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For a genre that ostensibly presents snippets of unvarnished truth, a particular type of documentary is difficult to name. The opening of “Chronicle of a Summer” (1961), a groundbreaking example by the anthropologist Jean Rouch and the sociologist Edgar Morin, calls it “cinéma vérité.” To the brothers Albert and David Maysles, it was “direct cinema.” Frederick Wiseman has used the phrase “reality fictions.” But in a 2015 interview, he told me he meant that term in jest: If Truman Capote could describe “In Cold Blood” as a nonfiction novel, then surely Wiseman could say his own films — shot unobtrusively, then edited with an eye toward characterization — added a novelistic spin to reality.
Whatever you call it, this type of filmmaking, if it’s indeed one type of filmmaking, became possible in the 1950s, when light 16-millimeter cameras and the ability to capture sound on the fly let documentarians test the boundaries of the form. Typically, the “vérité” label gets slapped on documentaries that avoid re-enactments or interviews, and instead favor real-life scenes as they unfold. Truth or fiction, one genre or several, these movies raise fascinating questions about cinema’s capacity to accurately mirror the world. They also make for active, exciting viewing.
“Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment” (1963): Stream it on the Criterion Channel or HBO Max; rent or buy it on Amazon, Google Play or iTunes.
“Salesman” (1969): Stream it on the Criterion Channel, HBO Max or Kanopy; rent or buy it on Amazon or iTunes.
Perhaps the simplest attribute of vérité is its ability to capture unguarded, candid moments. For that, look to the films of Robert Drew, who, along with associates like Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, established the vérité style in the United States.
“Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment,” produced by ABC, shows the style as a potentially powerful tool for observing events in real time. It follows the Kennedy administration’s actions to ensure the court-ordered integration of the University of Alabama in 1963, when the state’s segregationist governor, George Wallace, had pledged to stand in the door to block African-American students.
Drew and company pursue several lines of action. They follow Wallace, both at home and in public, as he grandstands about the South’s bravery in the Civil War and greets admirers who are presumably fans of his racism; Robert F. Kennedy, attorney general at the time, as he and President John F. Kennedy strategize on the best way to maintain control of a confrontation that could, if it backfires, embarrass the federal government; and Nicholas Katzenbach, then the deputy attorney general, whose job was to escort the students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, to the building where they would register. (If the film were made today, the students’ perspectives would surely have played a more central role.)
Amid the crosscutting, “Crisis” captures a wealth of informal texture: Bobby Kennedy, trying to work while his young daughter Kerry is distracting him, briefly puts her on the phone with Katzenbach. (“Hi, Nick!” “Hi, Kerry. How are you, dear?”)
Perhaps the quintessential introduction to the issues posed by direct cinema is “Salesman,” which is also a great place to think about the vérité style as artistry. (Even the title card takes an auteurist possessive: “The Maysles Brothers’ ‘Salesman.’”) Directed with Charlotte Zwerin, the Maysles’ film follows four door-to-door salesmen — nicknamed “the Badger,” “the Gipper,” “the Rabbit” and “the Bull” — who work for the Mid-American Bible Company. Their assignment: selling large illustrated Bibles for $49.95 (around $380 today).
Paul Brennan, “the Badger,” is the first and last subject seen, and the one whose desperation emerges most vividly as drama. Whether driving through the snow or spouting dialogue worthy of Arthur Miller (“They say Alaska’s good territory”), he prefigures Shelley Levene, the haggard, over-the-hill salesman of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Shooting in black-and-white, the directors film with an eye to aesthetics: There are stunning shots of Paul, in the shadows and apparently lost in thought, as his train pulls into Chicago’s Union Station for a sales meeting. (You would have to know Chicago to recognize the mordancy of the gathering’s location, the Edgewater Beach Hotel — a fading resort for the rich and famous that by then had fallen on hard times. In keeping with the vérité style, such context is never offered.)
The question of whether the camera influences action in “Salesman” is fascinating on its own. “Half the time, I couldn’t even get in the door,” Paul complains after a bad day. If that’s the case, how many times could Albert Maysles, who is credited with the photography, get in the door with him? Did the act of filming influence Paul’s sales, one way or the other?
Those questions aren’t answered in the film, but one presumes the offscreen negotiations with the prospective customers turned the filmmakers into salesmen themselves — and turned what they documented into a reality fiction.
In the coda of “Chronicle of a Summer,” viewers who have just watched a cut of the film question whether the onscreen figures were acting for the camera — and disagree about whether such put-ons are revealing or obfuscating. “Either our characters are blamed for not being true enough,” Morin reflects afterward, “or they’re blamed for being too true.”
That’s a good summation of the paradox of vérité, for which it’s rarely possible to conclude when the camera has turned subjects into performers. The question becomes faintly disturbing in films like the Maysles’ “Grey Gardens,” about two relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who have cloistered themselves in a decaying East Hampton estate. The women acknowledge the filmmakers’ presence, but they also clearly don’t have all their marbles.
By bearing passive witness, vérité films prompt the same ethical questions raised by photography. For “Gimme Shelter,” a film about the Rolling Stones’ 1969 Altamont concert made by the Maysles and their frequent editor Zwerin, a cameraman captured the stabbing of Meredith Hunter by a Hells Angel. David Maysles plays the footage back for Mick Jagger. “Did you see what was happening there?” Maysles asks. “No, you couldn’t see anything” but another scuffle, Jagger replies, apparently referring to his vantage point from the stage.
Watching the events on film may have acted as a magnifying glass for Jagger, but in Vincent Canby’s original review for The New York Times, the critic accused “Gimme Shelter” of exploitation, writing that when it was discovered Hunter’s stabbing had been filmed, “I can’t help but feel that someone thought, ‘Wow! What luck!’”
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