Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film

By Erik Barnouw.

332 pages, OUP, $5.15

Book Review by Simon Wilson

I have always had something of a prejudice against documentaries. First-class examples have tended to be exceptions; I suffer and am not, I think, alone, from over-exposure to trivia served up at school and before cinema features. However after reading Barnouw's book I am inclined to seriously reconsider the importance I had attached to a great number of fiction films. How, for example, would Costa-Gravas' State of Siege compare with the Uruguayan Tupamaros, made by the underground itself? How would The Battleship Potemkin stand up to the work of Dziga Vertov and others who did so much to unify the USSR after the revolution? How will Coppola's Apocalypse Now look beside the scores of films made in Vietnam during the war by nearly every country in the business except the USA?

We're not going to find out, of course Somewhere back along the line, distributors throughout the world decided people should see, or wanted to see, fiction, the more fanciful the better. This despite the fact that when documentaries have been deemed necessary viewing (eg during war) they have proved more popular, this despite the popularity of the genre on television. Encouragement of imagination plays a part in such reasoning, but it's not that simple. The overwhelming feeling emerging from the book is the depths to which documentarists have probed this very faculty. "The documentarist" says Barnouw, "has a passion for what he finds in images and sounds — which always seem to him more meaningful than anything he can invent". Commonwealth pioneer John Grierson called the process "the creative treatment of actuality." Vertoy proclaimed, "My mission is the creation of a new perception of the world. Thus I decipher in a new way the world unknown to you you."

Barnouw has divided his subject into genres, thirteen in all, which follow a rough chronological sequence. This system enables him to analyse in several veins at once: individual contributions, development within and between countries, the effect of technology, and above all the relationship of non-fiction film to the social and political history of its time.

The book begins with the 'prophets' (the Lumiere brothers, Edison) who invented film as a means of documenting activity, of showing people to themselves. They were scientists, caring little for aesthetics but greatly committed to communication. Their inventions astounded audiences throughout the world and very quickly led to a new industry. With the injection of vast commercial interest came the first set-backs. Imperialism was well served by films of quaint, loyal 'natives'. Fidelity to actual events became subject to interest value: if a cameraman could not get to the action it was simulated. In the name of 'enterprise', audiences saw the Boer War shot on a golf-course, the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius on a table-top, and even 'footage' of the Dreyfuss case which had preceded the arrival of film. Concurrently, editing in fiction films was producing works of greater merit and captivating power, and the documentary went into decline.

This was to be the pattern. Technical advance, or a new mode of approach, would swing nonfiction into the limelight. Cheap imitation would follow, and then fiction, usurping techniques and roles, embellishing at will, and flooding the screens. Distributors, and later on governments, would show no interest, or take an active negative stand, and documentary would subside again.

Thus Robert Flaherty's brilliant Nanook of the North was refused by five major companies but upon its eventual release and enormous success they flocked to sign him up. 'Explorer' documentarists were sent to all parts of the globe, often extending Flaherty's romanticism into fully-fledged patronisation. His next film was not so exciting and he was gradually dropped. Similarly, attempts under Roosevelt to popularise the New Deal were thwarted by Congress who withdrew funds. This even though the films being made argued for conservation not aganist administration policies. Fiction, with The Grapes of Wrath and others, took over.

In Europe during the 1920s many painters adopted film. Hans Richter and Fernand Leger were among those who formed the 'painter' genre, aiming to create a visual correlative to music. City-symphonies, made all over the continent, used subject matter as a tool for rhythm and pattern. The genre never enjoyed wide support and was overrun by the introduction of sound and the world economic collapse. After 1945 a 'port' genre emerged in a similar would, producing some masterpieces of visual aural collusion made possible by magnetic recording.

Documentary has not been without social impact. During the 1950s and early 60s 'black films' came into prominence in Soviet satellite countries. Often very witty, the aim was generally exposure of bureaucratic inadequacy. Dusan Mekavejev's Parade was supposed to be a coverage of the May Day parade, but became a satire on the pomposity and ridiculous protocol which surrounded the event. May Day in Yugoslavia was never the same again. The Canadian Film Board has sponsored many films made by communities about themselves, resulting in a high degree of participant interaction and the formation of productive links with government.

