The Documentary Film in America

Abstract

William Alexander. Films on the Left: American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.355 pp, Sol Worth. Studying Visual Communication. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.216 pp. Set opposite each other, in the way in which Lumière and Méliès are, Dziga-Vertov and Robert Flaherty established the terrain of the documentary film as the social, political and cultural quality of lived experience. Differentiated by their roots in Russian formalism and American romanticism, Dziga-Vertov and Flaherty nonetheless gave substantive weight to a nascent tendency which has gone on to become a major tributary of filmmaking practice. The documentary film does not represent a radically distinct practice from narrative film; indeed, it frequently borrows the same conventions and strategies, even though the effect may be noticeably different (a difference itself deliberately set into play in most docu-dramas). What most distinguishes documentary today is what distinguished it in the time of Dziga-Vertov and Flaherty: a distinct form of material practice, supported by specific individuals and distinct agencies or institutions, with its own distinct rhetoric and accompanying sense of purpose. In many instances these distinctions blur as we trace them toward the avant-garde or the feature fiction film, but as an overall organizing principle the difference is real enough.