Picking Up (and Filming) the Pieces: Post-War Documentary
OK...1945...La guerre est finis (the war is over!)
In Britain, the US, and other countries,
Post-war civilian populations faced the future with a
combination of optimism and weariness after 6 years of war.
European cinemas in particular reflected the weariness and
existential anxiety of the post-war world.
While American and British mainstream cinema veered into
fluff and technicolor escapism,
(or into the dark obsessions of film noir)
filmmakers in Italy and France were pursuing different
directions.
In Britain, the film industry was in the doldrums.
 The British mainstream screen was filled with a parade
of
 unremarkable comedies
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 rehashing of wartime valor
 stuffy literary adaptations and historic dramas.
 Grierson had immigrated to Canada before the war to head
the National Film Board of Canada
 Documentary film, which had flourished during the war under
government sponsorship,
ran out of both creative stream and government
money.
While the pre-war society chronicled by Grierson and his heirs had
radically changed in many ways over the course of the war
 many of the stiffling and restrictive features of British
society--including the rigid class stratification--remained in
tact.
 These social strictures and divisions, which had
always been reflected in British cinema, continued inform
much of the work coming out in post-war England.
However, in the decade following the War, things were to change:
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In the late 40's a group of rebellious young film enthusiasts at Oxford
University began a series of small film magazines and film
screenings.
The editorial stance of these cineastes was nothing if not contentious:
 They slammed the British film industry for
 being dominated by Hollywood and
 for not having a clear national voice of its own.
 This group of young upstarts jeered at the Griersonian
tradition of British documentaries for being
 preachy, and dull, and
 for representing the monolithic collective
voice of government sponsorship.
The Oxford film group looked toward a cinema that would be
 personal, poetic, and representative of the times and of
the lives of the common man.
 There was an expressed desire to forge a new British
cinema (something on par with the French New Wave which
was happening at the same time).
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The leader of this group was a critic and filmmaker named Lindsay
Anderson.
In 1956 he coined the term Free Cinema to describe a program of
short films made and exhibited by him and his young filmmaking
chums
The documentary films turned out by members of the Free Cinema
group were Free in the sense of
 being made outside of the framework of the film industry,
 free of government or industrial sponsorship.
 They were also free in the fact that they were intended as
intensely personal statements
not the work of a collective or group process
(compare with Grierson or Soviet filmmakers of
1930s)
Anderson and his colleagues felt that the traditional realism of the
British documentary were obstacles to that creativity.
 The Free Cinema group was more interested in
--observing and developing a feel for the lives and stories
of individuals, rather than
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--either contributing social or political discourse or
acting as an agent for social and political change.
Nonetheless: Many of the films by this group did have a
distinctly political or socially-conscious bent:
 There was in general a distinctly anti-establishment
tone to these films.
The focus was often on
 the life and leisure of working class Brits
 and the subtext of many was a condemnation of the
British class system itself.
 Free Cinema films tended to be low budget works (many
underwritten by the British Film Institute).
 They were often shot with newly-developed portable equipment
and often make innovative use of the camera and sound.
They often poked into places society was inclined to ignore or
keep hidden. Leaving conclusions to viewers their films were
ambiguous.
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In their
 observational style,
 their use of portable equipment to obtain a sense and look of
social realism and immediacy,
 their dealings with edgy or controversial subjects,
the works of the Free Cinema group were to have a major impact
on the US documentary style known as Direct Cinema…which
we'll be discussing at length next week.
Most members of the Free Cinema group eventually migrated into
feature films, most of which reflected the groups aesthetics, styles
and subject matter.
CLIP from Opening sequence Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(Karel Reisz 1960_
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In the 1940's another important current in European cinema was
happening in Italy.
After the war Italy was a nation
both demolished by war and
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liberated by it.
The war had left Italy in both social and psychological disarray.
--The nation was emerging from over a quarter century of
fascist dictatorship.
--The post-war film movement that emerged in Italy -known as Neo-realism—
was at least in part a response to Italy's immediate
past 1`and a desire to forge a new future with new
cultural values.
