Documentary essay

COMPARE AND CRITIQUE AT LEAST TWO TYPES OF DOCUMENTARY PRACTICE. MAKE EXPLICIT REFERENCE TO ANY SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THEIR AESTHETIC STRATEGIES, THEIR POLITICAL STANCE AND POLITICAL POSITION.

 

 

The documentary, may be generically defined as a cinematic device which attempts to deliver to the spectator visual information about reality.

This broad definition standing, documentaries have resulted in disparate practices, differing one from the

other, over the years, as far as their aesthetic strategies and the themes they deal with are concerned.

 

I think an early form of documentary can be said to be born at the very same moment as the first cinema of the Lumière brothers. In fact, the first films were photographing images and events of everyday life, such as the arrival of a train, a group workers leaving a factory or some children playing.

However, despite showing the capacity to document reality, the early films of the Lumière brothers were characterised by a complete lack of structure. To find a proper plot development in documentary practice, we have to wait until the early ‘20s of the past century, with Robert Flaherty and his “Nanook of the North” (1922).

I agree with most of the critics, according to whom it’s in the 1920s that the first clear thread of documentary practice was born.

In fact, in the 1920s and early ‘30s, documentary production increased significantly, especially in the U.S.A. and in Russia, in parallel with the experimental cinema of the European avant-garde, in response to the predominant cinematic form of the fiction film. As Ellis and McLane point out in “A New History of Documentary Film”

 

“… by the early nineteen twenties documentary and experimental had emerged alongside fiction to establish the three main impulses of film art, its principal mode. … the avant-garde as well as documentary started as rebellion against the fiction film, which had become the predominant artistic as well as commercial form.” (Ellis and McLane 2006:44)

 

Both the documentarists and the adepts of the avant-garde were in particular against the conventions of the classical narrative Hollywood fiction films, which they recognised as limited in regard to their will to explore further the possibility of film as a medium.

These new artistic tendencies, despite their different approach to the subject, were both trying to make “a truth” stand out; that truth which, according to them, was confuted in the Hollywood fiction films.

 

“For documentarists, conventional fiction films were not realistic enough; for the avant-gardists, they were too realistic. The former wanted external (objective) facts presented fully and accurately; the latter wanted formal (aesthetic) patterns and inner (subjective) truths presented poetically.” (Ellis and MacLane 2006:44)

 

the common will of both the avant-gardists and documentarists to create something more “real” facilitated the union of these two different art forms. To my mind, the fusion between documentary and the avant-garde is best exemplified in what is known in cinema as surrealist documentary.

Surrealism was originally born in France in consequence of the decline of both decadentism and dadaism, along with the diffusion of psychoanalysis. The newborn science stimulated artists to interest themselves in depicting the visions of dreams and of the unconscious.

Films, more than photography, were the best way for many surrealist artists to express themselves. The unexplored land of the unconscious with its multicoloured visions, made the avant-gardist filmmakers gradually abandon the non-objective abstraction of the avant-garde of the early 1920s, strongly influenced by futurism and cubism, to give birth to the new avant-garde of cinematic surrealism.

The first traces we’ve got of the union between documentary and surrealism, date back to the late twenties of the 20^th century, and in particular to the “Documents” edited by Georges Bataille. This was a Parisian journal, which first appeared in the French capital city in 1929 and was characterised by a predilection for the grotesque,

Bataille’s journal was intended to be a rebellion  against the artistic canons of the French humanist Borgeoisie. For this reason, it promoted an art deprived of the humanist sense of beauty and went openly against the market logics of the time.

However, despite French models such as Jean Vigo (Taris, Roi de l’Eau – 1931) and Jean Lods (Le Mile – 1934), the best example of surrealist documentary, can be found in Spain with Luis Bunuel and his “Las Hurdes” (Land Without Bread) (1932).

The film is about the miserable conditions of the people who live in Alberca, a small village in the mountainous region of the Hurdes, one of the poorest in Spain.

As a confirmation of Bataille’s definition, as soon as the film began to be screened in cinemas, the audience was shocked by the bizarre taste, so unsuitable for the market and dissimilar to the traditional aesthetic canons of the humanist documentaries. In fact, the strength of “Las Hurdes” and of most of the documentaries which are linked to the thread of the surrealist documentary, is to be researched not in the formal accuracy, but, on the contrary, in the transgression to pre-existing stylistic codes.

According to me, what makes this documentary really stand out is the ability of Luis Bunuel to find the correct balance between the surrealist aspects with all the horrific visions they imply and the actual documentarist approach, and the exploration of the life of the Hurdanos. I think the surreal treatment of the subject allows the director to gain a more detached look in relation to what he’s testifying. This allows him to respect the genuineness of the people who live in Alberca.

