Is There Any Truthful Cinema?

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, Lumière Brothers, 1896      Truth?

When I was studying film, we had several class discussions (arguments?) about what is called "cinéma vérité." The term means "truthful cinema" and is a style of documentary filmmaking. 

When the French Lumiére brothers invented the first movie camera in 1895 that could hold fifty feet of film stock, they filmed things such as a train pulling up to a station. No script, no editing, no sound, a real-life situation. 

In classes, we would also talk about "direct cinema" which is concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and the audience become unaware of the camera's presence.

Sometimes this style is known as being in an "observational mode", or "a fly on the wall."

Cinéma vérité was a1960s experiment developed by French ethnologist and filmmaker, Jean Rouch.  In those films, the filmmaker actively participates in the film as a subjective observer where necessary. How many names are attached to this style? I also heard the terms observational and participatory filming.

Any time there is an awareness of a camera filming a scene, the truth starts to erode. Think of when you point your phone camera at friends. Beginning filmmakers discover quickly that framing a shot, selecting an angle, and a point of view immediately alter what might be considered the truth before them.

So is a cinema of truth possible? Vérité filmmaker Dan Kraus has said, “no documentary can ever show you the truth, because there are multiple truths, but vérité can at least relay the truth as seen by a single observer…” 

Much of this came into being during the early 1960s when documentary cinema was mostly highly edited rather than portrayals of real events. Technology also changed and so changed filming styles. Smaller and lighter cameras (16mm rather than 35mm) that also required less lighting, and portable sync sound allowed filmmakers to be unobtrusive flies on the wall. Later, video would shift things again.

Albert and David Maysles were probably the best-known Americans working in direct cinema. Instead of planning a scene, the brothers let the story unfold organically as the camera rolled. They saw the documentarian as an objective, invisible observer, and not as a director or participant. That separates it from cinema vérité and so they are viewed as two alternative methods of documentary filmmaking.