The three leading lights in the movement included,
 Roberto Rossalini, whose Rome Open City (1945) is
generally considered to be the opening shot in the Neorealist movement.
 Vittorio de Sica
 Luchino Visconti
SHOW CLIP from BICYCLE THIEF
***This is obviously a fictional narrative. Why am I showing it to you
in this documentary class???????????
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The movement is characterized by
 realistic plots filmed in
 long takes,
 on location,
 using natural lighting.
 The preference of neorealist directors was to use nonactors…
(the actor in the clip we'll see in a minute-Lamberto Maggiorani .was a steelworker)
 Neo-realist directors consciously attempted to avoid the film
artifice of close-up shots emphasizing star quality.
These were films that had the look, the grittiness of "the real".
Neorealism rejected the trappings of Hollywood glamor
in favor of surface, emotional, and psychological realism, and
immediacy.
Many neorealist films center on the poverty and hardship
encountered by working class Italians during post-war reconstruction.
Bringing the "dailiness" and poetry of ordinary
people's lives to the screen.
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
Like Free Cinema, neorealist films tended to
observe social problems and their impact on individual
rather than offering solutions.
One gets the sense in these films of life unfolding,
with all its vagaries, confusions and messiness
(definitely not the glamorous stuff of Hollywood which sought to
enthrall but not connect the audience with life outside of the
theater.)
There's an intimate tie to time and place in most Neo-realist films...a
sense of being there.
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In France after the War-a crop of new non-fiction film makers also began flexing it's
muscle.
Among these were Alain Resnais--later to become a notable director
of fiction film.
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Resnais made a number of small documentary works in the years
after the war.
 None of these works were as powerful as the film we’re
about to see—night and fog--a meditation on the
holocaust, on memory, and history--Night and Fog (1955)
 one of the earliest films to address the holocaust…
Made a scant 10 years after the end of the war night and fog was
made as
a production commissioned by an official French governmental
agency to memorialize the camps.
Resnais initially declined the commission
 felt his lack of first-hand experience of the camps would
mean his film lacked authenticity…
 But then he relented, provided the Catholic poet Jean
Cayrol would consent to participate in the project.
 Cayrol' had been a member of the French resistance
and was a camp survivor His brother died in a camp
 his 1946 book of poems (Poems of Night and Fog)
evoked this experience.
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 Contemporary color sequences for the film were shot at Auschwitz
and Maidanek campus--filming underwritten by Polish govt.
 Black and white film was reconstructed from actuality
material and stills gathered from camp museums.
Film won prestigous Prix Jean Vigo in 1956.
It was chosen to represent France in competition at Cannes.
However following a private screening for the German
ambassador, the German government officially demanded it be
withdrawn…
French govt waffled by allowing the film to be screened at
Cannes, but withdrawing it from official competition.
Some things you should know before watching this film
When Germany defeated France in June 1940, there
were approximately 350,000 Jews in the country.
More than half of them were refugees from
Germany who had arrived during the 1930s.
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In June 1940, France signed an armistice with
Germany.
 Under the terms of the armistice, northern and
eastern French provinces either came under
direct German occupation or were annexed to
Germany.
 Southern France remained unoccupied and was
governed by a French administration under the
leadership of Marshal Henri Philippe Petain.
 The Petain regime had its capital in the town of
Vichy.
 Officially neutral, Vichy France collaborated
closely with Germany.
In July 1941, Vichy inaugurated an extensive program
of "Aryanization," confiscating Jewish-owned property
for the French state under newly coined anti-semitic
statutory laws and deporting Jews to detention camps
in France and Spain.
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In the summer of 1942 deportations from France began
in earnest,
with French police implementing the rounded up
Jews, particularly those without French citizenship
In 1942, at least 62,000 Jews were deported from
France mainly to Auschwitz... During the war, over
77,000 Jews deported from France were murdered
in Nazi camps.
The other thing to keep in mind:
"We all had the same reaction. We tried not to see it. We were
shocked, but powerless. At first, revolted; by the end,
indifferent. It has to be said, it's shameful."
What do you think this quote is talking about????
