Montage Vs Auteur

Recently in my introduction to film class I have been hearing a lot about Montage and Auteur theory of both. Montage, for me, was relatively easy to understand. Laura does a wonderful job describing montage theory in her blog The many flavors of Montage. I will assume that people can read that and figure out what montage means and so I will not spend much time defining it. Montage in a jiffy is a belief that it is the combination of shots, and the way they are placed together that makes a movie. In thinking about this I found myself agreeing whole heartily with this theory. It is very difficult to use an establishing shot to also tell the story and show character development. Yet, one often wants an establishing shot in order to orient the viewer. Just as one often wants a close up as a way to pick out a specific character as important. In other words each shot is limited in the amount of information it can portray, and by combining shots one can increase the amount of information that is portrayed to the audience.
In class I found that I had a hard time understanding what Auteur theory was. I somehow got it into my head that there was a war going on between Montage and Auteur theorists and that therefore Auteur theory must be the opposite of Montage. In truth this is not at all the case, they can both coexist quite peacefully. What Auteur theory says is that it is the director who is responsible for the effect of the movie. They believe that he is more the “author” of a movie then is the writer or screen writer because he has control over the audio and visual elements in the movie. This theory started mostly with Andre Bazin. This is interesting to think about because it really says that it is not the dialogue or the plot that makes the movie but it is the visual effects such as lighting, camera work, blocking, and sound that are really important. This is really in no way at odds with Montage theory as far as I can tell because Montage theory just focuses on a smaller portion of what Auteur theory focuses on.
In watching Hero I found myself agreeing with both of these theories. In hero the plot is rather limited as the myth from which it came is rather limited. However, the visual aspects in it are stunning, if a bit cheesy from time to time. The impact of color in it, such as when the people change clothes in different versions makes it quite impressive. Also, the way the camera makes it appear that the actors can move and do things faster then are possible makes it for a very amusing and interesting movie. This is a movie that would have in no way worked without as many cuts and edits as it has. I find myself always coming back to a scene right at the beginning where Sky kicks away four guards who are trying to arrest him. he kicks them all one after another in rapid succession. It actually appears cheesy because it is obvious that no one could actually achieve this feat. But it is an effect that can only be pulled off threw editing.