.

• Truffaut quotes from "Une certaine tendance du cinéma français" (cite certain tendency): the Development section attributes to this essay the "Cinema of Quality" critique, the metteur en scène "stager" line, and the eight named writer-directors. This has been questioned on the talk page for years and never resolved. Please open a dedicated talk section so it carries forward to any future nomination. Per WP:BURDEN, please supply a precise citation (or a reliable translation) confirming the wording.  Done; I added the precise quotes from the citation that supports the first few sentences in that section and also in last sentence, the list of directors named as auteur by Truffaut.
• Worth confirming when the lists are re-sourced: Bresson/Tati on that same newwavefilm.com page; Bay/Vox ("subversive...auteur" + verbatim phrases); Britannica (French origin + Sarris 1962, and the Astruc attribution); and the offline book quotes (Bloem p.97; Harmetz p.29; Godard/Lewis, Hillier p.295).  Done; All check. Also note that Sarris had coined the term "Auteur theory" in "Notes on the Auteur theory in 1962" piece in the 1962 edition of the quarterly magazine, Film Culture. It's already added as a citation.

Copyvio / close paraphrasing

• Earwig returns "violation unlikely" (top match around 30%); the highest hits are the quote-dense Bay/Vox and Pet Sounds/Atlantic passages, where the borrowed wording is properly quoted and attributed. No close-paraphrasing or copyvio concern. ✓

Structure, prose and coverage (criteria 1 & 3) - fails 1b, 3a, 3b

• The lead fails WP:LEAD and WP:EMBED (1b). Its third paragraph is one ~40-name run-on sentence with a citation after almost every director, and almost none of those directors are discussed anywhere in the body. A lead must summarize the body; this is a free-standing roster instead. Fix: remove the roster (it overlaps List of film auteurs); keep at most a few canonical, body-discussed examples; and add 2–3 sentences actually summarizing the Popular music and Video games sections (Spector, Wilson/Pet Sounds, Kojima/Miyamoto), which the current lead reduces to one clause.  Done
• The Video games section fails WP:LAYOUT/WP:EMBED (1b, 3b). 17 developers grouped together into one unprosed sentence with no connecting analysis. Prose-ify / trim to a few well-explained examples (as Popular music does well).  Done
• 3a - a major aspect is missing. The genre-theory critique, the principal academic counter-position to auteur theory in film studies, and one repeatedly raised on the talk page, is absent. A sourced sentence or two in Criticism is the minimum.  Done
• 3b - undue detail. The lead roster and the video-game name-list are both example-dumps that overweight "list of practitioners" against the theory itself.  Done; replaced both the list with links at section top which redirects to list articles.

Smaller prose/spelling fixes (would only be a hold on their own): missing comma between names for Japanese Auteurs - e.g. Katamari Damacy and Yuji Horii; display-name diacritics like Agnès.  Done; checked for WP:MOS.

Neutral (criterion 4) — pass

No problem. The authorship debate is balanced and attributed: Sarris/auteurists against Kael, Corliss/Kipen, Sadoul, and Harmetz, and the old 2011 unsourced "Criticism in Perspective" essay is gone from the current text.

Stable (criterion 5) — unresolved / aggravating

The talk thread "Notability of auteurs in the lede" (14 May 2026) refers to "recent edit warring" over the lede list, and the nominator's note - do not remove. It will be considered edit warring - reads more like an ownership warning (WP:OWN) than a consensus. On the static record I can't confirm whether reverting is currently active, so I'm not failing solely on 5 - but it's a real concern and, combined with the OR sourcing of that same list, it's part of why this needs to settle before a renomination. (If the live history shows an active war, 5 is an independent fail.)  Done; I have updated that thread with a new reply stating that the older list has been changed to include only a few select auteurs from the body.

Images (criterion 6) — pass

All three images are relevant, captioned, and freely licensed: Hitchcock (PD-US-not-renewed), Truffaut (Anefo / Nationaal Archief open-data release), and Spector (PD-US-no-notice, Billboard 1965). Each depicts a figure explicitly discussed and sits beside the relevant text.

