design, therefore, is extremely important in this mode. Nominees for Academy Awards in the categories of art direction and costume design are often dominated by historical realist films. In 1994, for example, these included The Age of Innocence, The Remains of the Day , and Schindler’s List.
To achieve this detail, filmmakers often conduct extensive historical research.
Janusz Kaminski, the cinematographer for Schindler’s List , based the visual design of his images on the photography of Roman Vishniac, who photographed European Jewish communities in the 1920s and 1930s and published these photographs in a book called A Vanished World. Seeking to recreate these communities for the film, Kaminski emulated Vishniac’s photographs. To do so, Kaminski tried to work as if he were photographing the film using the technology of 50 years ago, with no fancy lights, dollies, or tripods.
Robert Altman’s Gosford Park (2001) portrays the codes of social etiquette that bind a house full of English aristocrats in the 1930s with the service staff that waits on them and tends to their every need. An American filmmaker, Altman knew little about this historical period and the behaviors appropriate to it, but he wanted to get it right. He therefore hired a former butler, a housemaid, and a cook, all of whom, now in their eighties, had entered domestic service in the 1930s. They became technical advisors on the film, instructing the actors and filmmakers on the precise ways to prepare meals, clean shoes, set a dinner table, and for the actors to carry themselves properly as service staff in this period. Arthur Inch, the butler advisor, for example, corrected errors of costuming. He pointed out that a livery footman always wore a white bow tie, not a black one. This and other advice helped the filmmakers capture the small, accurate details of dress and behavior that helped the film achieve its vivid historical realism.
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The weight of such detail, in conjunction with characters whose behavior must conform to different social norms than those that prevail today, works to persuade viewers of the authenticity of the screen world. Many such films— Sense and Sensibility (1995), Howard’s End, Titanic (1997)—depict the confining nature of social class by showing the conflict between what a person desires to do and what his or her station in life demands. Construed according to the dictates of a historical period, character behavior furnishes an important index of historical realism, provided the norms of the era are clearly understood and the behavior is plausible within those norms.
An especially powerful depiction of such a conflict, Elizabeth (1998), portrays the accession to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I in sixteenth-century England, from which she commenced a 40-year rule known as England’s golden age. The film was shot on location in a variety of historical settings throughout the United Kingdom, including Durham Cathedral, Haddon Hall, and Bamburgh Castle, providing the film with regional authenticity. Director Shekhar Kapur envisioned the core of the film as Elizabeth’s journey from youth and love to ruthlessness, power, and the renunciation of her personal needs and feelings, and he stylized the film so as to bring out this core meaning. He used white light—as in several fades to white—to suggest the transcendent religious meanings on which she would model her image as queen. To embody the ruthlessness and cruelty of the political world she inherits, Kapur chose sets made of stone. English castles at the time included wood in their design, but Kapur felt that stone would better convey the coldness and harshness of power and would imply that these structures—castles and halls—would outlast the people living in them. To emphasize the forces of history and destiny, he also shot from extremely high angles, with the camera looking sharply down on the figures below. The climactic sequence late in the film, in which Elizabeth consolidates her throne by assassinating her political enemies, is modeled on a comparable, famous sequence in The Godfather (1972), wherein Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) violently rids himself of his enemies. These choices of light, set, camera position, and narrative structure demonstrate that filmmakers who aim for historical realism need not be shackled by an overly literal GOSFORD PARK (USA FILMS, 2001)
To recreate the social world of English high society in the 1930s, the filmmakers hired special consultants to advise on details of setting, dress, and behavior. The consultants, then in their eighties, had been domestic servants in the period that the film portrays. Their advice helped bring to life a now-vanished period in English history. Frame enlargement.
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ALI (COLUMBIA, 2001)
This film biography of the world champion boxer includes very stylized camerawork but weaves elements of historical realism into its account of Ali’s life. For the scene depicting the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, the filmmakers modeled their composition on a well-known news photograph showing King’s associates clustering around his body and gesturing to a rooftop where the gunfire that killed King originated.
The movie image (shown here) acquires its impression of realism through its close visual relationship with the news photograph. The filmmakers intend for viewers to make this comparison. Frame enlargement.
depiction of the past. They are free to invent and to stylize their materials in ways that clarify the core meanings that are inherent in the past being depicted. Historical realism, therefore, is compatible with inventive methods of visual stylization.
Documentary Realism
Concepts of realism in the cinema are closely tied to traditions in which the camera is used as an instrument of reportage and documentation. Films that fall into this tradition are frequently termed documentaries , although such films may employ a wide range of styles. While the topic of documentary filmmaking is an extremely broad one, and generally falls outside the confines of this text, a word on the subject is in order in relation to concepts of realism.
