L’Opéra-Mouffe (Carnet de notes d’une femme enceinte)

The Truth of the Fiction. At the Roots of Direct Cinema by Jacopo Chessa and Alessandro Giorgio

Significant and varied are the aspects and connections to be revealed looking back at the pathway of French documentary films between the 1950s and 60s. They may even be seen through the eyes of this flashback as opposed to what a vast and still little investigated production could disclose. French documentaries since the 1950s have included rich and numerous instances of renewal; these have begun to bear weight on the entire cinematographic equilibrium in France. In early post-war years France did not undergo a phase of radical transformation in its production methods and aesthetics of the film in question, as occurred in neorealistic Italy. Nevertheless the vitality of the documentary field from the start of the 1950s was not slow to affect the productions of fiction film. Significant was the Group of Thirty, which included Marker and Resnais and also the more elderly Rouquier and Ichac. It reflected the need to spread documentaries through the then-available channels, such as first release cinema show-rooms. This group consisted of a coming together of directors, critics and producers in 1953, without an aesthetic manifesto or apparent point of contact, they aimed at putting pressure on the government to obtain new legislative interventions in favour of the production and distribution of short-length documentary films. The Group of Thirty cannot be considered a precursor of the Nouvelle Vague, because the producers of the Cahiers were outside this environment; however it may be said that some of the more interesting names in French cinema in the 1960s which could be linked to the Vague, came from the Group of the Thirty. This would include the above-mentioned Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, as well as Agnès Varda, Jaques Demy and Pierre Kast, and also Pierre Baunberger, one of the most important directors of the movement. The documentary film is for many an important stage in approaching the long running film. However this in no way lessens its importance as it is often already a complete presentation in itself, or provides the point of departure and arrival for those in search of something being lucid and lyrical. In fact it may be said only afterwards and by reasoning that the documentary trials of Alain Resnais pave the way for Hiroshima, mon amour because the aesthetic research of the director of Les statues meurent aussi and Nuit et brouillard had reached an exemplary completeness. Unlike the vain “evolutionary” theses there appears a solid continuity between his documentary productions and fiction films together with effective mutual exchange. The same continuity is found in the cinema of Agnès Varda. She began in 1954 with a long-running film, La pointe courte, which is one of the clearest examples of the encounter between a documentary film and cinema fiction. Her career continued with little jewels like Du côté de la Côte both in 1958: these are detailed enquiries into urban and marine environments, considering objects as treasure troves of secret truths and colour as an explosive and poetic element. Another example is Jaques Demy, although he is more well known for musical comedies than for his analysis of the present-day with the more traditional methods of realism. He started with documentaries such as his first film, Le sabotier du Val de Loire in Val de Loire in 1955. Its autobiographical matrix is pervaded with a sensitivity for an ancient and unusual unchanged in time. He returns to the scene of his childhood to document the work of an elderly clogmaker; this is also a throwback to be first autographic production on this topic, a short documentary of 95 mm. He was only sixteen at the time and unfortunately his film has been lost. Finally we come to the works of Chris Market, truly unique in the factory of cinema, both documentary and otherwise. Today it is unfortunately impossible to see, and certainly not on big screens, his very first firm, like Dimanche à Pekin and Lettre de Sibérie; he himself does not wish to show them anymore. Le joli mai remains, however, a real cause of division among French society at the end of the war in Algeria. It is a complex work made in collaboration with Pierre Lhomme and it has as its fulcrum and destabilizing main thread his relationship to those interviewed. Fortunately he's still active and we have the pleasure of presenting his latest documentary Chats perchés (2004), in another section of the festival this charmingly natural film shows what can still be told of present-day France by means of a video-camera, while strolling along through Paris and taking advantage of opportunities.