I cannot hope to encompass all of Barnouw's material. From the Boxer Rebellion to Vietnam the role of non-fiction in war alone is a fascinating stub-study running through the book. Perhaps the two films which reveal the greatest range of documentary functions are the olympiads: Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, made under Hitler at Munich in 1936, and Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad, of 1964. Riefenstahl's film is a monument to superhuman power; balletic, almost mythic, a work perfectly composed within the ideology which spawned it. Ichikawa has adopted a more human approach. Concentrating less on the competition and spectacle, more on the individual place in the whole, he includes the losers, the injured, the people in the crowd. His testament achieves its grace and pride through quite different means. The Japanese Olympic Committee had hoped for another Munich-type film and ordered re-editing.

Barnouw sometimes loses his threads, failing to investigate similarities of pattern, approach or theme. A lack of value-judgement often prompts over-enthusiastic response. Comments on Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon, for example, do not reveal the film's restrictive colonial frame work. The chronological sequence can be misleading. But these are small faults.

Not until the end does anything like a definition of 'documentary' emerge. Instead, the reader is left to build up an impression of passionate involvement, of dedication, of a belief in the role of non-fiction film. Barnouw shares all these things and brings them vividly to life. It's difficult not to make this sound like a simple publicity blurb, for the book really is one of the most enjoyable and informative on film available.

Varsity films April till August

April.

Tues 19th	Play it again soon.	2.15p.m.
Wed 20th	Easy Rider	5p.m.
Thurs 21st	Paper Moon	2.15p.m.
Tues 26th	Straw Dogs	2.15p.m.
Wed 27th	A Man Called Horse	2.15p.m.
Thurs 28th	American Graffiti	5p.m.

May.

Tues 17th	Psycho	2.15p.m.
Wed 18th	Sherlock Holmes Smarter Bro.	5p.m.
Thurs 19th	Dog Day Afternoon	2.15p.m.
Tues 24th	Phantom of Liberty	2.15p.m.
Wed 25th	Vanishing Point	2.15p.m.
Thurs 26th	the Graduate	5p.m.
Tues 31st	Brother Sun Sister Moon	2.15p.m.

June.

Tues 1st	The 3 Musketeers.	2.15p.m.
Thurs 2nd	M.A.S.H.	5p.m.
Tues 7th	Exorcist	2.15p.m.
Wed 8th	Harold & Maude	2.15p.m.
Thurs 9th	Don't look now we're being shot at	2.15p.m.
Tues14th	Canterbury Tales	2.15p.m.
Wed 15th	Soldier Blue	2.15p.m.
Thurs 16th	If	2.15p.m.

July.

Tues 5th	Zabriskie Point	2.15p.m.
Wed 6th	Big Store/Day at the Races	2.15p.m.
Thurs 7th	Odessa File	2.15p.m.
Tues 12th	Jesus Christ Superstar	2.15p.m.
Wed 13th	The Bed Sitting Room	2.15p.m.
Thurs 14th	Sons and Lovers	2.15p.m.
Tues19th	Those Magnificent Men...	2.15p.m.
Wed 20th	One flew over the cuckoo's nest	5p.m.
Thurs 21st	The way we were	2.15p.m.
Tues 26th	The Inheritor	2.15p.m.
Wed 27th	Little Murders	2.15p.m.
Thurs 28th	Summer of 42	2.15p.m.

August.

Tues 2nd	They shoot horses don't they	2.15p.m.
Wed 3rd	Catch 222.	15p.m.
Thurs 4th	Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie	5p.m.
Tues 9th	Blazing Saddles	2.15p.m.
Wed 10th	All the Presidents Men	2.15p.m.
Thurs 11th	Dr Zhivago	2.15p.m.
Tues 30th	Chinatown	2.15p.m.
Wed 31st	Oh. you are awful	2.15p.m.