While the camera can be used as a recording instrument to capture events, situations, and realities that may be transpiring independently of the filmmaker, the camera is also an instrument of style. A filmmaker’s choices about lenses, film stocks, and camera positions and angles alter the raw material of the event unfolding before the camera so that it becomes a cinematic event that has a stylistic organization and design. It is naive, then, to believe that documentary filmmaking is the equivalent of raw reportage. A filmmaker’s structural choices transform the raw material before the camera into an organized cinematic design.
BASIS OF DOCUMENTARY REALISM Documentary films exist in a state of tension, caught between the camera’s recording and transformative functions. The documentary filmmaker aims to report on an event that has occurred, yet, to do so, he or she must transform that event into cinema. How, then, does the concept of realism operate within the documentary tradition? How can realism be squared with a 335
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filmmaker’s need to shape structure? Are documentary films essentially like fiction films in that they speak a language of structure and style that is unique to the cinema?
To some extent, documentaries are like fiction films. In each, a filmmaker confronts the same array of choices: where to put the camera, where to cut the shot, how to join several images together, whether and how to impose a narrative logic on the events to be depicted. Despite these similarities, however, two unique characteristics distinguish documentary realism from ordinary fiction films. First, audiences and most documentary filmmakers assume the existence of a noncinematic referent, some person, event, or situation that exists prior to, and independently of, the film that is being made. This assumption does not hold for fiction films in which the characters are clearly made up for the purposes of the story.
CLOSE-UP
9/11 and Documentary Film
Cinema often attains great power when it is placed
The images furnish a rare glimpse inside the remains
in an observational mode, recording and docu-
of the ruined buildings.
menting events. The attacks of September 11,
102 minutes elapsed between the instant that
2001, elicited an outpouring of documentaries,
the first plane hit the North Tower of the World
made within a wide range of styles and points of
Trade Center and when the tower fell (the South
view. There were partisan films that argued and
Tower, hit later, fell first). During that interval,
advocated for particular ways of interpreting the
onlookers in Manhattan and New Jersey trained
meaning of the disaster. These included Michael
hundreds of cameras on the burning buildings and
Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and a film made
the surrounding streets, filming the unfolding catas-
in response to Moore’s, Fahrenhype 9/11 (2004).
trophe.
There were also paranoid conspiracy films, like
These professional and amateur photographers
Loose Change (2007) and The Great Conspiracy:
and videographers produced a massive amount
The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw (2005), that
of footage that filmmakers have used to create
claimed 9/11 was an inside job, an attack by the
documentaries composed of candid views of the
U.S. government on its own citizens.
events caught on film as they were happening.
But the best and most significant documentaries
9/11 (2002) was improvised on the spot by two
were those that avoided partisan argumentation
French filmmakers, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who
and aimed to observe and by doing so to provide an
were in Manhattan making a documentary about
archival record of what happened, how the events
New York’s Fire Department. Jules was on the street
looked and sounded, and how people responded.
filming a routine incident when he looked up and
WTC: The First 24 Hours (2001), for example, breaks
caught American Airlines Flight 11 striking the North
with documentary tradition by avoiding narrative
Tower. He accompanied firemen into the lobby and
entirely and also by not using a narrator or any in-
filmed the destruction that had occurred there from
terviews with subjects and witnesses. The film is an
burning jet fuel. And when the South Tower came
eloquent and poetic compilation of video footage
down, he kept the camera running as he ran for
taken in the rubble of the smashed Trade Center
safety.
during the evening, night, and morning following
In Memorium: New York City (2002) portrays the
the collapse. The ruined architecture is poetic and
interval during which the buildings were burning
powerful, especially as captured on digital video
by cutting among viewpoints provided by amateur
with only ambient sound and without commentary.
cameras stationed throughout the city and into New
( continued)
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102 MINUTES THAT
CHANGED AMERICA
(A&E, 2008)
The North Tower of the
World Trade Center burns
during the interval before
the second plane hits the
South Tower. The attacks
of September 11 were
among the most photo-
graphed events in history.
Many documentaries have
used the candid footage
captured by witnesses to
create a visual history of
events as they unfolded
that morning. The filmic
style is observational and
attains great power. Frame
enlargement.
Jersey, creating a kaleidoscopic portrait composed
saying, “Come on. Don’t take pictures of that. What’s
of multiple, simultaneous views. 7 Days in September
the matter with you?”
