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We’re coming up on the July Fourth weekend, and at the movies, that usually means that the biggest and best movies are being rolled out. Seeing as the third chapter in the interminable Twilight saga and the adaptation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon The Last Airbender are new at the multiplexes for the holiday, that might not be the case (especially since the best film of the year so far is Toy Story 3, and that’s already playing). Still, the latter film, a big-budget kiddie-friendly epic, is notable mostly for the man who’s bringing the show to the big screen in live action: M. Night Shyamalan. Hey, wait, where are you going? Come back! I’m not making you watch The Happening, I promise. Take a deep breath; it’s going to be okay.

Whether you’re a fan of Shyamalan now or you were at one point (I’m in the latter camp, having given up all hope after the one-two-three knockout punch of crap known as The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening), there is one thing we really shouldn’t debate too much: the man is an auteur. As you probably know, the auteur theory hearkens back to France in the 1950s, where it was argued that movies, despite being made by many people, speak with the voice of the director, or the auteur (or author). So, even though Lady in the Water was worked on by people aside from Shyamalan, all you need to do is look at one minute of the movie and know that it is undeniably an M. Night Shyamalan movie, filled with faux portent, stilted acting, pretentious dialogue, and a cameo from the director. This week’s A-List looks at five other, and far better, auteurs.

Alfred Hitchcock

I like to imagine that, after the excrescence that was Lady in the Water, wherein Shyamalan appeared as a man whose writings would be so important in the future that they would literally save the world, the ghost of Sir Alfred Hitchcock haunted Shyamalan and bullied him into either never making a cameo appearance or barely showing his face in one of his movies ever again. Shyamalan, of course, was tipping his hat (or ripping off, depending on your view) to Hitchcock’s famous habit of showing up in each of his great movies, but only for a second or two. In the classic suspense film North by Northwest, he shows up right after the opening credits as a man who misses a bus; in Psycho, he’s a passerby wearing a cowboy hat. In Lifeboat, the 1940s thriller set entirely on…a lifeboat (duh), he appears in a newspaper ad someone is skimming past.

This cameo style is but one of the many things that set Hitchcock apart from his fellow directors, and as an auteur (and one of the favorites of many of those French film critics who thought up the auteur theory). From the icy cool blonde femme fatales, the beleaguered male leads, the very thought of an innocent man or woman being accused of something they did not do…the list goes on, but the point is that you can start watching Vertigo halfway through (although why in the world you would want to is beyond me) and know immediately that it’s an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Even to surface elements, such as using famous actors like James Stewart and Cary Grant multiple times, proves Hitchcock’s auteur status. He’s one of the first and best.

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