These are the words of a French soldier, who witnessed torture
during France's war in Algeria in the 1950s
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France had occupied Algeria as a colonial power since the early
1900s.
But the period of1954 to 1962 saw the culmination of a century
of Algerian nationalist rebellion against France.
It was a period of
--violent guerrilla strikes by the radical Algerian National
Liberation Front (FLN)
--terrorism and torture against both Algerian and French
civilians,
--and coups within the French military
The last thing I want you to keep in mind as you watch:
Up to this point, we've seen documentaries that have primarily
dealt with problems, issues, activities and events in the present
tense. The film we are about to watch takes us into the realm
of memory--historical, personal, and public: what Nichols calls
"Memory Theatre"... As you watch think about how
documentary can serve as a way of preserving and shaping
and inciting memory...
SHOW NIGHT and FOG
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Questions: NIGHT AND FOG
Nostalgia: we are fond spectators of a calm time, lulling, purged of
that constant moment-to-moment anxiety for ones survival that edges
each present moment with pain….It's as if the nostalgic film longs to
attain the status of the snapshot, the perfect form…the past not as
question but as posssession.
--Jay Cantor "Death and the Image"
"He makes the horrible ordinary so we may believe it; and then he
makes the ordinary horrible so that we may fear it."
--how is this manifested in the film…what does Cantor mean?
--In 1956, France was embroiled in a growing colonial war in
Algeria…How is this reflected in the film?
--French complicity with Nazis in Vichy…from 1940 on Jews
deported
--What is the intent of this documentary? What do the makers want
us to question? Feel? Do?
--Cantor: What I think the filmakers demand of us seems
almost inhuman: that the death instinct, and our anxiety, might
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be felt by us and in us, in each of its manifestations, that the
viewer might play every role in the film: executioner, spectator,
victim, and the artist whose violence forms the image of this
kingdom of death. Resourceful animals, we need all exits
closed or we will avoid this confrontation."
--What is the filmmaker saying about making a film of this type?
What is the filmmakers role?
--Is the film more or less effective for not having used personal
testimony? Why do you think Resnais chose not to use witnesses?
The viewer is forced to consider the inadequate evidence and make
the connections, relive the "endless interrupted fear."
--Can the past be retrieved thru this documentary evidence? What
part of the past? What elements of the past can we know?
"What remains of the reality of these camps--despised by those
who made them. incomprehensible to those who suffered here?
…no description, no picture can restore their true dimension."
We would need the very matress,,,
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--What do you make of the fact that Resnais never mentions Jews
explicitly? Simply calls them "deportees"
--What does the filmmaker say about the types of documentary
evidence he's using? Is it effective in doing the job? Can ANY
evidence effectively serve the job?
***"No description, no shot can restore their true dimension,
endless interrupted fear."
The gulf between the experience reconstructed thru the
assemblage of evidence and the the historic experience.
--Were the social and psychological "meaning" and implications of
this film different in 1955 than now?
--What's the significance of "the only sign--but you have to know--is
the ceiling scored by fingernails." --the only slim evidentiary link
between past and present
--Much of the stock footage and photography was originally
taken by the Nazis--a way of documenting and justifying their
work. What does the use of this material in this film say about
the nature of documentary evidence?
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--Some of the footage used was taken by allied liberation forces--how
do you think this footage was used? What was it's purpose? How is
that purpose different from the uses in the film?
--Photographic evidence vs moving picture evidence: sequence of
man in hospital bed.
-- investigates the cyclical nature of man’s violence toward man and
presents the unsettling suggestion that such horrors could come
again.
--Night and Fog: a reference to the arrival of interned prisoners into
concentration camps under the cloak of darkness, and the
subconscious suppression of knowledge and culpability for the
resulting horror of the committed atrocities. -- -- Using highly
unsettling, archival footage recorded during postwar liberation
contrasted against the stillness of the modern-day landscape,
Resnais creates a powerful, haunting chronicle of cruelty,
dehumanization, and denial of personal responsibility.
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--The text emphasises the timelessness and transferability of events
and, in view of the struggle for liberation in Algeria at that time, is a
warning against new executioners.
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