It's not vain or egomanical because it's the top billing. It has to do with the wording. A movie will generally say at the beginning 'A Film By Crocker Jarmen', and then at the end of the credit sequence say 'Directed By Crocker Jarmen'. The name dosen't need to be in there twice.

When it says 'A Film By', even though I know it's not the case, it reads as though that person is the brains and the brawn behind the show. It feels to me like if me and a hundred other people all chipped in money to buy someone a gift, and then I only wrote on the card 'To You, A Gift From Crocker Jarmen'.

I saw a nice title card the other night. On Leaving Metropolis (a truely wretched movie) it said 'A Film By Brad Fraser And...', after which everyone else got their title card, just as the appropriate way for me to sign the gift card would have been.

Where's TheV? I'm waiting for the "GOTCHA".

Yes, I'm waiting for someone to jump out from behind the curtain and say, "Hah! Only the key grip can claim this credit!"

I see your point. Mine is that because the director generally has the most creative control over a movie, allowing them “A film by …” attribution does not seem out of line---especially where they are responsible for and oversee virtually every aspect of a production. It’s like the “Building by ….” credit given to architects. Personally, I’ve always found it odd that actors tend to receive greater public recognition than directors and screen writers.

Audrey, the director recieves any and all appropriate credit with:

Directed by John Doe

Those who know film enough to get it, know that the director is steering the ship, and don't think that because a grip carried a C-stand that the director's role is somehow diminished. It's those with fragile confidence and large ego's that need the "A film by..." auteur B.S. It's really more of a minor quibble, but not an insignifcant one.

As of right now the results include:

Person who directed 43 votes

Person who wrote and directed 6 votes (including mine.)

Person who wrote the film 0 votes.

You guys have no respect for writers and are way too in love with the auteur theory.

This helps explain the nearly irrational fixation with the director's "vision" that rules all aspect ratio debates (even to the point where anyone daring to critique a particular director for his aesthetic choice in using a particular ratio is usually immediately snowed under in hostility.)

If you write and direct your films (like Kubrick usually did and like David Lynch does these days), then you've earned the right to claim the lion's share of the credit. If not, you're just the first among equals as the director.

Says you.

Sounds a little like "auteur" to me....

Where do you get that from? People are just voting on what they think the phrase means when they see it in the opening credits. It has nothing to do with "respect for writers," it has to do with the reality that when you see this phrase, it's almost always the director...regardless of who wrote the film.

I always thought it was who paid for the film, like Sir Run Run Shaw, for he was never a director, producer, or writer; he just came up with the money to bankroll the film.


Another man I seen Sir Lew Grade in the credits under A Film by and he wasn't any of the above either. What is the correct answer, this was 'not' a choice in the poll.

It's just my strong impression of the general frame of mind around here. Directors are looked upon as Olympain figures and given a bit too much credit, IMHO.


Exactly. If you fit into that mold (the Coens are another example), then you're legitimately an auteur, and "A Film By..." suits your case. If you direct a script that you had no input into, you're just (at best) the caretaker. Maybe a good one, with good ideas about shot composition and selection and the ability to get good performances out of your cast, but hardly the omnipotent god that film theory often makes auteurs out to be. At least from where I sit.

Buck, you missed Groucho's point. The question we were asked wasn't, "What SHOULD 'A Film By' mean?" It was. "What DOES 'A Film By' mean?"

Big, big difference.

I might agree that the credit SHOULD only be given to writer/directors, but that doesn't change the fact that the credit IS given to non-writing directors most of the time.

The writer deserves respect, but consider that most films don't have a single writer. A script might go through many typewriters before it hits the screen. A tweak here, a tweak there, often a script barely resembles the original writer's work, usually at the director, producer, or even actor's behest.

"A film by" when used at the end of credits is I think used when that person is established in the business, respected or just a plain auteur.

For instance, Heat. "A Michael Mann film"

I took the original question to be one relating to what our opinion would be (hence the phrase "I'd like to take an informal pole")

All I know is that if I see "A Film By Tony Scott" or "A Film By Adrian Lyne", I get up and run.

True, and that is the main reason so many of us leave the theatre looking like this: