Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960)

Some really fascinating stuff pops up in here with pertinent questions that make you wonder how much was real vs performance. Overall a neat look at 1960 Paris that holds time capsule like qualities and the keys to shared traits cross generations.

This film is incredibly poignant and essential in understanding the history of documentary film-making. Set in 1960's France during the Algerian War (France's equivalent of Vietnam), the viewer is taken on the journey of the lives of some incredibly interesting young adults. The film begins by reeling interviewees in with the simple question, "Are you happy?" Of course this is only a spring board for the subjects to invite us into their lives. Race relations, holocaust memories, mental illness, and so much more plague our subjects, both creating fear and excitement within the viewer. Not to mention there is a very cool, very unique ending, ala Robert Flaherty. Not to be missed.

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.

Often cited as one of the greatest documentaries ever made Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's "Chronicles of a Summer" takes a look at the lives of of ordinary Parisiennes over the course of the summer of 1960. It was filmed in a 'cinema vertie' style, using the people who appear as if they were actors 'acting out' their lives. There is no voice-over; their technique is to use interviews or simply silently film these people going about their business. What distinguishes this extraordinary film from others of its kind is that this is a work both sociological and deeply political, a piece of social history in which Africans are side-lined and homosexuality never mentioned.

Rouch and Morin pick and choose their subjects, mostly workers, students and intellectuals, and back them into a corner where the politics of the proletariat becomes the benchmark. These people talk fearlessly about their treatment by the State and the drugery of their daily routine with white Parisiennes oblivious to their inherent racism.

The film-makers fundamental question is, 'Are you happy?' Initially two women interview people on the street asking them if they are happy and as the film progresses this becomes its focal point while the level of intimacy Rouch and Morin achieves is extraordinary. Theirs is a technique other film-makers have used many times since, perhaps more skillfully as film-making has become more sophisticated but this masterpiece remains the granddaddy of them all. Unmissable.

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.