- With Vigo, Buñel adds another dimension to non-fiction film –- reflexive deconstruction of documentary process itself
- This “reflexive” mode (Nichols) = ahead of its time, until postmodernist 1960s/1970s
- Irreverent, proto-mockumentary style
- Challenges authority and truth-claim of Griersonian narrative mode.
- Vertov influence: Newsreel documents “exploited in a revolutionary way”
- Grierson influence: Political engagement for social change
- Anti-Griersonian “tradition of the victim” (Winston): give subjects “a voice”
- “Father of Environmental Documentary”
- Muckracking social critic in early 30’s
- Like Grierson:
- Producer/supervisor (writing, editing, directing, production)
- Negotiating between gov’t and filmmakers (Strand, Hurwitz, Van Dyke)
- Poetry vs. Politics, Expression vs. Persuasion, Image vs. Sound
- Narration recitatif style, opera sing Thomas Chalets
- Music: Virgil Thompson
- Re Grierson/Watt/Wright’s Night Mail (1936)
- Hollywood boycott
- Made for Dept. of Agriculture.
- Leads to U.S Film Service, which a Republican Congress opposes as FDR propaganda
- Success leads to boom in agrarian film, e.g FOX makes The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
- 1910, Path Gaumont (semi-)weekly
- 1927, Fox Movietone
- 1927: The Jazz Singer
- Launches Sound Era
- 1930s: Paramount, MGM Form newsreel departments
- 1935-51 March of Time newsreel magazine
- 1941: Citizen Kane’s “News on the March”
- 1942: RKO’s This is America
- Time-Life’s Henry Luce finances Louis de Rochemont produces
- Westbrook van Voorhis (“Voice of God”) narrates
- Dramatizations, actors, “Fakery in allegiance to the truth”: Luce
- Politically provocative editorializing
- “Destroys public escape from bitter realities, anguishes, and turmoil of life” (or) Infotainment??
Propaganda: information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, association, institution, nation, etc.
- Nuremberg Nazi Party Congress, 1934
- Riefenstahl calls it “pure history”, but…
- She’s full of shit.
- Pre-planned choreographed, edited for maximum propaganda effect.
- 28 Cameras, some scenes shot in studio, some edited out of chronology
- Office of War Information (1942-45, Elmer Davis)
- Frank Capra heads Film Division
- Capra’s Major Fiction Films:
- It Happened One Night
- You Can’t Take It With You
- Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
- Meet John Doe
- It’s a Wonderful Life
- John Ford, John Huston, William Wyler, George Stevens also direct wartime docs
- 1st of 7 episodes
- Walt Disney animation
- Walter Huston narration
- Compilation documentary
- Carl Hovland’s pioneering media effects study shows little influence, reinforces existing views
- Religious basis for Constitution?
- Nazis not openly anti-Christian
- US as bastion of freedom and democracy
- Japanese internment camps
- Asian exclusion acts
- Segregation, including military
- Born GB, poet/painter
- Works for Grierson’s group since 1934
- During WWII with Crown Film Unit
- Follows “Poetic” documentary line
- Flaherty
- City Symphonies
- Watt/Wright
- Riefenstahl
- Lorentz
p - Allows for ambiguity
- vs. Riefenstahl’s “totalizing eye”
- Overseas –- narration added tom make it more “effective”
- Claude Levi-Straussian mythic binaries
- City/Country
- Work/Leisure
- Working/Class/Upper class
- Popular culture/High culture
- Noise/music
- Modernity/Tradition
- Leach’s Criteria for Poetic Style
- Personal vision
- No omniscient narration
- Personal point of view (“private eye” vs. “public gaze”)