The relative isolation during the Salazar dictatorship and the near total absence of a commercial cinema, among other factors, have fostered a hospitable climate for distinctive, risk-taking auteurs, including the venerable Manoel de Oliveira (who turned 104 this month) and João César Monteiro and, more recently, Pedro Costa and João Pedro Rodrigues.
And with the rise of ambitious series led by show runners with voices as distinctive as any film auteur, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
This is what powers the charge, I suspect, that is commonly levelled against Lean: he is said to be impersonal, a coolly superb technician and a redoubtable marshaller of forces, but his movies lack the distinctive imprint of the auteur.
It's no surprise that the early fifties were the time when the young critics at Cahiers du Cinéma, those who would make the New Wave, exulted in Hollywood's artistry: they were discovering the distinctive work of American auteurs at exactly the moment when these directors were working more freely and more daringly than ever.
And he argued that Hollywood had produced auteurs, championing the distinctive voices of Orson Welles, John Ford and Sam Fuller, not to mention younger Turks.
Ade isn't as established as the bulk of directors vying for the prize, having helmed four features prior to the family comedy, but as many critics would wager, Toni Erdmann is distinctive enough to warrant her the auteur moniker.
Comic-book films rarely inspire auteur directors to really distinctive results, and you wonder whether a superhero – even if he does have existential traumas and razor-edged adamantium claws – will have the touch of intense seriousness that distinguishes Aronofsky from his contemporaries.
By the time of the 1948 consent decree in an antitrust suit that weakened the studios, Hollywood had built up a critical mass of talent that was suddenly set relatively free, able to burst forth in a splendid display of high-flying and extravagant achievements (the "auteur theory" was made for the distinctive and individualistic works of the fifties and early sixties).
The auteur, a film director who both has a distinctive vision for a work and exercises creative control, works with many other creative people.
The cinematic term auteur refers to a director whose work is so distinctive its authorship is evident in practically every scene, and if such a concept can be transferred to goalscoring in football, the sight of Hazard using his low centre of gravity and close control to bamboozle bigger defenders in his way surely qualifies.
