IV.8. Testing The Operational Definition of Documentary:
For testing
purposes, now let us see how our operational definition would apply to the four
categories of documentary as defined by Bill Nichols in his essay, The Voice of Documentary, in which Nichols
identifies four major narrative styles of documentary:
1). The direct
address style of the Griersonian tradition .
2). Cinema verite
3). A variation of cinema
verite featuring a character or narrator speaking directly to the
camera, sometimes in an interview
4). A self-reflexive style featuring a mix
of interview and comments, including observations from the documentarian.[1]
Now let us
see how our operational definition would
apply to these four styles:
1)
The Direct Address Style of the Griersonian Tradition: While there
are always exceptions, a documentary
shot in the Griersonian tradition would avoid employing dramatically re-enacted
or re-staged material, if at all possible. If any cheating were done for
production purposes, it was neither approved nor advertised by Grierson. In a
visual sense, then, the Griersonian style would fit the operational definition
of documentary as defined.
A successful documentary in this style
requires an extremely well written
poetic narration and an excellent
professional voice; “The Night Mail” (1936)
directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright,
with a narration written by W.H.
Auden, is a classic example of a
successful Grierson production. The
narration is suggestive, rather than
dominant, and the story is told visually.[2]
In the hands of more pedestrian talents,
however, the Direct Address can become
essentially radio with pictures, with the previously disparaged institutional
Voice of God didactically blaring out the company line over some generic
images, with a few V.I.P. talking heads of the bosses to give them their 15
minutes of fame. In short, the Direct Address style can easily become
documentary straight out of some authoritarian Orwellian nightmare.
In this context, it is worth
noting that Vertov himself did his best to avoid relying on titles to tell the
story in his silent films. In his sound films, Vertov also attempted to employ
sound as a creative medium in its own right; while the second-person address to Lenin in Three Songs of Lenin might be considered
a variation on Direct Address, even in this overt propaganda film, Vertov carefully
avoids the omniscient third person Voice of God narration.
Today, it is safe to say that, by
condescendingly treating the audience as mental incompetents incapable of
reaching their own conclusions, the Voice
of God narration has fallen into disfavor with more sophisticated audiences
around the world. Or, as Michael Renov
has written: ”As described by countless
critics, the voice-over has, in recent decades, been deplored as dictatorial,
the Voice of God; it imposes an omniscience bespeaking a position of absolute
knowledge .”[3]
2)
The Cinema Verite Style: According to Aufderheide, the
roots of the cinema verite movement
lay in an anti-authoritarian reaction to World War II, and one of the first
indications was Britain’s Free Cinema movement
in the 1950’s. [4]Led by
Lindsay Anderson , Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz, Free Cinema reacted against
Griersonian didacticism by showing daily lives of ordinary citizens without
editorializing .[5]
A few years later, thanks in large
part to the development of lightweight 16 mm cameras in World War II, and the
crystal synch cordless sound system created by Ricky Leacock and his colleagues
in the early 1960’s in the United States, cinema
verite (also known as ‘direct cinema’) enjoyed a vogue in the United States
and France. The new equipment granted
cinematic access to new facets of human existence, and purists insisted that
this depiction appear as unadulterated as possible. As a result, cinema verite purists decreed that all
sound had to be recorded live, and
any uses of narration or music that had not been recorded live were considered
violations of the cinema verite code.
Since the very name cinema verite is an homage by the French
documentarian Jean Rouch to the Kino Eye of
Dziga Vertov, it seems safe to say that the
Cinema Verite Style would fall within the realms of our operational
definition.
Leacock’s own definition of his cinema verite style supports that
conclusion:
“What is it we filmmakers are doing, then? The closest I can come to an
accurate definition is that the finished film- photographed and edited by the
same filmmaker- is an aspect of the filmmaker’s perception of what happened.
