Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960)

This film, made in the summer of 1960 by the sociologist Edgar Morin and the ethnographer Jean Rouch, aimed to be as 'true as a documentary, but with the content of a fiction film.' Facilitated by improved technology (16mm film, sync sound, light hand held cameras) it pioneered a direct or live aesthetic dubbed 'cinema verite'. It was to film 'true life', but engage on a subjective level, getting people to talk about their experiences and ambitions, and most notably, whether or not they are happy. What emerges is an absolutely overwhelming cinematic experience, a film that is deeply affecting but also that makes you think. The film begins with a market researcher, Marceline, on the street, asking people whether or not they are happy. This sequence seems to me both to confirm the importance of human relationships and point up the dissatisfaction that living in a society about to tip into consumerism engenders. The film then moves to concentrate on a set of characters. Morin was criticised for his structural approach, typing his characters (i.e. a factory worker, a petit bourgeois, a student), but a real sense of the individuals involved shines through, notably in the sequences with Angelo and Landry chatting, and Marceline recounting her experience of deportation during the war. The most revolutionary part of this film is that the makers demonstrate the impossibility of documentary objectivity when they film themselves filming - they show how the truth of the film is constructed. Questions of authenticity abound. At the end of the film, they screen it to the characters involved. Even those filmed are unable to decide whether they were acting ('hamming for the camera') or being themselves. Morin and Rouch conclude they have failed in their aim to offer a slice of life, as the very act of filming something transforms it. Truth is elusive in the attempt to represent the everyday. This film is far from a failure however - watch it and be blown away.

By 1960 the documentary had evolved with new sound equipment and lighter cameras. In a direct line from the ideas of Flaherty and Vertov, Canadian filmmakers as Michel Brault had made significant shorts as "Les raquetteurs" (1959), while in the United States Robert Drew created his seminal work, "Primary" (1960.) All this activity helped the launching of "cinéma vérité" in France, with this film manifesto made by anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin. With a "caméra vivant" (living camera) and the question "Are you happy?", they went out to the streets of Paris to make a survey, showing passages in the life of students, workers and migrants (including Joris Ivens' future wife), with a short escapade to the St. Tropez beach, and a final confrontation of the creators and subjects with the footage and the idea of constructing objective pieces of reality on film. Rouch and American Frederick Wiseman believed in a kind of documentary open to emotional spaces and fantasy (as opposed, for example, to Richard Leacock's more naturalistic approach), and eventually changed the tone of their works, while the movement finally identified with the concept of "direct cinéma", developed by Canadians and American filmmakers.

