Cinéma Vérité /Direct Cinema
Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment
(Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.
Week 10 Study Questions: November 22
Bruzzi, 67 – 74; Lioult, “Framing the Unexpected” www.ejumpcut.org
1. How does Lioult convince you that there is a problem with the staged-unstaged
dichotomy that has historically defined documentary practice?
2. How can a documentary scene be understood as both spontaneous and arranged?
3. Why does Lioult need to add the category “framing the unexpected” to
Ponech’s Type I “flexible” plans and Type II “more restrictive” plans as
strategies for documentary practice?
1. According to Bruzzi, Nichols’s position on observational cinema is that it comes at the
expense of loss of voice? If Nichols has seen “voice”
“style plus,” what is at stake here? What else is lost? List.
2. Consider the 4 different direct quotes Bruzzi attributes to U.S. direct cinema makers
about their documentary practice. How have these statements been construed?
What are other possibilities for interpreting these statements?
3. What are 3 practical aspects of basic film and/or video making that make the ideal of
pure cinema impossible for makers to sustain?
4. How would direct cinema makers (for instance, the Maysles in Salesman) defend the
manipulation of events to suggest a story?
5. Bruzzi says that observational cinema has been mis-defined, mostly by observational
filmmakers. What new definition does she offer? Does this definition apply to all
documentary films?
I. American direct cinema:
the models
Primary (Richard Leacock and Robert Drew [Drew Associates], 1969)
Don’t Look Back, 1967 ( D.A. Pennebaker, 1967)
Salesman (Albert and David Maysles, 1969)
Problem: discrepancies:
Stated ideals vs. cinema practice
D.A. Pennebaker: “It is possible to go to a situation and simply film what
You see there, what happens there, what goes on….And what’s a film?
It is just a window someone peeps through”
2. American direct cinema =
observational cinema
1. lightweight equipment
2. follow, do not lead the action
3. shoot/edit in chronological order
4. events must be revealed untouched
5. all music must have diegetic source;
no non-diegetic music can be used
6. no juxtapositions/no Kuleshov effect
7. the story must be “found” in the material
A) 3rd meaning produced from juxtaposition of 2 shots
CU Mozzhukhin + shot of cherry trees =
CU Mozzhukhin + shot of bowl of soup =
CU Mozzhukhin + shot of baby in casket =
Marion Crane stopped by cop
“shower sequence”
A) Shot/Reverse Shot
B) With absence of
establishing shot, viewer
infers shots in same space
establishing shots
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
3. direct cinema
A. the paradox :
documentary strives to give us unmanipulated
reality
totally unmanipulated or untouched reality is ultimately
impossible
B. the problem:
the hierarchy of direct cinema style (documentary codes)
pure = no narration, no interviews, no non-diegetic music
less pure = non-diegetic music, interviews, voice-over narration
least pure = self-reflexive camera,
sound recording
4. French Cinéma Vérité =
new cinema truth
Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique d’un été
(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)
1. The truth in lies: anticipates faux documentary
Rouch: film technique as “lying intermediary”; more real
than the truth. (“telling the truth by lying”)
2. characters: the truth of their lies and fictions
produces of a new reality that would not have existed
3. cutting style: shots give impression that there is
no space between the beginning of the end of one shot
and start of another.
4. documentary of encounter: characters & camera
Chronicle of a Summer/ Chronique d’un été
(Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, 1960)
Post-WW II – Nagra tape recorder +
16mm Bolex camera = Cinéma Vérité
camera as confessional accelerator: subjects must be provoked
Characters:
Marceline
Jean-Pierre (philosophy student)
Marilou – Italian living in Paris
Angelo – Renault worker
Landry – African
Jean Rouch – filmmaker
Edgar Morin - filmmaker/sociologist
Chronicle of a Summer/Chronique d’un été, Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin, 1960
5. The legacy of direct cinema
Frederick Wiseman: Basic Training, 1970; Primate, 1974; The Store, 1983; Zoo; Hospital;
Welfare
Michael Moore: Roger and Me, 1989; Bowling for Columbine
Fahrenheit 911 (2003); Sicko (2006), Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)
Nick Broomfield: Soldier Girls (1981); Chicken Ranch (1983)
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, 1995), Ghosts (2007)
Common features:
- interest in the quotidian (ordinariness)
Harlan County, U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976) - people as subjects
Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1985)
- following vs. leading subjects
Other directors/films:
Cannibal Tours (Dennis O’Rourke, 1987)
Grey Gardens (Albert and David Maysles, 1988)
Truth or Dare (Alex Keshishian, 1991)
The War Room (D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, 1993)
Hoop Dreams (Steve James, Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert, 1994)
6. The false comparison:
Cinéma Vérité (France)
camera provokes subject
new reality produced in the
making of the film
Direct Cinema (U.S.)
passive camera: no provocation
reality pre-exists & must be
respected
Jean Rouch: No difference between either:
presence of the camera alone (automatically) provokes
Cinéma Vérité: Defining the Moment
(Peter Wintonik, National Film Board of Canada,1999) 103 min.
“ER: The Live Episode”
Foreign letters
• ééèèœ àâáçêôöäüû