Although “Cinéma verité” might arise numerous contradictions and questions nowadays, I believe that the strive to create an experimental movie showing “the truth” behind the camera was rather innovative, and obviously courageous in 1961, when the movie “Chronique d'un été” ("Chronicle of a Summer") was released. Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin did not even hide that it was an experimental idea allowing them to check the possibility of such a movie, where the personalities of the characters would unfold in the screen throughout the film.
The film itself is about the film. Starting with the discussion on how the directors imagine the movie and the possible problems related to its realization it ends showing the first screening of the movie, the debates including the criticism around it, and how the directors reflect on those. Although at the end it was criticized by its own participants as “too bare” or at some parts participants were accused for “stripping in front of the camera”, this high level of honesty was the feature of the film to impress me the most.
When thinking about the characters, it becomes rather interesting whether they were chosen to show these sentiments, or their feelings unfold during the movie. This leads us to another question to what extent were the characters playing? In the movie there was a criticism about the “unnatural” character of the film and debates around the idea whether those characters were playing. However, I kept asking myself: is it, in general, possible, not to play at all when there is a camera? Or, if we “dig” even deeper, is it possible not to play at all even in real life social situations when interacting with others? This is not only a small reference to Goffmanian theory of dramaturgy, but rather a simple question, the answer of which is obvious to me. This presumes that “playing” should not be regarded as something negative or in contradiction with “honesty” and “authenticity”. Rather, it should be viewed as something normal and inseparable from our lives. Therefore, it is not of importance whether the characters were “playing” or not. One can hardly imagine any social situation where people don’t play, let alone with a camera shooting them.
However, the concept of truth itself is a little bit problematic not because of subjectivism, rather because of its impossibility here. While the directors try hard to “drawn” into the characters’ realities, it is still them shooting, editing and making the movie. It is still them to come up with ideas what to show and what not to, who to include in the film, who- not to, which scenes to cut, which- not to. Basically, they have the privilege to represent that truth, which obviously already changes it- whether they want it, or not.
However, the movie is a try to minimize the director’s subjectivism and to show the maximum of the characters’ personalities and their realities. The scenes mainly unfold in the environments which are usual for those people where they would feel the most comfortable at. These are the places of their everyday practices, such as homes where they live or the streets where they commute. The environment, obviously, not only gives space for the characters to open up, but also allows the directors to illustrate the "everydayness" of the people’s real lives. The cigarettes present in almost all the sequences re-create this "everydayness", and the close-up shots help to reduce the space between the viewer and the character increasing the intimacy between them. While in the beginning of the movie we see Marceline asking people in the streets whether they were happy, as the movie evolves, we found ourselves wondering whether she was. We appear to get interested both in the systematic, radical questions posed by these people, as well as very intimate and private issues they might had in their personal lives, such as broken relationships and losses. We see people crying during the movie, and we see them talking about the reasons why their relationship didn’t work out. We seem to be present in the big table discussions about international political issues and we see the reflections of such systematic problems on each of their lives… We see emotions, feelings and reflections evolving during the movie as we can see them developing, reflecting and transforming in the real life.
Maybe expectedly, not all of the participants liked the movie. Since the movie was rather experimental for its time, the unpreparedness of the audience or the rejection of the very idea of the film is rather understandable. The emotions shown are of real people based on their experiences. These sentiments do not seek to find solutions or logical consensuses in the movie, they are not exaggerated, but they are not hidden either… The “bare” emotions the characters show, are the ones real people feel and experience… the fact that they let the directors closer is not far from reality either, since many people tend to do that in their lives, too. A sudden cry or heated argument is not absent from daily lives, either. So, the question is: if all of these are experienced in the real lives, why not in the movie? Why not try to show the life as it is in the movie?!
Despite the problematic of the concept of truth, maybe that is what the directors meant by it… Why not to show ourselves and our lives in the movie?! And through these specific stories we get into more general question: why should not cinema show these bare emotions, that all of us tend to have?! Why should cinema be detached from our realities?! While nowadays, this issue seemed to be more or less conquered and it is not a revolutionary question viewers can ask themselves, in its times, this movie and cinema verité most probably had an immense role in such a transformation of our understanding what the movie can and should show.
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