This is a magnificent, and exquisitely sensitive and original, film which I never saw until now. It has been released on DVD with an extremely informative and lengthy booklet by Sam di Iorio, and with many DVD extras (such as previously unseen footage cut from the original officially released version of this film) and important and informative interviews. It is necessary to see it all and read the booklet in order to take in the enormous importance of this project, and its effect on worldwide film-making which followed afterwards. The film was jointly directed by ethnographic film-maker Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, the latter being a sociologist and intellectual. I knew Jean Rouch during the latter 1970s. He was employed by the Ethnographic Film Unit of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. I was introduced to him by an anthropologist with whom he worked closely, Germaine Dieterlen. The fact that I was friendly with his anthropologist colleagues (including also Solange de Ganay and the family of Dominique Zahan) and came to him in that way rather than through the media meant that he was particularly warm and friendly towards me and was prepared to give me every cooperation. He was a truly marvellous man, and if I had lived in Paris I would inevitably have been drawn into his fascinating circle of friends. I was at the time working under a contract with the BBC on a major TV documentary, not only as a researcher, but effectively as a co-producer for much of it, though uncredited as such. We needed ethnographic footage from Jean of a West African tribe. But Jean had eccentric personal habits and was exasperatingly elusive. This was long before cellphones existed. He would leave his flat every morning (except for the times when he stayed out all night) between 7 and 8 AM and could not then be contacted by any telephone. That is of course 6 to 7 AM British time. No BBC employee is awake at such an hour, much less in the office. So the BBC gave me the additional assignment of dealing with Jean Rouch entirely on my own, up until financial negotiations were reached. I would set my alarm clock for 5 AM and try and become alert enough to phone him before 6. In Paris, Jean and I sat through about 36 hours of ethnographic footage together and had long talks. During this time I conceived an enormous respect and admiration for him, but I never had any idea that he had made this film, and he never mentioned it. I now know that he had been greatly influenced by WE ARE THE LAMBETH BOYS (1958), which I had seen and admired long before, and which was an early documentary by the British director Karel Reisz, under whom I had apprenticed for several months in the 1960s. (I don't believe Karel and Jean ever met, which is a pity.) But as I was unaware of Rouch's non-ethnographic film-making, we never discussed Karel's work, which would have been so interesting for both of us. Jean was infatuated with his Africans, and only wanted to talk about them, and we bonded because of sharing that interest. This film shot in the summer of 1960 was a 'revolution in the cinema' in the true sense. The film set out to ask people 'are you happy?' and got some dusty answers. Although a few strangers were approached in the street on a vox pop basis, most of the people interviewed were individuals known to the directors. Some of the interviews are overwhelmingly emotional, more powerful and devastating to watch than any dramatic acting. The two main examples of this are the scenes with the amazing Marceline Loridan, who years later married the documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, and is still very much alive, as well as with 'Mary Lou' (really Marilu) Parolini. Towards the end of the film she is glowing with happiness because she has found a boyfriend whom she loves. He is Jacques Rivette, later a famous film director. Another famous person who appears in the film as a young man is the notorious ideologue and political provocateur Régis Debray, who became a friend and colleague of Che Guevara. So fascinating is this film and everything connected with it that a review can do it no justice at all. But what is most remarkable of all is the intensity of many of the film's sequences, perhaps because they are real rather than simulated, and come from people prepared to be more honest and revealing about themselves in front of a camera than possibly anyone had ever been before. It is in this sense that this film goes beyond all previous horizons and treads a New Land, as unexplored by the cinema until then as the subconscious had been before Freud. The monologue spoken on the sound track by Marceline, as she wanders through the now-vanished Les Halles, about her memories of Auschwitz, where she had been taken as a Jewish girl of 16, and of her last meeting there with her father, who had told her she would get out of there but he would not, are so distressing that they would bring tears to the eyes of stones, if they could see and hear. But the most torrential outpouring of emotions comes from Marilu Parolini, and her self-revelations must rank amongst the most harrowing and naked in the entire history of film. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this shattering documentary, not only for the history of cinema, but as a breakthrough in the moral, social, and psychological spheres. It was the first film of the cinema verité movement, which it founded. And since then, it is doubtful that any other film of this kind has yet equalled it. Let us hope therefore that this DVD release may stimulate more projects like it.

Dugan McShain Anthropological Film Chronicle of a summer Chronique d'un été

Filmmaker Jean Rouch, in coordination with sociologist Edgar Morin, create a story out of seemingly random interviews and anecdotes. Together they create a piece that describes life in Paris circa 1961, they converse with their friends and associates about life, the current war in Algeria, and the mindset of the daily life of Parisians. Using the newly available 16mm camera they set out to do what no one had done before them: try and capture daily life and discuss it. They talk at length about politics, arguing on film, and discuss, both during the film and at the end when the filmmakers show their finished work to the participants and have them dissect it.

They give feedback, feelings and talk about the characters, describing what worked and didn't, what felt real and what seemed contrived. The people that they interview are across the board when looked at socioeconomically, intellectually, and racially, providing alternate views about the problems faced, the stories that they needed to tell to the camera and the trials that were associated with their lives.

I was, to say the least disappointed with the final product that was shown. As I was watching the film there came a scene where the two filmmakers are discussing their participation and the feat that they had just accomplished with the finished film ready to be shown. It was a very intimate scene where it seemed as if both of the filmmakers were unaware that they were being filmed and as such proceeded to expound on the principles, and the theory of making an anthropological film.

It was half way through this conversation that I realized that they staged this discussion not as a candid frank debate but as a 'realistic end cap' to put on their film to add flair and realism. What seemed at first as a novel approach to film-making came off more as a clever marketing ploy, using the audience as a sounding board, and bringing the audience closer to the subject matter of the film through the use of intimacy.