Further on, the horrific images we see on the screen prevent us from identifying with the Hurdanos; and, on the other hand, the surreal, extreme insensitivity which transpires from both the film and the unstressed voiceover, avoid us taking the side of the director’s point of view either. In line with the typical aesthetic strategies of surrealism, the film is more of a visionary slideshow rather than a proper narrative processed documentary. In this sense the use in the film of the fourth symphony of Johannes Brahms is also significant, since it manages to emphasise the lack of a diegetic narrative, as well as to create a stylistic contrast between classical culture, represented exactly by the music of the Austrian composer, and the pverty-stricken conditions of the people of Alberca.

 

“Bunuel’s Land Without Bread (1932) forces us to look at the devastating actuality, the poverty of the Las Hurdes region of Spain, in a way that might be described as having the intense irrational reality of a dream – that is, of being sur real.” (Ellis and McLaine 2006:47)

 

Anyhow, surreal documentary didn’t last but a few years between the very end of the 1920s and the beginning of the thirties. The main cause for the short life of the movement, is to be sought outside cinema: Europe in the early thirties was being shaken by the rise of Adolph Hitler and Nazism in Germany in 1933 and later by the fascist revolution of Francisco Franco in Spain; and by the rise of Stalinism in Russia. In particular Germany was now being seen as the supreme enemy. Adolph Hitler’s politics, in fact, being a danger for European democratic society, was also constituting a threat to freedom of thought and consequently to art in general.

For this reason, artists, including filmmakers, started to believe in the necessity of a strong socio-political consciousness, necessary in order to survive the threat of Nazism. The consequence of this new tendency was a sudden abandoning of the previous avant-garde, which was denounced for its dealing in a superficial manner with themes no longer considered important.

 

“… political ‘engagement’ became a near-necessity for Britain’s intellectuals, and the formalist explorations of the twenties were often viewed unfavourably by the new generation of critics and directors.” (Buckell 2005:34)

 

Although the avant-gardists sided with left wing politics, almost none of them expressed any political convictions in their films, which were, as I said, focused on the inner world of the human psyche. Therefore, a changing of focus on to the more daily problems of politics and society, called for a radical change of aesthetic strategies: where surrealists used an editing process which avoided a clear diegetic narrative,  the filmmakers of the thirties opposed a linear narrative; where surrealists expressed their art by having recourse to visionary landscapes, often contrasting the images with music, the documentarists of the thirties opted for the lucidity of realism and a diegetic use of the soundtrack.

The focus on political issues in the documentaries of the thirties increased quickly and considerably.

Especially in countries such as England and France, where fear of both Russian Stalinism on the one hand and the Nazi threat of Hitler on the other was high, filmmakers found little or no difficulties in realising their films. It was no rare thing in such countries that it was directly the government which financed political documentaries, in order to have the population made more aware of the acute dangers of the totalitarian regimes. Since the government was supporting documentaries of political propaganda and social awareness, many documentarists found an easy way to have their works produced without much effort. It is no accident  that almost all of the documentarists of the thirties were politically committed, and especially to the left.

With a generation of filmmakers more aware of the social and political problems of their time, the new aim of their work was no longer the search for beauty, for “art for art’s sake”, but rather they concentrated their efforts in order to create something “as real as possible”, something which could reproduce faithfully the socio-political reality in which they lived; usually exploiting unstressed voiceovers to better emphasize their non-research of aesthetic expedients.

However, many directors, despite being conscious of the seriousness of the situation of the time, didn’t stop their quest for creativity. Documentarists such as Robert Flaherty (Industrial Britain – 1933) and Alberto Cavalcanti (Coal Face – 1936) both denounced the conditions of poverty of the industrial workers and miners in Britain, trying to balance raw actuality with an aesthetic taste, using what John Grierson, one of the fathers of English documentary, defines as “creative treatment of actuality”.

The same John Grierson, in the 30s, contributed by creatively producing many social-conscious films together with the British GPO.

On the other hand, in Russia and Germany it was practically impossible for the filmmakers to express themselves and in general to make any films at all. The only exceptions were those films wanted and approved by the regime; which used them as propagandist means to gain the support of their peoples.

 

“Documentaries in the 1930s were connected with economic and political upheavals and innovations. Totalitarian regimes employed them to gain the allegiance of their people. In Britain and the United States they were used to try to strengthen democratic societies in the face of ailing economies at home and imperialist aggression abroad.” (Ellis and McLane 2006:227)

 

To find another new, significant documentary practice, we must wait until the sixties.

After the second world war and the atrocities it implied, documentarists experienced a phase not characterised by anything really relevant in terms of innovation. I would say the fifties, apart from the gradual growth of television as a mean of mass entertainment, weren’t an important decade for the production of documentaries; I think they were rather a decade of transition, during which were constituted the basis for the rise of the documentary production of the sixties.

