Documentaries Guide

by Mark Kitchell

Some call it "the D word," as in boring, hackneyed, preachy and worse. As a poor relation to the glamorous feature film, most documentaries languish in obscurity, lucky if they rise to the status of tiebreaker in an Oscar betting pool. Nonetheless, documentary can be an extraordinary art form. There's nothing quite like capturing actuality; it can be so much richer and truer than fiction. And for the discerning devotee of documentary, there are a great many amazing and fascinating films to be seen. Herewith, then, a discerning guide to that obscure object of desire.

Leni Riefenstahl filming Olympia.

What Is & What Ain't Documentary

The dividing lines are getting blurrier than ever, but, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography: you know a real doc when you see it. Reality TV ain't it. Nor are most made-for-television series, formulaic and neutered by the demands of the medium. Of course there are exceptions - works of gravitas by nature of their subject and by who made them. Certain sub-genres, like the nature documentary or performance film, are often regarded separately - although here, too, there are plenty of exceptions. Simply put, documentary is non-fiction film, and generally a film about people and ideas, running toward social analysis and independent visions. But that's too narrow a definition of an art form that's all over the map.

Early years

Over the course of its history, the documentary has developed into many things: explorer, reporter, propagandist, poet, advocate, observer and iconoclast. The first -- and for some, still the greatest -- documentary was Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty's look at a vanishing way of life among the Eskimos. He went on to document other primitive peoples (see Man of Aran) and launched the ethnographic genre - still going strong today with films like The Saltmen of Tibet (2001). The next great pioneer was Dziga Vertov, who began in the Russian civil war making newsreels shown on agit-trains. Then he turned to experimentation as a way to document socialist reality , as can be seen in the ahead-of- their-time Kino Eye and Three Songs of Lenin. His most enduring testament is 1929's The Man With The Movie Camera, a kaleidoscope of dazzling virtuosity - don't miss it.

If the 1920s saw the first flowering of documentary's poetic possibilities, the 1930s brought the social documentary to the fore. Film became an instrument of struggle. One of the most amazing works of propaganda ever made is Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934), heralding the arrival of Hitler's Nazi Germany at a huge rally choreographed for the camera. Debate goes on about whether it's a great documentary or the basest of propaganda, but it still packs a powerful (and frightening) punch. Also check out Riefenstahl's Olympia as well as a recent documentary about her, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl.

In England, a different kind of political documentary emerged. John Grierson trained a bunch of raw recruits to make films on social issues. "Art is a hammer, not a mirror," he said. But some brilliant work emerged, especially Night Mail (1936), edited to a poem by Auden. Grierson was known as "the chief"; he was an organizer of film units in England, Canada and elsewhere, and, through protégés like Paul Rotha, the progenitor of the socially engaged documentary. In the U.S., Pare Lorentz made the short documentary The Plow That Broke The Plain (1936) and The River (both of which are on the DVD, Our Daily Bread); and a group of photographers including Willard Van Dyke, Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz made hard-hitting docs about civil rights violations in the South and the Spanish Civil War. The City, made for the 1939 New York World's Fair, is a gem. The most celebrated man of causes was Joris Ivens, the Dutch documentarian. From Russia, Spain and China to Cuba and Vietnam, he made dozens of legendary films. Unfortunately, they're so hard to find that they're likely to remain legends.

The War

World War II seems to have been made for documentary. Some may jokingly call the History Channel the "Hitler Channel" due to the number of their programs about the subject, but there are so many angles of the Second World War to explore. The best archival history is the 26-epsiode British series The World At War, and for classic bombast you can't beat Victory at Sea. Many of the bugle-call films made to rally support, like the Why We Fight series produced by Frank Capra, now seem heavy-handed and simplistic. More nuanced and interesting is the work of Humphrey Jennings, Listen to Britain and other films that capture the English "we'll be all right" spirit of endurance in the face of adversity. John Huston's Battle of San Pietro is an unforgettable look, from a foot soldier's perspective, of a slaughter of uncertain value. Wartime France under Nazi control is the subject of one of the all-time great documentaries, The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) by Marcel Ophuls. In brilliant interviews he cuts through the veil of myth surrounding both the resistance and the collaboration.

And, of course, the Holocaust continues to be, and rightfully so, thoroughly documented. Alain Resnais' Night and Fog (1955) is the most admired and Shoah (1985), an epic but unforgettable series, the most monumental. Several good recent films about the Holocaust include Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport and The Long Way Home, both by Mark Jonathan Harris, both Oscar-winners.

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