In a special three part ‘Have You Seen…’, Charles Rivington explains that reality does not necessarily bite…
Reality is a dirty word. With the recent tragic suicide of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Russell Armstrong hitting headlines, the debate about the cruelty of so-called ‘reality’ television has once again captured public imagination. I’m not here to debate the culpability of the show but there is a well-known saying that suggests, and I’m paraphrasing, that every innovation or new piece of technology, even those conceived with the best of intentions, will eventually be used to bring mankind one step closer to destruction. In a sense, this is exactly what happened to the documentary genre when its techniques and style were first appropriated, bastardised and reduced to their most shallow and cruel form by the reality tv docu-soap. I believe that, now more than ever, we should learn to value, appreciate and celebrate reality again, not Bravo’s ‘reality’ but the unscripted, impartial and thought-provoking reality of cinema’s great documentaries. This edition of ‘Have You Seen…’ is therefore a little bit different as, rather than focusing on one film, I have decided to focus on a genre, that of feature-length documentaries. Due to its length, I have split it into three parts.
The documentary genre is as old as cinema itself and almost everything you can imagine has been the subject of a documentary film. Narrowing this vast category down to a definitive ‘five greatest’ would thus be pretty much impossible not to mention entirely redundant given the subjectivity of this criteria (how do we define greatness? Is my great the same as your great and is your great the same as Leonard Maltin’s great? Probably not.). Having said this, I do believe that a great documentary, regardless of whether its subject is penguins or the Second World War or a spelling competition, should challenge its viewers and force them to consider an idea or a point of view that might never have occurred to them. Whereas the great documentary-maker simply observes and questions without judgement, the great documentary connects with the audience by insisting that they think for themselves, forcing them to evolve from passive observers to active participants. This list is simply five films that did that to me.
I've heard great things about Hoop Dreams
I have limited the field to just feature length films (no Attenborough here I’m afraid) and excluded films that I think most people have already seen and therefore don’t fall under the remit of ‘Have You Seen…’ (Bowling For Columbine and Man on Wire for example are both wonderful films but are excluded for this reason). I should probably still apologise in advance because I am bound to have omitted one of your personal favourites either because I don’t share your opinion or because I simply haven’t seen it yet (Hoop Dreams, often regarded as one of the greatest documentaries of all time, is omitted from this list for the simple reason that I’ve never watched it). These five films are presented in no particular order. Feel free to disagree/put forward your own suggestions/advertise a dating website for rich singles in the comments below.
The Early Actualities of the Lumière Brothers (1895)
Having spent quite a bit of time defining the rules for this list, I have gone and broken at least one of them in the first entry because this is not one film, but rather a collection of one-reel films – the first ten of which were debuted at the Grand Café in Paris in 1895. It is also arguable the extent to which they are documentaries as given their short length (one-reel is usually less than a minute) it seems that most of them were probably at least partly choreographed and the comic L’Arroseur Arrosé (The Sprinkler Sprinkled) is often hailed as the first narrative film. Regardless of this, they are remarkable records of a bygone age and are therefore more than worthy of mention.
Filmed in their hometown of Lyon, Auguste and Louis Lumière’s fascinating actualities, among the first films ever made, give us an unparallelled glimpse at the lives of the French working class at the turn of the century. Among these first ten are La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon)
The Lumiere Brothers
and Les Forgerons (The Blacksmiths). Their depiction of the working class, and the fact that they were screened to audiences of all backgrounds, makes them as much a document and engine (pun intended) of social change as they are the remarkable first gasps of an emerging technology. Of course, at the time, the draw of these films was the amazing technology on display and the Lumière’s cinématographe, a device that recorded, developed and projected films, was the real star. These early audiences, used to the flat painted backgrounds of the stage, were particularly impressed by the capturing of nature on film and it is said that the popularity of films such as Repas de bébé (Baby’s Breakfast, which featured Auguste’s own family thus making it the first home movie) owed more to the movement of the leaves in the background than to the film’s charming subject matter. Because of this, this early, pre-narrative period of cinema is often referred to as ‘The Cinema of Attractions’ (a term coined by film scholar Tom Gunning). Nowadays, the opposite is true and it is these actualities’ remarkable depiction of every day life in France at the turn of the century that makes them so fascinating.
For a set of ‘local films for local people’ featuring an interesting look at British life during a similar, slightly later period, check out Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon’s actualities which were often filmed and projected on the same day and feature many other entries into the ‘factory-gate’ subgenre.
Both the Lumière Brothers and Mitchell and Kenyon films are currently available on DVD. As they are out of copyright, they can also be legally watched online for free and are relatively easy to find.
Crumb (1994)
Part of my fascination with the documentary genre lies in its wonderful breadth. Anything from pet cemeteries to the horror of war to cave paintings to parrots, when handled in the right way can make, and have made, incredible documentaries. That this list’s second entry should be so wildly far-removed from its first is a testament to this breadth and I make no apologies for the jarring shift in tone. I can’t begin to imagine what the Lumières and Mitchell and Kenyon would have made of Terry Zwigoff’s moving and shocking Crumb, a film apparently so depraved that the 1996 Academy Award nominating committee switched it off after only 20 minutes, but I like to think that, unlike the prudish Oscar snobs, they would have persevered and recognised it as a worthy and spellbinding entry into the genre they helped to create.
Crumb is very hard to describe and like the best documentaries doesn’t tell you how you should respond to it so that laughter, tears and repulsion are all equally valid reactions. It takes as its subject Robert Crumb, the
A self-portrait of R. Crumb. He's not kidding either...
subversive comic artist most famous for creating Fritz the Cat, the counter-cultural slogan, ‘Keep on Truckin’’ and a myriad of other works that were at the forefront of the underground comics movement of the 1960s. I have to admit that I was wholly unfamiliar with Crumb’s work before I saw this film (I only sought it out because I’d seen and loved Zwigoff’s rather more mainstream, Ghost World) and even now I’m not sure if I can say that I actually like his drawings with their garishly warped figures and often challenging and unsettling depictions of women and African Americans. However, as is the case with many great documentaries, the ostensible subject is merely a way in to much richer territory and the heart of Crumb lies not in these drawings (although their geneses are often as fascinating as they are disturbing) but in the man himself and his bizarre and tragic family, most notably his disturbed and equally artistic brothers, Maxon, who developed a penchant for sitting on nails and sexually harassing women, and Charles, a recluse who committed suicide before the film was released.
Featuring various interviews with family members, friends, critics and ex-girlfriends as well as his surprisingly well-adjusted wife and daughter, Crumb paints a picture of an intelligent and sensitive man who escaped a
Robert Crumb and friends
horrible childhood and went on to find salvation through art when others around him who were not as lucky. Crumb is a disturbing yet frequently amusing portrayal of mental illness and people on the fringes of the society that is frequently depressing but also strangely relatable. Crumb himself is a tapestry of quirks and odd sexual fetishes. As a young child he developed an attraction to Bugs Bunny to the extent that he would carry a picture of the cartoon rabbit around with him, periodically taking it out to look at it and much of the film deals with his life-long obsession with women with disproportionately large hindquarters. Despite these quirks Robert Crumb emerges as an oddly charming character whose quiet sense of humour and bafflement and disgust at the world around him is remarkably sympathetic, perhaps even inspirational.
Needless to say, Crumb is unsuitable for children and the prudish but if you can stomach it, it is a very rewarding experience. It is currently available on Region 2 DVD (annoyingly this print does not feature the fantastic Roger Ebert commentary that is available to our American cousins, so if you watch the film and like it – and have a region free DVD player – the Region 1 DVD is well-worth seeking out for this alone).