The filmmakers opted for participation in the film instead of the typical vein of anonymity. Reflexivity is a device that is used to vary the distance from a subject, giving the idea that the filmmakers, the product and everything that goes along with it a unity in the production. This style is self-serving in that the filmmakers could be seen prompting the subjects and providing a direct line of questions that they could use to form a solid piece. In the court of law this is called 'leading the witness' in order to get the desired answers that you seek, as opposed to the answers that come naturally from a subject matter that is brought up.

Rouch gives specific questions that lend themselves to specific answers. "I would argue that most anthropologists implicitly believe content should so dominate form in scientific writing that the form and style of an ethnography appears to "naturally" flow out from the content." - (Ruby, Studies in the anthropology of Visual Communication, Pg 106,Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1975). In providing specific questions, they do not let the life naturally 'flow' but instead impede it at their own will destroying the illusion that they have created. These filmmakers seem almost like they wish to participate in the very spectacle they wish to show, and cannot distance themselves from the subjects for fear of losing notoriety.

Morin and Rouch are extremely open to their subjects, providing valuable insight into their minds, as well as the minds of the people whom they are interviewing. This certainly provides for honesty in front of the camera creating a cushion of comfort for the subjects so that the camera does not seem to interfere as much a simply record. In certain scenes it seemed as if we were an observer regarding these people with a cold unfeeling eye. The argument in the hallway for example. This does not lend itself to a self-conscious conversation.

There are moments in the film that do seem very contrived however. There is a scene of a woman walking through the streets of Paris along with her walking we hear her telling the story of her father's internment and her own in a Nazi death camp. This is obviously a scripted scene. It lends itself to disbelief when we see that she is walking, lost in thought. The technique of us hearing those thoughts is vital to this disbelief.

The film-making was excellent at times, as I said, giving the sensation of an omniscient- floating eyeball, observing the people at their daily lives. This feeling is ruined however when we are privy to the Rouch's and Morin's conversation on what they feel the outcome of the film represents. It creates a feeling of false voyeurism then, incompatible with the sensitive proximity that we have just watched. The scene in the theater when he shows the characters dissecting each other is especially grating as it lends it self even more to a Dali-esquire surrealism where the characters are watching themselves as we watch them.

Jean Rouch is remembered as an oddity in film history, an artist working in between of fact and fiction as well as the era of colonialism and post-colonialism. He is especially often crowned as the founder of ethnographic cinema, but "Chronicle of a Summer" (1961) made by Rouch and Edgar Morin is something a little different. It is the breakthrough film of cinéma vérite or "truth cinema" which had a huge impact on the following French New Wave, most of whose filmmakers admired Rouch.

Already in his earliest documentaries, Rouch isolates himself from his own time by focusing on engagement and immersion instead of observation. Interaction between the observer and his object -- or rather between subjects -- becomes vital. As vital is embracing the presented subjects' personal and collective world views, which form a fascinating entirety in Rouch's "I, a Black Man" (1958). In a word, the other and the self are of the same reality to Rouch.

Although a representative of so-called truth cinema, Rouch and Morin's film does not concern any epistemic and scientific truth, but rather the truth of the appearance of the intersubjective reality. The camera takes part in action, ceases to exist, but at the same is inseparably present. A fabric of real emotions, thoughts, lies and acts is born which can be taken as a truth of one kind. On the one hand, Rouch and Morin attempt to revolutionize the cinema or at least to turn its lens to itself, but on the other, their sociological mission is to find out how does the modern man live. Hence they ask "Are you happy?" from random people in the streets.

Rouch's "The Human Pyramid" (1961) might be more well organized, though utterly poetic, than "Chronicle of a Summer", but the latter is more essay-like which also associates it with the new wave. The remarks of the meta-level are not as detached from the rest of the film as in "The Human Pyramid", but still fact and fiction merge in an essential fashion.

However, Rouch didn't only affect new wave filmmakers for his cinematic methods but also for his image of the world and man. There is indeed great human beauty in the film. During the interviews and other scenes, the camera becomes a penetrating mirror to whom one can reveal all of one's secrets. Perhaps this also happens to the viewer in a lesser extent. On one level, Rouch and Morin reveal the need to talk and share in an individualistic society. On the other, they tell something enduring about man, life and cinema.