Chapter 1: What Is a Movie?

Essay: Nonfiction Films: Direct Cinema

Most of the documentaries we see on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel are made using the same basic elements and approaches that documentary filmmakers have employed since the 1930s: voice-over narration, "talking head" interviews, archival footage, musical score, reenactments, and sequences planned and often even staged to support a mostly predetermined script. These traditional documentaries provide information, make a point, or illuminate a subject. Like feature films, they typically have high production values and are produced with the help of large crews and heavy equipment.

In the 1960s, a group of documentary filmmakers took advantage of portable handheld 16mm cameras, cheap light-sensitive film stock (which allowed filming without supplementary light), and lightweight sound-recording equipment to create a new style of documentary film they called "direct cinema." Directors such as D. A. Pennebaker, Albert and David Maysles, and Frederick Wiseman sought to create a more spontaneous form of nonfiction film that immersed its audience in a more "direct" experience of the subject.

Working in crews as small as two (often camera operator and sound recordist, with the director filling one of those roles), the direct cinema filmmakers chose a subject or event with the potential for dramatic development, then simply started filming - and kept filming long after their subject had ceased to notice their presence. Their fly-on-the-wall process was one of discovery; the filmmakers rarely knew how their story would turn out, or even what the story was, until the film was shot and edited. Direct cinema filmmakers’ lightweight equipment allowed them to follow the story wherever it went. Relatively low production costs allowed them to capture events in their entirety and present extended action in real time.

Audiences conditioned to a less-polished aesthetic (thanks to rock ’n’ roll, the French New Wave, and Beat novels like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road) were glad to exchange the controlled presentation of traditional documentary for the immediate, raw, and intimate narratives offered by this new documentary form.

Two films about folk and rock music legend Bob Dylan provide comparative examples of these different approaches to documentary filmmaking.

Martin Scorsese’s 2005 No Direction Home: Bob Dylan covers the singer/songwriter’s entire career. Scorsese and his team researched their subject, wrote a script, collected archival footage and recordings, interviewed Dylan’s contemporaries, and conducted a series of interviews with Dylan himself that serve as the film’s voice-over narration. The filmmakers knew the story they wanted to tell ahead of time and constructed a polished, well-lit, and structured film that tells that story. While the film features snippets of candid behind-the-scenes action (much of it culled from direct cinema-style documentaries) traditional talking-head interviews and voice-over narration guides the audience through a preplanned timeline.

In contrast, D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary Don’t Look Back follows the young folk superstar on a single concert tour to Great Britain. Don’t Look Back presents an intimate portrait of the enigmatic performer. Pennebaker’s unblinking camera follows Dylan everywhere - catching the dissolution of his romance with fellow folkie Joan Baez, hardball television-appearance negotiations, drunken arguments, and a masterful snubbing of rival folk star Donovan. Far from a vanity project, Don’t Look Back reveals its protagonist as both generous and petulant, self-assured and overwhelmed, sensitive and insecure.

These and other events are not recalled or re-created in retrospect, but rather are presented as if the audience were in the room as they occurred. The film’s subjects determine what happens, not the filmmakers. Pennebaker and his collaborators simply stay out of the way and capture the action as it happens. It would be wrong, however, to assume that these films are perfectly transparent windows into hidden worlds. While they are less overt in their form and meaning than other nonfiction films, they nonetheless express their makers' opinions and biases.

Like Don’t Look Back, many documentary films in this new style chronicle famous subjects. For example, David and Albert Maysles show the normally swaggering Rolling Stones in a much more vulnerable light in their film Gimme Shelter, which presents the chaotic buildup to and devastating aftermath of the murder of an audience member. But not all direct cinema’s subjects are rock stars. Many of the movement’s filmmakers use their methods to expose audiences to subjects considered too mundane or controversial for traditional documentaries.  The Maysles brothers’ acclaimed Salesman follows a team of door-to-door Bible salesmen as they struggle to convince reluctant customers, meet stiff quotas, and navigate a life on the road.

Frederick Wiseman’s Titticut Follies exposes the inhumane treatment of inmates inside a Massachusetts asylum for the criminally insane. The film was the subject of a lawsuit and was eventually banned, but it also sparked an outcry that led to the closing of the facility.

Direct cinema’s candid content, as-it-happens immediacy, and raw aesthetic have influenced such documentaries as The War Room (1993) and Hoop Dreams (1994), as well as documentary-style narrative films like United 93 (2006) and the award-winning work of the Dardenne brothers, The Child (2005). The documentary expectations direct cinema movies established also helped prepare audiences to appreciate the unpolished, informal style of reality television shows like Cops and "mock"-umentary series like The Office.

 

FOR FURTHER READING

"Albert Maysles and the Art of Direct Cinema."

"DA Pennebaker Biography."

Pennebaker and Hegedus Films.