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COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
1. Documentarist as. . . PROPHET
Definition(s):
Documentary = moving images that document some real phenomenon or action
Prophet = early practitioner of documentary filmmaking (unusual as a
documentarist type, in that it does not seem applicable to later practitioners)
Key Concepts & Issues:
Institutionalization—“court photographers,” both official and unofficial (e.g., Kaiser
Wilhelm’s visit to London)
Fakery—from the very beginning of film, so-called documentary footage has often
been fabricated either wholly or in part (e.g., Albert E. Smith & J. Stuart Blackton mixing fake footage with genuine in depiction of Teddy Roosevelt’s San Juan Hill charge; e.g., Melies’ 1902 “reconstitution” footage of coronation of Edward VII, shot in Paris, mixed with genuine shots)
Narrative film advances as stifling the progress of documentaries—re editing, mostly
Newsreel—the newsreel is the legitimate offspring of early actualities
Archives—an early call for a depository of documenting footage by Boleslaw Matuszewski in1898
Key Filmmakers:
1. Scientists:
Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen—documenting Venus/sun eclipse in1874
Eadweard Muybridge & Etienne Jules Marey—documenting slivers of time,
freezing motion with their series photography and photo gun, respectively. . . cross-sections of motion in time
Georges Demeny—Marey’s assistant who proceeded to photograph mouths in CU for lip reading training
2. Businessmen:
Thomas Edison—Developed a heavy, fairly immobile camera that frequently shot in the Black Maria studio; “items of the world” were brought before the camera (e.g., strong men, dancers, boxers, vaudevillians); films were viewed by individuals via the kinetoscope beginning in 1894
Louis Lumiere—Developed a very light, portable camera/projector/printer apparatus, the cinematographe, that traveled the world beginning in 1895; by 1897, there were about 100 Lumiere operators filming and exhibiting mixed travelogue programs around the world; at the end of 1897, the Lumiere brothers ceased their “world demonstration tours” and concentrated on selling cinematographes
COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
2. Documentarist as. . . EXPLORER
Definition(s):
Ethnography = genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies; an investigative technique that involves immersion in a culture not one’s own, letting the analytical tools and methods emerge from the culture itself
Explorer = one who explores, i.e., the act of searching or traveling for the purpose of discovery, e.g. of unknown people, including space, mineral prospecting, or for information
(Is this at odds with the concept of ethnography??)
Key Concepts & Issues:
A friction between the role of the explorer and the goal of preserving indigenous cultures—i.e., the explorer or prospector is after something (e.g., minerals, a trade route, oil), and its discovery will undoubtably change the people living nearby. . . can documenting the affected culture assuage the explorer’s guilt?
Key Filmmakers:
Robert J. Flaherty
An American educated at a mining school, he worked in Canada as a prospector for Sir Wm. MacKenzie, who urged him to take a camera on his third trip
After a three-week cinematography course in Rochester, he shot many hours of Eskimo life, footage that was heavily damaged in a fire
Post WWI, he began again, completing Nanook of the North in 1922
Obsessed with documenting his “discoveries” (the land, and the people before contact with outsiders changed them)
At the same time, he always attempted to make commercially viable films; he and his wife hoped the success of Nanook would lead to a lifelong career documenting disappearing cultures, something that never quite worked out (e.g., Moana (1926) produced while under contract to Paramount, failed at the box office)
His widow Frances Flaherty said he always called himself “an explorer first, and a filmmaker second”
COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
3. Documentarist as. . . REPORTER
Definition(s):
Reportage = dissemination of factual information from one source (typically a journalist) to a large, undifferentiated audience; includes news, newsreels
Key Concepts & Issues:
Whose “truth” is being reported? What is the “news”? (In the case of the Soviet documentarists, it was the “socialist reality.”)