(2004) examines the debates, vigils, and memorial
Taking such pictures was not necessarily wrong.
services that proliferated in Manhattan following
Such details were part of the truth of what was
the collapse of the towers, and 102 Minutes That
happening. But photographing events can be an
Changed America (2008) uses the candid footage
ethical and moral act, with positive as well as nega-
to provide a linear narrative of events, anchored by
tive value. By taking a picture, a photographer
a digital time clock that displays when things were
or filmmaker enters into a relationship with the
occurring.
people or events being recorded. It is important for
Because the events were so terrible, many people
documentary filmmakers—and for candid witnesses
taking pictures found themselves reflecting on ethi-
with cameras—to reflect on those values. These re-
cal issues posed by filming atrocity. Jules Naudet, for
flections, too, became part of the meaning of what
example, turned his camera away from burn victims
happened that day.
in the North Tower lobby, feeling strongly that no
Many viewers resented it when filmmakers created
viewer of his film should see those victims. Some on-
fictional or docudrama recreations of 9/11, believ-
lookers with cameras spontaneously filmed jumpers
ing that nothing was to be gained by re-enacting
falling from the towers and then felt that doing so was
those events for a movie. In this sense, fiction and
wrong. Taking the pictures made these photographers
docudrama struggled under a burden of proof—such
feel that they were complicit in the deaths. In 7 Days
movies needed to justify their existence, according
in September , an amateur videographer impulsively
to many Americans. But documentary escaped this
films one of the bodies falling and zooms in on the
burden of proof. Documentary is an assertive mode,
detail. But then he turned off his camera, remarking in
unlike fiction. About historic events, documentary
a subsequent interview “I didn’t want to have anybody
asserts this is —these things occurred, and they
else’s death on my hands.” In In Memoriam: New York
looked and sounded and felt like such. And that as-
City as a camera operator films a falling body, the cam-
sertion is commonly recognized by viewers as being
era’s sound card captures someone standing nearby
important. ■
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Modes of Screen Reality
The second basis on which documentary realism rests is the perceived absence of fictionalizing elements. These might include the presence of actors performing a role or a narrative structure that alters the time chronology of the event. Audiences and most documentary filmmakers assume that fictionalizing tendencies begin with the presence of actors and an invented narrative structure. Critics charged that the documentary about the collapse of the auto industry in Flint, Michigan, Roger and Me (1989), violated documentary ethics because it re-arranged and re-ordered the chronology of events leading to the demise of the General Motors auto plant. The film condensed events that occurred over a long period of time so that they seemed to happen virtually overnight. Assumptions of a noncinematic refe
rent and the absence of key fictional elements are central to the mode of documentary realism, but in practice, there is considerable flexibility for individual films to negotiate their own unique approaches with reference to these issues, particularly when a filmmaker wants to offer a stylistic commentary on the events or people the film depicts. Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, for example, in such films as The Thin Blue Line (1988) and Standard Operating Procedure (2008), routinely uses actors to re-enact key events, but he employs music or visual cues to mark these episodes for the viewer.
DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING—FAIR AND BALANCED?
Many viewers believe that there is a clear line dividing documentary films from fiction films, that the categories are quite distinct from one another. In fact, there is much similarity and overlap.
Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922) is one of the earliest documentary features and a classic of the form. Flaherty spent ten years studying and filming the Eskimo communities of Canada’s Hudson Bay area, and he built his film around the charismatic hunter, Nanook. He filmed Nanook with his family, on hunting and NANOOK OF THE NORTH
(PATHE, 1922)
Robert Flaherty spent a decade
filming in Canada’s Hudson Bay
region and eventually found
Nanook, a renowned hunter of
the Itivimuit Eskimo, to be the
central character of his film.
Backed by a French distributor
after Hollywood turned it down,
Flaherty’s film was a critical and
box office hit. With this success,
the documentary feature film
was born. Frame enlargement.
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Modes of Screen Reality
fishing trips, and while building igloos and repairing boots. The footage provides a vivid record of Eskimo life.
Flaherty, however, altered and embellished many of the things that he filmed. For a sequence where Nanook and others hunt a walrus, Flaherty insisted they use a harpoon, a traditional weapon but one that the men had discarded long ago in favor of rifles.
The harpoon would be more dangerous for the men—the enraged and wounded walrus could drag them into the sea—but it would make a more dramatic and visually exciting film sequence, and this was Flaherty’s chief objective.
In this scene and others, Flaherty changed the conditions of the lives he was filming so as to produce a more vivid portrait. While a documentary filmmaker today might feel more restraint than Flaherty did at the time, the essential truth is this—
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