Result

Not listed. This is not a reflection of the effort already invested. The theoretical core is good, but criteria 1b, 2c and 3a fail on the article as written, and the lede list raises an original-research problem that needs re-sourcing from secondary analysis plus talk-page consensus.

To get this to GA and renominate:

1. Rebuild the lead so it summarizes the body; remove the ~40-director roster (point readers to List of film auteurs); keep only a few body-discussed examples.
2. Resolve the OR: don't assemble an auteur list from primary sources / "multiple lists" — cite secondary sources that themselves call each person an auteur, and drop names that can't be supported.
3. Replace the blog/listicle/student-essay citations in both lists and for the Kael and Sandler claims with reliable sources.
4. Prose-ify or trim the Video games section into a few well-explained examples.
5. Add the genre-theory counter-position (3a).
6. Reconcile the 1954/1955 date; source or develop the Astruc mention.
7. Fix the small prose items (comma; Agnès/von/del).

Renominate as soon as these are addressed, and feel free to ping here for any questions.

ABehjat (talk) 23:48, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: That is a rigorous work of the issues you have deduced so far from a full read of my WP:GAN and I appreciate it. The only point that left me stuck was that I wanted to make the article ready according to the current nom but you're requesting for a re-nom and kept the current one on hold.

I have understood all the issues so far and I'm fairly confident that I can tackle them but before getting started, I wanted more clarity on the ambiguity of nom / re-nom situation. Thanks. Sddarealone (talk) 04:40, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

ABehjat, I agree you should clarify what you mean by re-nominating. I don't think the article should be failed yet, I think it should be put on hold. I think the nominator deserves a chance to fix these in a timely manner. However, if you think these are significant issues after or that the issues can't be resolved in a timely manner, it would support your rationale for failing this review. Up to you, and it also depends on if Sddarealone would support renominating it in another nomination, or addressing the issues in this one. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 07:28, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

@Alexeyevitch: Thanks for overseeing my WP:GAN. According to me, I think except for criteria 3a, all the others can be resolved quickly enough within a week's threshold as seen by the reviewer. In fact, one of my successful GAN's took 4 days to complete despite the great no. of issues raised in the review. Hence I'm confident I can tackle the same in this nomination fairly quickly enough without having to re-nom. Sddarealone (talk) 07:45, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Great. I suggest ABehjat allowing some time to Sddarealone to fix the issues. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 08:07, 27 June 2026 (UTC)

Sounds good and thank you Alex for the guidance!

Please proceed to make the updates and changes based on the feedback and ping me when they're complete and I'll re-review the article.

Would 14 days be sufficient for updates/review, starting from today? ABehjat (talk) 00:21, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

It's usually seven days, and the nominator said they can respond to the comments fairly quickly. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 01:08, 28 June 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: I have completed solving all the issues raised under the criterias (2, 3 and 5) and would like a further review to complete the GAN. Best regards, Sddarealone (talk) 21:06, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the thorough turnaround, @Sddarealone. I've re-read the article against the first-round findings, and the substance is essentially there now:

• 2c (original research + reliability) - resolved. The editor-assembled roster is gone, the failed-verification listicles and unreliable blogs with it, and each remaining named auteur rests on a secondary source that actually calls them one. Y
• 3a (major aspect) - resolved. The new Genre theory subsection supplies the academic counter-position with solid sourcing (Petrie in Film Quarterly, Langford, Chandler), and it's summarised in the lead. Y
• 1b / 3b (Video games) - resolved. Now prose built around a few well-explained examples rather than a name-list, with the roster pointed to List of video game auteurs. Y
• 2b - resolved. The 1954 (essay) vs 1955 (la politique des auteurs) distinction reads consistently, Astruc is developed in Origin, and you've supplied the verbatim Truffaut quotation that settles the long-standing verification concern. Y
• 5 (stability) - settled. No reverting since, and the lede dispute is resolved by the rewrite. Y