Key Filmmakers:
Dziga Vertov (nee Denis Kaufman)
Oldest of the three Kaufman brothers, born in the Soviet Union in 1896; all three eventually worked in film
First, a medical student and futurist poet
Constructed sound montages in his “audio-laboratory”
In 1918, at 22, he became a newsreel editor for the new Bolshevik Cinema Committee; his work using footage of the revolution was disseminated by agit-train to the masses
The NEP (New Economic Policy, circa 1921) resulted in Vertov’s exposure to more foreign films, and allowed for Soviet content to be exported more readily
Vertov became a writer, theorist, and producer; his “Council of Three” (Vertov, wife/editor Yelizaveta Svilova, and brother/cameraman Mikhail Kaufman) published manifestos re the role of cinema—traditional narrative film, like religion and theater, was seen as an opiate for the masses, and the task of Soviet film was “to document socialist reality”
Vertov thought of himself not as propagandist, but as a reporter getting the news out
His monthly (approx.) film/newsreel Kino-Pravda epitomized Vertov’s doctrine-that proletariate cinema must be based on truth, “fragments of actuality” assembled for meaningful impact, and so that the “whole is also a truth”
His One Sixth of the World (1926) was popular and effective in building national esteem; but Vertov’s influence waned as other, narrative films were produced by other Soviet Montage filmmakers (e.g., Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, etc.); also, Vertov’s documentary style clashed with Stalin’s more controlled and predictable vision of Soviet film
His great work, Man with the Movie Camera (1929) was:
1--a kaleidoscope of daily life (a city symphony? Not quite)
2--a constant self-reflexive reminder that this is a film
3--an “essay on film truth, crammed with tantalizing ironies”,
“dazzling in its ambiguities”; The core irony—(a) demonstrates the importance of the reporter as documentarian, and (b) with its expressionistic/formalistic use of trick shots and edits, shows that no documentary can be trusted
4—biographical of Mikhail Kaufman?
Esfir Shub
A Soviet subtitler and editor of foreign films, her passion for documentaries results in The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), using Tsar Nicholas II’s home movies and other existing footage from 1912-1917; two other such histories followed, also using this “newsreel compilation” style
COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
4. Documentarist as. . . PAINTER
Definition(s):
Painters defined film as a “pictorial art in which light was the medium”
Key Concepts & Issues:
Painters infiltrated the ranks of filmmakers in the 1920s; with other artists, they joined cine-clubs (anti-commercial)
Transference of principles of the work of painter-artists to the world of the filmmaker-artist
Two factors resulted in a lessening of the importance of the painter filmmaker: (1) the coming of sound, and (2) the tension introduced by the depression (the functions of the documentary would necessarily change)
Key Filmmakers:
1. Abstract film as documentary
Viking Eggeling (Sweden) and Hans Richter (Germany), both Dadaists, began experiments in abstract film, using familiar objects and materials (e.g., Richter’s Racing Symphony (1928), which used horserace footage—“Muybridge fused with abstractionism”)
Fernand Leger and Dudley Murphy’s Ballet Mechanique
Jean Painleve’s Le Vampire
2. Beyond these experiments--The City Symphony
Walter Ruttmann—a painter and architect who worked with Eggeling and Richter, and later advised Leni Riefenstahl on editing Olympia; with DP Karl Freund, directed Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) and released it generally, creating a new theatrical genre, the “City Symphony”; Berlin is characterized by:
1—rhythms and patterns/people as objects, incidental
2—shows a day in the life of a city
3—machines, often without human operators
4—a “crossbreeding” of all the arts
Jean Vigo (D) and Boris Kaufman (DP)—for On the Subject of Nice (1930), Kaufman shot the boardwalk from a wheelchair with a camouflaged camera in his lap; the film adds satire to the city film repertoire
Joris Ivens—His Rain (Regen, 1929), shot over four months in Amsterdam, depicts a “single” rain storm (truth, but not reality??); has been called “the most perfect product” of documentarist as painter
COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
5. Documentarist as. . . Advocate
Definition(s):
John Grierson coined the term “documentary,” supposedly in a review of Robert Flaherty’s Moana. Key quote from Barnouw (p. 99)—“Grierson and his movement had in a few years changed the expectations aroused by the word ‘documentary.’ A Flaherty documentary had been a feature-length, close-up portrait of a group of people, remotely located but familiar in their humanity. The characteristic Grierson documentary dealt with impersonal social processes; it was usually a short film fused by a ‘commentary’ that articulated a point of view—an intrusion that was anathema to Flaherty.”
