TITICUT FOLLIES

Frederick Wiseman

1967

Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité These are similar in nature in that there is a string tendency to use hand held cameras, and let the action happen as it will. Both divorce themselves from historical reconstructins, or flashbacks, or any of the technical manipulations of film. They look for a kind of "fly on the wall" approach where the camera is simply an observer to what happens. This is sometimes called "Observational Cinema". Both forms lack a narrator's voice over.Both give the immpression of life unfolding in front of the camera. The two forms look for a "deeper truth" than what is happening on the screen. .

Where they differ is in Cinéma vérité's willingness to "set up" a scene and even provoke action, whereas direct cinema tends to being more observational.

Many questions have been raised about whether or not the camera's being there is enough to keep the action from being "real". (Little Fugitive used a kind of "candid camera" which was hidden so many people did not know they were being filmed. There have been considerable discussions about whether or not people finally come to ignore the camera or not.

They share a history with Kino Pravda (Dziga Vertov), and Flaherty. . Certainly films like Morris Engel's Little Fugitive take a similar approach in film making. Engel's film border's almost on documentary in that it sets up a situation which the performers "improvise" in. Little Fugitive is not strictly speaking scripted although it has something of a plot line. Rich Andrusco, (Joey) was put into situations and allowed to do what he wanted since the film was about what a 6 year old boys wanted to do in Coney Island. This influenced people like Truffaut and Cassavettes.

The style has had an impact on narative films and well as TV (reality shows and many of the CSI shows and so on). Docufiction; Docudrama and "found footage films" (like Cannibal Holocaust, Blair Witch Project.) are outgrowths of this approach.

Titicut Follies

Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman) (1967) is a typical Wiseman film which looks at an institution rather than focusing on an individual as Flaherty did. In this he is liek Pare Lorentz. Wiseman's approach was to go to a place without any preparation, and films for about 4 weeks. Although the films are unplotted they are not without dramatic structure. Wiseman says overtly that one has to manipulate the source material to create dramatic structure, and indeed insists that it is necessary to "make a movie." Wiseman has emphasized that his films are not and cannot be unbiased. Clearly there is selection of material, and of camera positions, camera movement and most of all the editing are there and these ultimately shape the film and what it says. The viewer draws conclusions only from what is shown. Outtakes and other footage that does not make it to the final version are of course never seen by the audience. It is estimated that there were more than 100 hours of footage shot for the film.

Wiseman's style typically lacks expository material (narration), interactive material (interviews between the film maker and the people ont he screen, but not between characters involved - e.g. the psychiatrist and the patient), or reflexive (revealing to the viewer some part of the filmmaking process) elements. (See Zelig and the statements about filming interviews between Zelig and his analyst or Crazy as Hell and the statements about hidden cameras) Although Wiseman got permission from the people in the film (or their legal guardians) to film them, the film was ultimately blocked from release on the grounds of the patients rights to privacy. It is the only film to have ever been banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security. The restructions were first lifted when it was held that "professionals" could see the film and then finally in 1991 when it was ruled that those involved were either deseased or the issue of provacy did not take precedence of a right to know. Wiseman came to feel eventually that persmission in any case was not necessary.

The film depicts the inner workings of a mental institution in Massacheusets and clearly the attempt to block the film was based on how ad the film looked. Was the institution itself as weird as the film depicts? That is how accurate is the film? We do see scenes with the psychiatrist asking questions and virtually answering them himself. In many cases we wonder about the psychological state of the "normal" people in the film. The psychiatrist seems far too interested in the sexual behavior of the inmates going so far as to tell them whether certain behaviors are excessive and asking what kind of erotic stimuli the inmates like - suggesting a host of different aspects. This seems totally antithecal to psychiatric theory.

There is a question too of "The Gaze" which can be used to talk about (a) what the camera looks at and (b) what the various audience members look at. In the former, the gaze is often held to be male since most directors and cinematographers especially in the Golden Age of Hollywood tended overwhelmingly to be male. The latter refers to the fact that audience members see certain things in the films which appeal to them. A gay woman interviewed in The Celluloid Closet a film about the depiction of gays in Hollywood films talks about how she had seen Johnny Guitar a number of times just to see Joan Crawford in a specific costume because it was a "turn on" ofr her. Whether this was the intent of the director and cinematographer (and costume designer) is hard to say, but one suspects it was not the main reason for most people going to the film. Taking this to its logical conclusion the question becomes why does Wiseman focus so much on these kinds of questions from the psychiatrist unless there is some interest in the area on Wiseman's part. Does a film like this tell us as much or more about Wiseman than it does about the institution considered in the film?.

One of the problems raised by the approach taken here is whether or not the film's connection with the real world is very strong and whether or not the film leads people to believe that this is an accurate depicition about the institution. What we can say about the mental institution and the people in the film may not really be applicable to the real institution or the people who work there. Without marration there is little to explain what is going on. One can only draw conclusions from the images which are in fact not real life since they are selected and edited. Are there options, for example, to the forced feeding of the patient.? We can not ask the doctor in the film and questions and the lack of narration makes it difficult to know what is happening - or why.

Some people appear in the film (the women who come to the institution) and we are not sure who they are or why they are there. Without explanation the audience drawn its own conclusions which might be erroneous or mioght even be led in an erroneous direction by the editing techniques.

The cinematographer, John Kennedy Marshall held a BA and MA in anthropology from Harvard. He is perhaps best known for his ethnographic film making, notably a film about the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert called The Hunters which deals with 4 bushmen hunting and finally killing a giraffe. He has more than 70 films to his credit and was in 1968 involved with Tim Asch in fouding a not for profit organization called Documentary Educational Resoucnes.which distributes anthrpological films.