Abstract:  According to Francois Truffaut, the proposal of “film author” is to strengthen the “director personality”, i.e. bringing director′s individual ideas and designs into films. The theory of “film author” advanced with the rise and development of “the New Wave” film campaign and later on in its transmission grew into a film critic method or strategy, a new film theory and more than that, a new perspective in the historical studies of films. Yet the identification of the “film author” with the director as the singular author incurs critical reproach. We believe that since the day the “film author” was put forward, its concept and implication has been interpreted in comparison with literature author. However, the historical significance of “film author” theory to film has been neglected, as the negative effects are evident: the true connotation and significance of the “film author” theory is yet to be excavated, and even misinterpreted. We argue that a director is ostensibly regarded as a literature author according to the theory of “film author”, but between the lines it actually confirms the nature of film: it reveals the ontological property of film and liberates film radically from wordsdominated reading tradition, restoring the imagebased significance of film which as a technological invention has developed from entertainment “device” to narrative art, from silent to sound, from blackandwhite to colored over nearly 60 years

Key words: film author, literary tradition, ontological property of film