At the very end of the fifties, television had increased its power considerably, thanks also to the incredible mass purchase of the appliance. This, in addition to an unprecedented improvement in the field of recording equipments (lightweight cameras, possibility of synchronous recording of both sound and video) created the condition for the rise of the so called “Cinema Verité”.

By the end of the 1950s in Europe, and in particular in France, the clear political stance and social awareness of the documentarists of the thirties was over. The arrival of better living standards which characterised the post-war period, resulted in the abandoning of political idealism on the part of the population. This new generation, which in France took the name of “Nouvelle vague” (New Wave), was devoted to amusement, relaxation and was characterised by a general indifference toward politics. In cinema, this particular climate resulted in a generation of young directors determined to fight commercial cinema and its conventions, with films which expressed their personal vision of the world around them. This was made possible thanks to the new lightweight cameras and the new sound technology, which allowed the filmmakers to move around and shoot without the encumbrance of a big crew with all the economic expenses it required; and also thanks to the new unexpected lack of interest by side of the population to mainstream Hollywood commercial movies and a major interest in independent documentary production. For the new generation of directors, however, it wasn’t Hollywood that represented the main “enemy” any longer; the new threat was now the television. As I said, television had gained a worldwide influence on the people, by giving them fun and entertainment and a fictitious image of the outside world. It was exactly the fictitious face of television that caused the critical reaction of the Documentarists of the sixties. In fact, they placed the search for  “Truth” at the centre of their works, giving birth to the cinematic movement which took the name of “Cinema Vérité” in Europe and “Direct Cinema” in the United States.

 

“the whole function of television is to produce a visible world, visible and comprehensible at the touch of a switch and in whose production no other effort is required” ( Godard quoted in MacCabe 1980:141)

 

Cinema Vérité adepts were interested in common people, living their normal everyday life. They were trying to capture life “as it actually is”, in opposition to the fictitious image of reality proposed by television productions. They were convinced that this was possible by not interfering with the action of the characters. To achieve their goal, and make the contrast between their films and those produced by television stand out, they used new aesthetic expedients; different from the ones adopted in the thirties and from those of the surrealist documentary. We no longer find the abstract visions of surrealist nor the harmonic structure of realism. In Cinema Vérité, we find shaky hand-held cameras, an unusual photography, in open contrast with the traditional one, live-recorded sound; all elements which contributed, together with the particular way in which the directors dealt with the subjects of their movies, to create something “super-realistic”. In Cinema Vérité and Direct Cinema the search for “truth” is so obsessive that what we get on the screen goes inevitably to the detriment of art. As far as I’m concerned, Cinema Vérité is the extreme opposite of the surrealist documentary. If surrealist cinema is focused on the exploiting of the “artistic power” of cinema, preferring the pure beauty of the images to the development of a logical structure, Cinema Vérité, on the other hand, is so concentrated on the search for “truth” that the camera becomes a sterile recorder of what is in front of the lens, depriving the film of the artistic elements which characterise film as an art form. Moreover, if according to Cinema Vérité the director of the film must not intrude in any way into his subject, the film ends up lacking in personality.

 

“…the observational style is problematic because it implies the filmmakers’ loss of voice… pure observation comes at the expense of commitment, interventionism and authorship.” (Bruzzi 2006:69)

 

Apart from the lack of art which characterised Cinema Vérité and Direct Cinema movies, I think another problem is linked with the actual amount of “truth” we can witness in these movies. Probably, the incredible technical improvement, left Cinema Vérité adepts with the feeling that they could now do anything they wanted to with films. Leaving aside whether a Cinema Vérité documentary is enjoyable and well realized or not, I think I can argue that none of them actually manages to capture the absolute truth they were claiming. As most of the critics nowadays assert, as long as there are people who make decisions about what to shoot  and how to edit it, films will always be subjective.

 

“There isn’t any Cinema Vérité. It’s necessary a lie from the moment the director intervenes – or it isn’t cinema at all.” (Franju quoted in Levin 1971:119)

 

Despite the difference of approach to the subject (European Cinema Vérité adepts believed that one character would open up and reveal his real self in front of the camera, while American Direct Cinema filmmakers thought it was necessary to get the subject during a situation in which he would not be aware of the camera), I’d personally say that the documentaries of these filmmakers are so deprived of artistic value and lacking story development, that, despite few exceptions, all that transpires from these films is their failure to keep faith to an utopian objective such as that of the representation of the absolute truth.

 

“Cinema Vérité is first of all a lie, and secondly a childish assumption about the nature of film. Cinema Vérité is a joke. Only people without feelings or convictions could even think of making cinema vérité. I happen to have strong feelings and some of my dreams and prejudices are under and in everything I do.” (Rosenthal 1978:7)