Propaganda—Communications that are intended to be persuasive
Key Concepts & Issues:
The Politicizing of the Documentary—“not a Grierson innovation but a world phenomenon, a product of the times” (p. 100)
Government Sponsorship of Film—In Germany (under Hitler), not a surprise, but in the U.S. (during the Great Depression), it was viewed with suspicion by Hollywood
Key Filmmakers:
John Grierson
Studied at Glasgow University, then in the U.S. at U. of Chicago, met Walter Lippmann and Robert Flaherty (love-hate relationship)
Helped prepare Battleship Potemkin for U.S. release, and then for the London film Society; influenced by the film, he began Drifters
His work for the Empire Marketing Board in Britain included Drifters (1929; as director; this film “brought the daily work of the herring fisheries to life in a way that astonished the audience”), Industrial Britain (1933; as producer; Flaherty began it before being fired), and Song of Ceylon (1935; as producer, Basil Wright directed); in 1934, the EMB was dissolved and the film unit was moved in the General Post Office to become the GPO Film Unit
Song of Ceylon (1935) had 4 parts: (1) The Buddha, (2) The Virgin Land, (3) The Voices of Commerce, and (4) The Apparel of a God. The first two are limited to a view of Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) as authentic in its integrity and antiquity, with an emphasis on the beauty of the country and its people, using quotes from a 1680 travel book by Robert Knox, that was still applicable; the latter two parts indicate the introduction of British commerce, largely via use of nonsynchronous sound (e.g., VOs), but leaving the viewer to decide at the end what is the impact of British imperialism.
Established the National Film Board of Canada after being dispatched to Canada in 1939
Leni Riefenstahl
Was a dancer, actor, and pin-up beauty before directing. Her work as star and director began with German “mountain films,” a genre comparable to American Westerns.
Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933; admiring Riefenstahl, he asked he to produce film(s) for him. Given near-total control, she directed Triumph of the Will (1935), a record of the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi rally; she used 30 cameras, 4 sound trucks, and 120 employees total. Later, she directed the two-part Olympia (1938).
Many details of her arrangements with the Nazi party are examined in the documentary, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1994). She died in 2003 at age 101.
Pare Lorentz
Raised in West Virginia, his home life was “saturated in the arts.”
His first film, The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936) was funded by the RA (Resettlement Administration), which wished to expand its purview beyond still photography (e.g., Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange). Way over budget, Lorentz and composer Virgil Thomson combined music and images to illuminate a national problem (i.e., the Dust Bowl) “with strong documentation, and with emotional power and beauty” (p. 117). This was followed by the important film The River (1938), with a focus on the Mighty Mississippi.
Other notable concepts and people:
Film and Photo Leagues in the U.S.
The March of Time
Frontier Films
Akira Iwasaki
Fumio Kamei
Joris Ivens
COM 321, Documentary Form in Film & Television
Notes from and about Barnouw’s Documentary: A history of the non-fiction film
6. Documentarist as. . . Bugler
Definition(s):
The “bugle-call film”—adjunct to military action, weapon of war—a “call to action” (note that both Listen to Britain and the Why We Fight series literally begin with bugle calls over the opening credits)
Key Concepts & Issues:
Use of battle footage—e.g., expanded newsreels in the German Weekly Review
Repurposing of captured footage—in WWII, both sides engaged in this (e.g., Why We Fight)
“Documenting” a thesis with fiction excerpts (e.g., use of footage from Fritz Lang’s M in The Eternal Jew; footage from Drums Along the Mohawk, The Good Earth, Marco Polo, and many others in the Why We Fight series)
Key Filmmakers:
Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950)
A new member of “Grierson’s Boys” (including Alberto Cavalcanti, Paul Rotha) at the GPO Film Unit, which became the Crown Film Unit.
A Cambridge graduate with a broad arts background, his style was “precise, calm, rich in resonance.”
Among his films, one earned him a world-wide reputation: Listen to Britain:
(a) Featured Jennings’ specialty, vignettes of human behavior under extraordinary stress—they are “carrying on;” (b) Typical of Jennings’ war films—the film never explains, exhorts, or harangues—it observes; (c)The soundtrack is an “anthology of the sounds of Britain at war.”
The Soviets
Shot unique war footage “up close.”
The state film academy—founded in 1919 in the middle of the revolution—added combat photography to its curriculum.
Cameraman at the Front (1946), by Vladimir Sushinsky, shows the cameraman’s own death.
Important practitioners included Leonid Varlamov (Stalingrad, 1943), Roman Gregoriev (newsreel editor), Mikhail Slutsky (Day of War, 1942).
Frank Capra
Already an important narrative filmmaker in the Hollywood Studio System, he was tapped by the U.S. War Department to make indoctrination films for new draftees after Pearl Harbor. He had never before made a single documentary. He produced the seven Why We Fight between 1942 and 1945. Drawing on a wide variety of Hollywood talent, he created simplistic films with tough-talking VOs, films that were a “strange amalgam” of (a) real combat footage (both U.S. and captured from the enemy), (b) fiction film excerpts, (c) animated sequences.