Cinema Verité: Drew, Pennebaker, Maysles etc.

[The Silver Bullet]

Primary (d. Robert Drew, 1960)

Robert Drew's Primary is an interesting little film. I don't think I've ever seen something strive to be so painstakingly objective. This was, of course, partly the point [if not the whole point] of the Cinema Verité movement, but still, it's really quite something to sit there and witness – it's just so completely observational, you sort of don't know how to take it.

Primary, for those of you who don't know, observes and documents the 1960 Wisconsin presidential primary election between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, and that's it. That's all it does. There's no blatantly subjective narration, no filmmaker editorialising – it's just what happened, as photographed by the filmmakers. However, of course, no film is completely objective. The moment in which a filmmaker chooses to cut, for example – the exact frame of film that he chooses to cut on – is a moment that's born of a subjective decision. The filmmaker chooses what he keeps or leaves out. He manipulates.

However, Primary tries to remedy this problem by giving each candidate almost exactly the same amount of screentime, and by giving them same formal treatment throughout. The film is full of parallel sequences and techniques – we don't see hear Humphrey's campaign song unless it's immediately followed by Kennedy's, for example. At one point in the picture, the narrator says something along the lines of, "This is Hubert Humphrey's great strength," before going on to say what that strength is, and Moments later, the exact same line surfaces again, this time in regards to Kennedy: "This is Senator Kennedy's great strength."

I found it extremely funny [and telling] that – at the end of the film – neither candidate was any better off than the other one in terms of their national standing. The winner was no further advanced than the loser, and both would keep on campaigning. How convenient for the filmmaking team's pursuit of objectivity. No-one to glamorise.

This said, I often found myself wondering whether or not history has had a detrimental impact upon the film's objective stance, and whether or not our knowledge of "what happened next" [not only in regards to the election, but also Kennedy himself] taint our perception of the events depicted in the film. Do we automatically look to "Senator Kennedy" as the film's "protagonist" because we know that he will eventually become the president, the King, and a mythological, cultural icon? If so, does that render the filmmaker's intentions, goals and achievements irrelevant in the face of history?

The truth is, I don't know. I just thought I'd pose the question.

[mutinyco]

I think there's a slight difference to cinema verite and just plain documentary filmmaking.

[The Silver Bullet]

There is, yes, but the movement that these guys were involved with was actually called  Cinema Verité. These films weren't an example of "plain documentary filmmaking".

[mutinyco]

Could've fooled me...

[The Silver Bullet]

Could've fooled me...

Of that I have no doubt.

Maybe I should have said, "These films weren't an example of 'plain documentary filmmaking' at that time"?

[(kelvin)]

I haven't seen the picture, but I' say the answer to your question is "yes". Even if the filmmaker was objective, the viewer is not. Perception always involves active selection of information.

[Ernie]

Frederick Wiseman is the best documentary filmmaker of all-time and nobody seems ever to have heard of him. Check your local library for some of his stuff and trust me, it'll change your life.