  We show how low-level formal features, such as shot duration, meant as length
of camera takes, and shot scale, i.e. the distance between the camera and the
subject, are distinctive of a director's style in art movies. So far such
features were thought of not having enough varieties to become distinctive of
an author. However our investigation on the full filmographies of six different
authors (Scorsese, Godard, Tarr, Fellini, Antonioni, and Bergman) for a total
number of 120 movies analysed second by second, confirms that these
shot-related features do not appear as random patterns in movies from the same
director. For feature extraction we adopt methods based on both conventional
and deep learning techniques. Our findings suggest that feature sequential
patterns, i.e. how features evolve in time, are at least as important as the
related feature distributions. To the best of our knowledge this is the first
study dealing with automatic attribution of movie authorship, which opens up
interesting lines of cross-disciplinary research on the impact of style on the
aesthetic and emotional effects on the viewers.