That clears everything the first round turned on. I'm keeping it on hold for one more short round rather than listing today, because rebuilding the lead has swung it the other way:

1b - the lead now runs long for LEADLENGTH. It's grown to seven paragraphs of detailed, citation-heavy prose: the full Lady Vanishes MacGuffin quote, the Godard-on-Lewis quote, the Bay and Sandler paragraphs. Much of this are duplicates from the body. Lead should be roughly 3-4 paragraphs that summarizes the primary points in the body. Could you condense it and keep the definition, the origin/Sarris history, the critique (including genre theory), and a sentence or two each on the film / music / games examples, and let the detailed quotations live in the body?  Done; Kept the lead now 4 paragraphs only.

1a - a few small fixes (feel free to just make these):

• One such well-known genre filmmakers is David Cronenberg → "filmmaker is".  Done
• Broken italics in Genre theory: cahiers du cinéma → Cahiers du cinéma.  Done
• Alexander Astruc (Origin) vs Alexandre Astruc (lead) — standardise on "Alexandre".  Done
• his directorial style as an auteur is such easily noticeable that → "is so easily noticeable that".  Done
• Thus the theory aims to break the glorification of critically acclaimed directors reads as an unattributed conclusion - attribute it to the cited scholarship or trim it.  Done; I modified the sentence according to RS.

Condense the lead and tidy those and we'll be ready to pass it. Ping me when done, and thanks again for your time and effort!

ABehjat (talk) 22:30, 1 July 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: I completed the last few fixes for the issues that you raised above. As you said, it seems the article should now be ready to pass as GA, should you not find any other issues with it. Also I'm glad you took notice of my efforts. I sped up the editing in 2 days as I find it more convenient to keep track of my edits in a shorter period of time. Sddarealone (talk) 07:11, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: Re-pinging you to know the GAN result as I have finished clearing all the issues in the article few days back. Sddarealone (talk) 11:39, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

=== Third-round review — source spot-check complete; short hold for a few sourcing fixes ===

Thanks @Sddarealone. the lead is now a tidy four paragraphs and the 1a fixes are all in, so the writing and structure are where they need to be. Before listing, I completed the source spot-check that criterion 2 calls for (I'd earlier flagged verification as something to hand back to you, but I should've also done a check. So I've now done one across a ~10% sample of the web cites and the offline books). Most of it holds up well:

• Truffaut / "A Certain Tendency" — the long-standing quote concern is resolved. Everything the Development section attributes to the essay (the "process of equivalence"; "when they hand in their script, the film has already been made"; the eight-name auteur list; "by a curious coincidence … auteurs"; "failed when they tried their hand at comedy") is in the cited text verbatim. Y
• Michael Bay / Vox — all quoted phrases verbatim, and the source explicitly calls him an auteur. Y
• Harmetz p. 29 — "collapses against the reality of the studio system" checks out. Y
• digitallydownloaded.net — I see you've already removed it. Y

A few sourcing items do need fixing before I can list — none large:

1. The Kojima "first auteur" claim still rests on an unreliable source. "The first well-known game auteur" (lead and Video games) is still cited to screenrobot.com, one of the sources I flagged as unreliable in round one. Two reliable sources call him an auteur but not the first: the Sydney Morning Herald ("Japan's pre-eminent auteur game designer") and Axios ("Gaming auteur Hideo Kojima"). Could you replace screenrobot.com with those and change "first" to "pre-eminent"? (Or keep "first" only as attributed opinion via the Mancunion line, which itself hedges it as "often dubbed".) As written, "first" isn't supported by a reliable source.  Done; I added The Sydney Morning Herald, and also kept the auteur claim only supported by mancunion (in body) and Herald in lede.

