Between 1958 and 1963, documentary filmmaking was transformed. Documentarists began to utilize lighter and more mobile equipment, to work in smaller crews, and to reject traditional conceptions of script and structure. The new documentary sought to study individuals, to reveal the moment-by-moment development of a situation, to search for instants of drama or psychological revelation. Instead of staged scenes dominated by a voice-over narration, the new documentary would let the action unfold naturally and permit people to speak for themselves.
Called candid cinema, uncontrolled cinema, observational cinema, and cinema verite (“cinema truth”), this trend was most generally known as Direct Cinema. The name suggests that the new technologies recorded events with an unprecedented immediacy and that the filmmaker avoided the more indirect documentation—restaging, narrational commentary—of earlier documentarists.
Several factors influenced the new approach. Most generally, Italian Neorealism had intensified documentarists’ urge to capture everyday life. Technological innovations, such as the growth of 16mm production and the emergence of sound-on-tape, provided a new flexibility (see box). Moreover, television needed motion pictures to fill airtime, and network news organizations sought a fresh approach to audiovisual journalism. In the United States, Canada, and France, documentarists affected by these conditions forged distinct versions of Direct Cinema.
The United States: Drew and Associates
In the United States, Direct Cinema emerged under the auspices of the photojournalist Robert Drew. Drew wanted to bring to television reporting the dramatic realism he found in Life magazine’s candid photography. In 1954, he met Richard Leacock, who had worked on Native Land (p. 304) and had been cinematographer for Flaherty’s Louisiana Story. With the backing of Time, Inc., Drew hired Leacock, Don Pennebaker, David and Albert Maysles, and several other filmmakers.
Drew produced a series of short films aimed at television broadcast, including the ground-breaking Primary
(1960), a report on the Wisconsin primary contest between John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Leacock, Pennebaker, the Maysleses, and Terence Macartney-Filgate all worked as cinematographers. Although the film contained some lip-sync sound, its visual authenticity attracted more attention. The camera followed the politicians working the streets, riding from town to town, and nervously relaxing in hotel rooms (21.20-21.22). Primary’s drama was heightened by crosscutting between the two candidates and by voice-over news reports, which largely replaced explanatory commentary.
World History
