Other than Vérité: Sound and Moving Image in the Rock Music Documentaries of Peter Whitehead

Abstract

When we think of music documentary and the emergence of rock in the 1960s, the classic fi lms of American cinema verite or direct cinema readily come to mind-What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (Maysles brothers, US, 1964), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1966), Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1968), Gimme Shelter (Maysles brothers, US, 1970), and Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, US, 1970). These works have deservedly received great deal of critical attention. Unfortunately, their popularity suggests homogeneous approach to documentary during this era when, in fact, alternative practices fl ourished. Working coevally with Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers, and others, British fi lmmaker Peter Whitehead forged his own eclectic approach to documentary fi lms about pop u lar music. These groundbreaking works included documentaries on The Rolling Stones' 1965 tour of Ireland, The Beach Boys' 1966 visit to En gland, and early Pink Floyd in concert and in the studio. Because of legal obstacles that limited distribution, 1 Whitehead's fi lms are less well known than those of his American counterparts. However, viewers with sensibilities blunted by overexposure to the canon of direct cinema will discover in his fi lms refreshing take on the pop music scene of the de cade. Comparisons to fi lms such as Dont Look Back are expected,2 given the apparent similarities in subject and style. Yet, while sharing certain qualities with direct cinema, Whitehead's work remains profoundly dissimilar. This difference derives in part from the geo graph i cal distance between the United States and Britain, which allowed Whitehead to develop working practices unhampered by the obsessive polemics of the Americans. Because he drew inspiration from sources both selective and wide- ranging-from the Eu ro pe an art fi lm auteurs such as Bergman and Godard and from his training as newsreel cameraman- his diverse body of work refuses facile pigeonholing. Ultimately, Whitehead is bricoleur of cinema, determined to get the job done with the tools hand in the time allowed. I focus here on Whitehead's approach to audiovisual synchronization, for I believe this aspect clearly distinguishes his work from that of his American contemporaries and also illustrates his improvisatory manner of working. Four of Whitehead's music documentaries are addressed, each of which has its own mode of treating the relationship between moving images, speech, and music. I demonstrate that such diverse approaches preclude any adherence to the doctrine of verite. The Doctrine Although the practitioners of direct cinema did not conform to the caricature typically painted of them, it is nonetheless accurate to claim that they pursued naturalism as repre sen ta tional practice- especially as it pertained to audiovisual components.3 For Leacock, Pennebaker, Drew, Maysles, and company, portable sync sound represented the Holy Grail.4 To reject it apostasy. Yet sync sound sought after without critically examining its value. Why it so desirable? Perhaps perceptible disjunction between what we see and what we hear makes us wonder whether some tampering might have occurred in that gap. In other words, hiatus between sound and image presents an opportunity for the fi lmmaker to intervene. The power to capture reality unawares has persisted as an ideal, but as one seldom attained. We may imagine pure form of direct cinema, but the practice of fi lmmaking inevitably necessitates compromise.5 As Joe McElhaney observes, the Maysles brothers violated the codes of direct cinema at almost every turn.6 Nevertheless, these fi lmmakers continued to pledge themselves to a documentary cinema in which truth and reality are simply out there in the world, waiting to be captured on fi lm.7 Whitehead admits for time, he too was swept up little by that, but he soon realized that the notion of the objective documentary totally wrong and a total lie. …