David Holzman's Diary

Jim McBride's mockumentary is a delightful satire about the filmmaker's compulsion to capture everything on camera, and also a wry character study of one young man who uses his "art" as a pretext for complete self-absorption. This film from the sixties eerily forecasts our present absorption with social media.

As played by L.M. Kit Carson, David is on an irreconcilable mission: to at once understand a world in chaos, and cocoon himself from it in his own cinematic world.

He is lucky that his girlfriend ( Eileen Dietz) didn't chuck his camera when he filmed her sleeping nude.

One thing I found fascinating is the "Observer Effect" as defined by David. Once you start filming, you cease to have reality as you change in response to the film. It is not real life, it is a movie. One would wonder here, if you wore a GoPro Hero all day would you record a normal day, or would you look for the abnormal?

With irritation, alienation, a sex-hungry lady sitting in a car in the middle of traffic, and a few bloody noses, this one "Diary" worth peeking into.

I guess you would get confused if you didn't understand the hype and hoopla surrounding the cinema verité movement during this era.

David Holzman's Diary serves to lampoon cinema verité by showing one dull, overly introspective scene after another. It's a thinly-veiled attack on what director Jim McBride saw as a pretentious cinematic form.

The fact that cinema verité is not widely regarded today (except in film schools) is a testimony to how dated this film now appears. That said, Roman Coppola endlessly references this film in his debut, "CQ". Perhaps McBride's film will enjoy a bit of a renaissance.

I first saw this film on public TV of all places, at about 2:30 am. Not knowing why(or anything about the film),I grabbed a blank tape and recorded it. What followed was a film that grabbed my attention from the opening shot of David with the camera to the end scene where the only thing left is some still shots and David's voice. Being that this is shot on a hand held,it gives it great atmostphere (especially the shots on the street and in Central Park). I recommend this to any future filmmaker and watch with awe.

***1/2

If you liked the Blair Witch Project, this is where they probably got the idea. Every film school shows this as an example of a completely fictional documentary, that works. Done in cinema verite style, the fictional angst filled life of a documentary maker falls apart, as he chronicles its disintegration, largely caused by his obsession with filming it as it crumbles. Like watching a train wreck.

Wildly unconventional and sadly underrated, "David Holzman's Diary" is, in my opinion, the greatest "found footage" film ever made. While "found footage" is a genre normally associated only with horror movies, and wasn't even a term in 1967, this still plays out extraordinarily similarly to a film like "The Visit" or "Willow Creek". However, it is much, much better and is a tragicomedy rather than a horror flick.

Before delving into the depths of this obscure oddity, one must be aware that it is a highly satirical film. It mocks the avant garde and cinema verite movement in a deadpan and, at times, subtle way. It portrays those who attempted to find art and truth in the painfully mundane as people who are pretentious, delusional, and occasionally creepy. Of course, I am something of a fan of these movements, but it is important to also note that the film isn't mocking ALL cinema verite or experimental films, just the highly pretentious and annoyingly boring ones that began to spring up back in the mid to late 60's.

Although he is something of an antihero, the film also gives poor David Holzman some sympathy as we witness his life steadily decay due to his cinematic obsession. It's tragic, it's satiric, and it's comic.