Although the following words were written about Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928), they are perhaps equally applicable to this essay's subject, Murray Grigor, given the uncanny resemblance between Grigor's career and that of Mackintosh:

It is not that Grigor is wholly unknown in Scotland. He has, for example, collaborated with prominent Scots in mounting exhibitions and sociocultural public advocacy campaigns, including ones aiming to bring to greater public attention the architectural heritage of Glasgow in the buildings of Rennie Mackintosh and Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson (1817–75). Nor has the Scottish press been uniformly hostile to his work. The run-of-the-mill press often responded warmly, if somewhat bemusedly, and more politically and culturally alert commentators were positively enthusiastic. In Grigor's case, the equivalent of the ‘stolid, unimaginative men-of-the-world’ who had thwarted Mackintosh were the uncomprehending apparatchiks in certain Scottish arts, broadcasting and film institutions.

The title of this piece describes Grigor as ‘auteur’, a term formulated within French film criticism (particularly, the magazine Cahiers du cinéma) to describe the kind of film director whose stylistic and thematic identity is discernible across the whole range of their work. This essay retains the ‘auteur’ idea of identity and coherence, but – while being centrally concerned with Grigor's films – extends it to include his journalism, public advocacy, graphic art and association with the Edinburgh International Film Festival. His directorship of the latter (1967–73) coincided with the importation into the UK of the cinephilia which had reanimated post- WWII French film culture. The ideas of authorship and mise-en-scène were taken up and applied by younger British critics primarily associated with the journal Movie (1962–2000) and the British Film Institute Education Department.