Direct Cinema
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Direct cinema is a form of documentary film that emerged in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Its origin is often associated with the advent of lightweight cameras and transportable, synchronized sound recording devices, although this sort of technological determinism is somewhat controversial. "In fact," writes Claire Johnston, "the lightweight camera [though, crucially, not the portable sync-sound unit] was developed as early as the 1930s in Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes; the reason why it was not until the 1950s that it assumed common usage remains obscure."
A pioneering work in the form was Les Raquetteurs (1958) (The Snowshoers) by the Quebecois Michel Brault and Gilles Groulx. Techniques of direct cinema were also frequently used in early feminist cinema. In the United States, Robert Drew founded Drew Associates (which included Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, Terence Macartney-Filgate, and Albert and David Maysles). In 1960, this group produced for Time-Life Broadcast three films: Yanqui, No!, Eddie (On the Pole), and Primary. In particular, Primary (a documentary about the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary campaign between Senators John F. Kennedy and Hubert H. Humphrey) defined the Direct Cinema style.
It is useful to distinguish Direct Cinema from Cinema Verité. Typically, film historians have characterized the Direct Cinema movement as North-American version of the Cinema Verité movement, an idea that crystallized in France with Jean Rouch's Chronicle of a Summer (1961). Cinema Verité uses the power of the camera to provoke and reveal. Direct Cinema, on the other hand, is more strictly observational. It relies on an agreement among the filmmaker, subjects, and audience to act as if the presence of the camera does not (substantially) alter the recorded event. In Direct Cinema, the filmmaker aims to be a "fly-on-the-wall" (the originators hated this term) capturing life as it unfolds, although such claims of non-intervention have been severely criticized. (Johnston again: "Clearly, if we accept that cinema involves the production of signs, the idea of non-intervention is pure mystification. The sign is always a product. What the camera in fact grasps is the 'natural' world of dominant ideology.")
In a 2003 interview (Zuber), Robert Drew explained how he saw the difference between Cinema Verité and Direct Cinema: "I had made Primary and a few other films. Then I went to France with Leacock for a conference [the 1963 meeting sponsored by Radio Television Francaise]. I was surprised to see the cinema verité filmmakers accosting people on the street with a microphone. My goal was to capture real life without intruding. Between us there was a contradiction. It made no sense. They had a cameraman, a sound man, and about six more--a total of eight men creeping through the scenes. It was a little like the Marx Brothers. My idea was to have one or two people, unobtrusive, capturing the moment." [See also, Ellis, Chapter 14].
To further confuse the distinction, it should be noted that, although Jean Rouch claimed that "All we did in France in cinéma vérité comes from Brault and the NFB" (original quote below), cinema vérité, the phrase and the form, can be seen as France's spin on the idea of the cinéma direct of Brault and his colleagues of the French section of the NFB in Canada.
As pioneers of the form Brault, Perrault and the others, never used the term cinéma vérité to describe their work, a term they found too pretentious : they preferred "cinéma direct". And if they at times served as catalysts for situations (asking for example people to start fishing again), they always worked in small crews (3) that were very close to their subject.
Both Cinema Verité and Direct Cinema rely on the power of editing to give shape and structure to the material recorded. It's not uncommon for shooting to finished film ratios to be 40:1 or even as much as 100:1. For this reason it is not rare amongst filmakers to see the editors of documentary films as co-authors of the work.
[edit] Further reading
- Dave Saunders, Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties, London, Wallflower Press, 2007.
- Jack Ellis, The Documentary Idea: A Critical History of English-Language Documentary Film and Video. N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989.
- Claire Johnston, "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema" (1975) in: Sue Thornham (ed.), Feminist Film Theory. A Reader, Edinburgh University Press 1999, pp. 31-40
- Bill Nichols, Representing Reality. Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1991
- Sharon Zuber, "Robert Drew, Telephone Interview, June 4, 2003" in Re-Shaping Documentary Expectations: New Journalism and Direct Cinema. Unpublished Dissertation. College of William and Mary, 2004.
[edit] Quotes
«Il faut le dire, tout ce que nous avons fait en France dans le domaine du cinéma-vérité vient de l'ONF (Canada). C'est Brault qui a apporté une technique nouvelle de tournage que nous ne connaissions pas et que nous copions tous depuis. D'ailleurs, vraiment, on a la "brauchite", ça, c'est sûr; même les gens qui considèrent que Brault est un emmerdeur ou qui étaient jaloux sont forcés de le reconnaître.»" Jean Rouch, June 1963 Cahiers du Cinéma No.144.fr:Cinéma direct
