The Renée Review

I believe that narrative spine; theme, exposition, plot, character development and arc have become increasingly objective as filmmakers explore increasingly complex content. 

In the films Actualities (Lumiere Bros. 1890 – 1910), Nanook of the North (Flaherty 1922), Regen / Rain (Ivens 1929), Drifters (Grierson 1929), Triumph of the Will, (Riefenstahl 1934), Olypiad II – Diving Sequence (Riefenstahl 1936), The River (Lorentz 1936) and Night Mail (Watt & Wright 1936) the filmmakers want us to believe the way they do and portray a one sided story. 

During the early years of film, people were naïve. By 1910, coast-to-coast calling was possible in America and most towns had a local telephone franchise, but this was hardly the information age.  Verifying facts through world news and early media was either painstakingly slow, unavailable or beyond most persons resources.  Today’s audience has more resources at its fingertips than has ever existed.  To be pandered to or told what a certain reality is will not go unchecked.  If a filmmaker creates a purely subjective film, the audience will not be easily fooled and speaking points will be checked.

In Flaherty’s, Nanook of the North (1922), the score and repeatedly used supers give a narrative spine or train element in an effort to drive the story forward.  Exposition unfolds at the beginning with a super stating that Nanook, the subject of this film has since died of starvation.  While Nanook did die, his death was caused by tuberculosis.  Flaherty manipulated the text of these supers because he needed us to care about Nanook and wanted to draw the audience in. It is important to motivate viewers to want to know what happens next, but this type of manipulation is no longer possible with the advent of the World Wide Web.

By 1929, filmmakers use the score to give credence to the theme of the film.  In Ivens film, Regen / Rain (1929) the montage imparts a familiar scene of daily life.  Life without rain is mundane and lacks a certain momentum.  Once the rain begins, the music perceptibly changes and the imagery changes to rivulets of water.  The imagery, which focused only on objects, changes to include people and their reaction to the rain.  The music makes the rain feel friendly, familiar and welcome.  It has a personality.  Its theme suggests the world is more interesting with rain and the people serve it by being out in it.  It is subtle, soft and artistic.

In  1929, Grierson’s, Drifters, used supers combined with cross fades, long dissolves and optical printing to help the arc of the story.  The characters transform from countryside villagers to salty sea dogs and men scratching out a living, making their catch and hauling it to market, feeding their families and the world.

By 1934, Riefenstahl’s, Olypiad II (Diving Sequence), took the world on a turbulent ride from observer to participant.  She set up her shots beginning with an observer’s perspective.  Once lulled in, she took shots from high and low angles, in front and behind, full body to close up and edited shots in reverse.  She provided a provocative dance allowing us the feeling of participation. She invented the optics for these shots and was the first to give the world under water imagery.  While narrative film is character driven, this film breaks the confines of time and space allowing the viewer to become the character.  It’s thrilling and physically dizzying to watch.

By 1936, crude soundtracks were available to filmmakers. Riefenstahl’s, Triumph of the Will (1936), takes her character, Adolph Hitler into a movie star stature with dramatic storytelling, making him heroic and strong before the German people.  Dialogue is cut efficiently for power and exploitation.  Various camera angles are used to diminish others and exalt Hitler.  He is always portrayed as taller than those around him, never small.  When Hitler is eye level, he connects with smiling well-fed, well-groomed people and pretty young girls admire him.   His protagonist is poverty, starvation and a diminished Germany that he alone is capable of saving.  The people of the time were completely held by the film.  The lengthy parade sequences of enormous crowds pledging their loyalty to Hitler equaled the satisfactory ending German audiences craved.  If they support Hitler they will achieve a unified Germany.  The sequences played out so long, brain washing the population; it was easy to believe that every loyal German supported Hitler.

Lorentz, The River (1936), used poetic narrative to describe the destruction happening in the lands touched by the Mississippi.  The clean and beautiful Mississippi is a highway and the beauty begins to fade once man touches it.  “Men and mules, mules and mud.” 

Finally, Watt & Wright’s, Night Mail (1936), has dialogue on an optical sound track.  The story of a letter as it makes its progress on the postal special, a night train, becomes a frenzy of activity.  The postal workers, their pride and the risks they take to deliver our mail and manage our dreams.  “We all dream of receiving mail, and who can bear to be forgotten?”  The film is poetry.  It is a clock ticking in constant repetition.  It is how we expect the mail to continue – ever on.  The world is good when the postal special runs.

The exposition of these films cover who, what, when, where and why differently, not always waiting to give the audience what we need when we needed it. 

Symbolism, iconography, montage, supers, camera language and sound have always reached the audience, but the ability to fact check combined with a well-traveled population and higher levels of education have made it more difficult to hold and entice that audience.  It is for these reasons that objectivity is necessary as we explore increasingly complex content in documentary filmmaking.