Cinéma Vérité

Article from Baseline's Encyclopedia of Film

The premise. Cinéma vérité and direct cinema are often used interchangeably by critics to denote a particular approach to documentary filmmaking that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Both approaches involve the use of lightweight portable cameras and sync-sound equipment to capture events as they happen on location, without a script. The approach is based on the premise that "life caught unawares"(Dziga Vertov) is more revealing—more truthful to the complexities of experience— than either fiction film or documentary reconstruction.

A long tradition. Elements of vérité filmmaking can be traced back to the beginnings of film history, in the actualités of the Lumière Brothers, who turned their camera on relatively unmanipulated scenes in the streets of Paris. Later, the post war Italian neorealism of such filmmakers as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Cesare Zavattini inspired a new interest in location photography and a heightened sense of realism in both the United States, in films such as Jules Dassin's THE NAKED CITY (1948) and Elia Kazan's ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), and in England, where the work of such directors as Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson spearheaded the British Free Cinema movement.

New technology. It was with the development of portable, sync-sound equipment around 1960 that the approach known as both vérité and direct began to appear in several countries, most notably in Canada, the United States, and France. In Canada, direct cinema was pioneered by both English and Québecois filmmakers working for the National Film Board (NFB), founded by documentary pioneer John Grierson in 1939. In the NFB's Unit B, under executive producer Tom Daly, in English-speaking directors Terence Maccartney-Filgate, Roman Kroitor, and Wolf Koenig produced work for the "Candid Eye" series. Broadcast on television between 1958 and 1959, the series clearly anticipated what would soon become known as direct cinema, despite the technical limitations that still existed. In Québec, Michel Brault (LES RAQUETTEURS, 1958) and Pierre Perrault (POUR LA SUITE DU MONDE, 1963, with Brault) used the direct approach to give voice to the suppressed culture of their province during the "Quiet Revolution."

American efforts. In the US, independent filmmakers such as Lionel Rogosin (ON THE BOWERY, 1956), Bert Stern (JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY, 1959), John Cassavetes (SHADOWS, 1960), and Morris Engle (THE LITTLE FUGITIVE, 1953, WEDDINGS AND BABIES, 1960) began making feature-length films with the new portable equipment. During the same period, a group of young documentary filmmakers organized by former journalist Robert Drew began making short films in the direct method for Time, Inc., in an attempt to transfer the style of magazine photojournalism to the cinema. The group included D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, and Richard Leacock, all of whom (together with Albert's brother, David) would go on to become important figures in American direct cinema in the 1960s and early 1970s. Together under Drew, they made a series of nineteen pioneering films for television, beginning in 1960 with PRIMARY. In this film, for the first time the camera is able to follow a person (John Kennedy) going from his car through a corridor and into a hall where he is about to speak, all in one stunning shot.

France. In France the approach took on a somewhat more assertive form. Anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin collaborated in 1961 to make the extremely influential CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER (1960)/CHRONIQUE D'UN ETE, photographed by the French-Canadian Brault. The filmmakers appeared onscreen and prompted the Parisians they interviewed with questions. The film is subtitled UNE EXPERIENCE DE CINEMA VERITE, in homage to the Soviet documentary filmmaker Vertov and his idea of the Kino-Eye, a belief that the camera eye is capable of seeing more "truthfully" than the human eye.

"Direct" vs. "Vérité" Thus, as Erik Barnouw notes in his book Documentary, the direct cinema filmmaker hopes to find a crisis while shooting, whereas the cinéma vérité filmmaker wishes to precipitate one. Whereas the former seeks to be an invisible observer (what Leacock called "the fly on the wall"), the latter is an unabashed participant.

Despite this distinction, however, both direct and vérité filmmakers believe that filming events as they transpire leads to what Rouch has called a "privileged moment," in which a truth about the subject of the film is revealed. To what extent the presence of the camera affects the real-life situation, and thus compromises this truth, has been a hotly debated issue.