2. Bloem (p. 97) — please reconcile the paraphrase with the source. The quotations are accurate, but on that page Bloem's "motion picture poet" is exemplified by screenwriters (Carl Mayer, who wrote Caligari; Hans Kräly), and his point is that these writer-"poets" go unrecognised while fame goes to the producer. The article maps "poet/artist" onto the director, which this page doesn't quite support. Could you either cite Thompson & Bordwell (already in that paragraph) if they treat Bloem as a director-as-artist theorist, or soften the sentence to match the page?  Done; I simplified the context by keeping the producer as the main focus of Bloem who wanted the audience to see the contributions of screenwriters in cinema. Also I corrected the timeline to show the rising influence of film directors in the 1940s.

3. Kamina — the "influence of auteur theory" clause isn't supported. The EU-law point that the director is "considered the film's author or one of its authors" is accurate (that's the Term Directive). But "largely by influence of auteur theory" conflates droit d'auteur — the general authors'-rights doctrine, which predates and is unrelated to film auteur theory — with the film concept; the cited passage is about droit d'auteur and even notes that French law historically leaned toward the producer as author. Could you drop that clause (or attribute it only if Kamina explicitly says it)? Also, the cite reads "p. 153" but the relevant text is at paragraph 135 — worth confirming the locator.  Done; included the right text from Kamina's source; and yes it lies in p. 135. Additionally, I added the Luxembourg exception to the law which is on p. 160.

4. A quick self-check on the remaining book cites. Two of the paraphrases above (Bloem, Kamina) lean a little further toward "the director / auteur theory" than the sources say. Since I only sampled, could you give the other book-supported claims (Santas p. 18, Eisenberg p. 103, Butler p. 225, Bannister p. 38) a second read against their pages to make sure the wording matches? Just being thorough.  Done Bannister check, Butler check, Eisenberg check (The first auteur among producers was Phil Spector, a singer and song writer who moved into production in mid career (at the age of twenty)), but I couldn't find an online copy of Santas' book which is unfortunate as it's the first reference in the article. Santas check

In addition, can you trim a couple of overlinked names (Truffaut, Hitchcock and Kojima are each linked several times).  Done

Optional, not required: Cath Davies's Approaches to Pop Music (Auteur Publishing, 2008, p. 7) would give the Popular music section a one-sentence scholarly framing for why film auteur theory transfers to music, if you'd like to add it. It's available via Internet Archives.  Done

Please address the items above and I'll be happy to review again.

Ping me when done, and thanks again for the steady work here.

ABehjat (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

@ABehjat: All the above issues sorted including the optional suggestion. Kindly check. Sddarealone (talk) 13:25, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, @Sddarealone. I've checked the latest round against the live article and everything from the third-round list is resolved:

• Kojima "first auteur" — the unreliable screenrobot.com cite is gone; the lead now reads "Japan's pre-eminent auteur game designer" cited to the Sydney Morning Herald, and "first" survives only as attributed opinion via the Mancunion line. Y
• Bloem (p. 97) — the paraphrase now correctly gives the "artist/poet" role to the screenwriter, with the producer as the figure Bloem critiques, which matches the page; the 1940s timeline reads right too. Y
• Kamina — the "influence of auteur theory" clause is removed, the Term Directive is a cleanly attributed blockquote, the locator is corrected, and the Luxembourg exception is a good addition. Y
• Remaining book cites — Eisenberg now carries the verbatim Spector quote, Santas has an archive link, and Bannister and Butler check out. Y
• Overlinking — trimmed, and the optional Cath Davies framing in Popular music is a welcome addition. Y

Stability is settled as well: the only recent non-nominator edit was an unsourced addition you reverted on WP:V/WP:NOR grounds, which was exactly right.

That clears the last of the sourcing items. The article now meets all six criteria in my opinion — it's well written, verifiable with a completed source spot-check, broad in coverage, neutral, stable, and well illustrated. Congratulations, and thank you for the steady, thorough work throughout this review.

@Alexeyevitch, just need your final check and I can proceed with the pass.

ABehjat (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Just checked the review again and it's been properly reviewed against the six criteria. You may pass the review now. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 22:28, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.