Another reason for interest in documentaries of this period is that it entailed renewed techniques, together with profound discussions which contributed to a complete change in the way of representing reality; in the long run it also gave birth to new aesthetics in film fiction, particularly in the Nouvelle Vague. The introduction of light cine-cameras and portable Nagra tape-recorders for direct recording of sound formed the basis for the cinema at the start of the 1970s, which went under the somewhat debatable name of Truth Cinema. Following on from this was Direct Cinema, which already made use of many elements of the Rouch cinema of the second half of the 1950s. Considering this topic, it is important to bear in mind the great influence enjoyed by the spreading television networks, which still relied on prefilmed material and tried above all to minimise the crew and ignore the aesthetic problems connected with film portrayals. A change was taking place which involved not only France but also francophone Canada (which retained many fruitful exchanges with the mother country), and the United States, which together formed the other main centres of diffusion. We should dedicate our attention to these other centres in future editions of the festival. There was a need for greater ease of movement for the crew and a more realistic soundtrack, the latter applying especially to enquiries and interviews. This need was felt above all in the field of anthropological documentaries, and particularly by Rouch, it was also felt in sociological fields, where it became important for the cameramen to follow the filmed subjects with agility and to move in restricted spaces. Rouch himself intervened on the subject of filming and gave technical suggestions to André Countant, the engineer who invented the light and highly manageable Cameflex, available for both 35mm and 16mm film. Rouch and Edgar Morin used this camera in 1960 to film Chronique d'un été, a manifesto of the new cinema documentary. This film not only used new technology but was also a new way of conceiving a survey, beginning with the apocalyptic question, "How do you live?”, which perhaps served as a pretext. There followed a profound inquiry into French society at that delicate time of change and the rising of the Fifth Republic. It contained elements of criticism within the matrix of the film, with a discussion between the directors on the likely results of the work and between the protagonists of the enquiring on being shown the final editing.

The cinema of Jean Rouch is at the heart of this retrospective and the documentaries of that time, because it is the perfect pathway between the new conception of a documentary and fiction cinema. In this sense Rouch is one of the most important designers of a new look, on one hand determined by technological needs and on the other hand by a new understanding of how to portray reality. The influence of Rouch on the Nouvelle Vague is clearly affirmed, above all by Godard; he declared that his production À bout de souffle was the Parisian version of Moi, un noir, Moi, un blan. Rouch's cinema is wholly modern in that it establishes new rules for defining the concept of fiction and reality, it is concerned with the staging of a film and the work behind it. His own films which have passed in the history as fiction, like La pyramide humaine (1959-61), contain documentary elements and aspirations, likewise, his so-called documentaries reveal a structure which is conditioned and enlivened by a truly staged presentation.

In some ways, Rouch’s method is declared psychodramatic, as in Les veuves de quinze ans (1954). It consists of a reinterpretation on the part of the characters of their role in society. His productions between the 1950s and 70s mark a point of no return for the redefining of the relationship between documentary cinema and real life. We would agree entirely with Deleuze, who was able to see even greater reality where there existed greater finesse.

The magnificence of Rouch is also in his brutality of method and subjects, his unique capability for creating cinema almost without contest; self-reflexive states abound concerning a time and place which belongs to the cinematographic history of an unusual ethnographer. We can almost believe that Edward G. Robinson, if unemployed at Hollywood, could be a good imitator of Ousatos Ganda. Great problems are still posed today by Rouch and Daney himself has been worried by them. He says of the contradictions and flashes of genius of this famous and gracious man, «He does not believe in history, in scenery, but as the aesthetical anarchist that he is, he knows only that in more or less linear time he is forcing his way through and encompassing a disturbed and violent moment of freedom, both disorderly and anti-authoritarian. He realises that the threads and memories must be retained and woven together, forming the plot of a light hearted and parasitic “international” in some unnamed part of the world and in the absence of frontiers». 

Mario Ruspoli, an Italian but French by adoption, finds a place beside Rouch as one of the protagonists of the new documentary films of those years. It was he who coined the phrase Direct Cinema as a substitute for the imprecise and controversial Truth Cinema. He was a great technical experimenter, and had as a collaborator Michel Brault, director and cameraman and a noted figure at the Office National du Film in Montreal. A complex picture of rural life faced with industrialization and the movement away from the countryside can be gained from the cinema of Ruspoli in the early 1970s (Les inconnus de la terre). In addition, the entry of a crew into a psychiatric hospital is seen in Regards sur la folie – one of the first crews to enjoy direct sound recording.

These documentaries do not form a particular school or style but in different ways they are influenced by a shared political and historical climate. Starting from the war in Algeria, this climate has compelled many cinematographers to elaborate alternative methods and techniques. There has perhaps not been sufficient recognition given to the part played by these works reflecting real life as represented in the great films of the 1970s by young Turks. The works of rightful masters such as Renoir, Rossellini, the Hitchcockhawksians and others have been highlighted in history books, partly at the expense of these other works (though they still remain vivid in the minds of cinematographers).

Various and varied, then, are the forms of documentaries, treating different themes by means of diverse modes of representation. We have attempted to outline a panorama of production over a period of about ten years, considering the main directors and the principal categories of documentary film, and the relationship they bear towards fiction films. It is in no way accidental that the film Paris vu par… has been added to the list of films, it is in every way a fiction film with successive descriptive episodes of various Parisian districts, short stories all retold using the basic techne cues of Direct Cinema.