Cinema Verité: The French film movement that changed documentary
One might believe that there is always an element of truth when it comes to the documentary medium. However, there’s a power to film through which a filmmaker can bend such truths according to their personal biases, leading to some documentaries being criticised for their handling of reality.
Queue cinéma verité, or “truthful cinema”, is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, who were inspired by the theoretic writings of Soviet documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertov. Emerging in the late 1950s and early 1960s, cinéma verité was defined by its air of spontaneity and fly-on-the-wall method with the aim of capturing the truth of its subject that would have otherwise been hidden when using more traditional means.
Prior to that era, documentaries had often been comprised of stage set pieces with a clear directive on didactic information, but the new observational techniques of cinéma verité, enabled by lighter and more portable equipment, allowed filmmakers to immerse themselves in the lives of their subjects, leading to more profound elements of truth coming to light.
This intimate interaction eschewed the false realities of staged documentary, and films like Robert Drew’s Primary, Morin and Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer laid the foundations for what would become the future of documentary filmmaking. What began as a theory in France in the late 1950s soon started being used the world over, particularly in the United States, by the likes of Drew, Haskell Wexler and D.A. Pennebaker.
Albert and David Maysles would use the methods of cinéma verité, also known as “direct cinema”, as detailed in their 1969 film Salesman, which focuses on the day-to-day lives of a group of door-to-door Bible salesmen. By forgoing the previously expected documentary conventions of narrative voiceover and the manipulation of scene takes, the Maysles managed to dive deep into the intricacies of the salesmen and the many pitfalls that naturally come with the profession.
The Maysles would follow up with their widely admired films Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, with each exploring the hidden truths of their subjects, including the final weeks of the Rolling Stones’ 1969 tour of the United States and the reclusive, upper-class inhabitants of derelict East Hampton mansion. Frederick Wiseman also continued the new tradition of direct cinema with Titicut Follies, which focused on the patient-inmates of a Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Massachusetts, but the director himself had been resistant to “observational cinema” and how its French roots see one thing as being as valuable as another.
Still, cinéma verité played a significant part in changing the role of the filmmakers themselves, who became responsible for capturing reality as it occurred rather than making it happen. The hands-off approach replaced the purposeful narrative set-up through which reality could be represented according to one’s wishes. Observers and participants, filmmakers and subjects suddenly became one, and films began to arrive with a greater sense of immediacy.
There’s naturally an air of ambiguity to films classified as cinéma verité or direct cinema, but this allows audiences to make up their own minds when it comes to the details of a film’s subject. Cinéma verité subsequently inspired non-documentary filmmakers like John Cassavetes, who began to search for the meaning of his narratives beyond what he might have been expected to showcase, delivering long, naturalistic takes in which his actors could explore their characters on a deeper level.
However, the most significant change occurred within the documentary genre itself, where a desire for subjectivity (surely the highest aim of the medium) began to be embraced in all earnestness. Honestly was suddenly the most important ingredient to a non-fiction film’s evaluation, and while filmmakers could always bend the truth, cinéma verité paved the way for the future of the documentary.