This is assuming that he does no directing. No interference.”[6]
It is important to note that some
fundamental contradictions in cinema
verite theory became apparent as the movement grew in popularity. While the
better known term cinema verite is
now generally used to describe a style of documentary filming, in the early 1960’s,
there were two stylistic branches:
the American branch, known as Direct Cinema, led by Ricky Leacock and
John Drew, were staunch advocates of a very non-obstrusive, Fly-on-The-Wall approach,
while the French, led by Jean Rouch and Claude Morin, opted for a reflexive style, in which the filmmaker could be a
visible participant.
There was also the issue, raised by Jean Luc
Godard, of open advocacy as opposed to apparent neutrality. Some post modern
academics enterered the fray, accusing the proponents of Direct Cinema made impossible claims of objectivity. In turn ,American
documentarian Fred Wiseman dismissed this post modern charge as : “ a lot of horseshit...My films are totally
subjective. The objective-subjective argument is from my point of view, at
least in film terms, a lot of nonsense. The films are my response to a certain
experience.”[7]
Regardless, the goal of making a
fly-on-the-wall recording pure human behavior was ultimately proven to be an
impossible ideal by such productions as “An
American Family” (1973), a 12 part documentary series about the Loud family
by Alan and Susan Raymond, produced by the American Public Broadcasting
Service. The production (not to mention the broadcasting ) of the
series had a devastating effect on the Loud family, apparently causing them to
do many things they would not have done without the cameras present.
This should not have been a
complete surprise; common sense would indicate that the constant presence of
even a minimal two or three person cinema
verite crew with cameras, sound equipment and lights, would have some effect
on the behavior of those being filmed. However, when it became known to the
public that the producer was having an affair with Mrs. Loud, the defenders of
the series conceded defeat.
The controversy surrounding “An American Family”[8],
and the subsequent revelations of how family members had been manipulated
behind the scenes, effectively ended the debate; today, cinema verite and direct
cinema are now generally recognized
more as a style of shooting, rather than an aesthetic ideal.
3). A variation of cinema verite featuring a
character or narrator speaking
directly to the camera, sometimes in an interview: As Nichols notes, this style
is the conventional style employed in
many contemporary television
documentaries today; it is also
essentially the same style employed by Vertov
in “Three
Songs of Lenin”,[9]
so this style would also fall well within our
operational definition of documentary in
the Vertov tradition. Vertov employs
all of these narrative techniques in the
film, and has an interview with a
factory worker that is extraordinarily
modern, in that some mistakes and
awkward
moments have been retained, thus adding an air of authenticity to
what would otherwise appear to be a
staged and rehearsed interview.
4). A self-reflexive
style featuring a mix of interview and comments, including
observations from the documentarian: As previously noted, “The Man with
The Movie Camera” has many self-reflexive elements,
including shots of the
editor waking up and getting dressed, as
well as shots of the man with the
camera
at work, setting up shots and moving to
get better angles. As a result,
this style would also fall well within
our operational definitio
[1]
Bill Nichols ( The Voice of Documentary) Film
Quarterly 36, No. 3(Spring, 1983) University of California Press; from
Rosenthal and Corner(ibid) p.17-18
[2]
Link to “The Night Mail”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmciuKsBOi0
[3]
Michael Renov ( The Subject of
Documentary) University of Minnesota
Press, 2004 p.xxi Curiously, Renov then goes on to state that some contemporary
documentarians use their own voices to provide reflexive commentary on the action,
as if they were variations on the same narrative technique. They are not. One
is omniscient, the other subjective .
[5]
Aufderheide (ibid). p.44
[6]
Lewis Jacobs ( The Documentary Tradition
,Second Edition) WW. Norton,
1975. P.404
[7]
Brian Winston ( The Documentary Film as
Scientific Inscription) in Theorizing
Documentary, Michael Renov, Editor. Routledge, 1993.pp 46-49
[8]
Link to an episode from “An American
Family”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNL26zQv7w
[9]
Link to “Three Songs of Lenin”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeWK5iRp0BE
