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Can one-sided propaganda movies be called 'documentaries'?

Can a propaganda movie be called a 'documentary' if it purposefully excludes highly relevant information and spokepersons, and includes lots of innuendo, plus statements sold to its audience for facts or even 'evidence', and talking heads presented as 'witnesses'?

'Allen v Farrow' should not be listed as a documentary.

It is a propaganda movie, presenting and trying to convince us of Mia's three decades old allegation - one for which she has always shunned our legal system, and has only offered to the media since the day in August 1992 when her videotape was 'leaked' on the desk of a young reporter working for a NY Fox news channel.

That would be Rosanna Scotto, who can be seen & heard in 'Allen v Farrow'. The one young, hardly known reporter about whom Dylan's nanny, Kristi Groteke (not in 'Allen v Farrow'...) wrote in her tell-all book that she was happy to meet Rosanna, and that Rosanna was a visitor to Mia's big party when she celebrated the outcome of the custody trial.

This was the videotape that we only get to see three selected minutes from in Allen v Farrow', while we know from from court reports that the tape ran for 15 minutes, while the 'Allen v Farrow' makers maintain they only saw 11 minutes. There's something smelly here. Herdy, who did the research, never accounted for the missing 4 minutes, nor for her selection of 3 out of 11 minutes.

It is the same videotape about which Mia's own hired expert, Dr Steven Herman, testified that it was undermining Mia's allegation, since she seemed to have coached Dylan while making it, likely putting words in Dylan's mouth.

The same videotape that was investigated in full by.a child abuse expert working for the Manhattan sex crimes unit. He concluded that the child had been asked leading questions, urging her to tell what Mia wanted her to tell. He did not find the tape convincing of the abusive event to have happened, and worried that Mia's obvious 'coaching' made it more difficult for subsequent investigators to find the truth.

The makers of 'Allen v Farrow' presented the video material als new and shockingly convincing, while it was old and the opposite of shockingly convincing. Mia's expert Steven Herman was interviewed for it, but the makers 'forgot' to ask him about his negative opinion about the videotape.

This is just one of the many problems that undermine this propaganda movie's credibility.

'Allen v Farrow' has been presented as the 'definitive nail in the coffin' of Woody Allen. As such, it aims at replacing the verdict given by our legal system. Allen has been fully exonerated from the allegation after two independent legal investigations into the alleged abuse. Both investigations, done by experts in child sexual abuse, concluded in no uncertain terms that the abuse did not happen. 'Allen v Farrow' just wants us to forget that while bypassing due process.

This is a commercial tv production that aims at having a person convicted in a trial-by-media, using manipulation and deception. It wants us to give up values such as equal hearing, the innocence presumption, and due process. It feeds on the MeToo movement and is fueled by 'cancel culture'. It seeks to make money over the public smear of a person by presenting salacious allegations as the outcome of their own 'research - that has never seen any critical scrutiny, let alone legal scrutiny.

I have no hesitation awarding this, ahem, 'documentary' with the least number of 'stars' possible.

By the way, there is a big difference in rating between men and women. A full two points difference is extreme. Besides, half of the votes are cast by people who either award this propaganda movie with a '10' or a '1'. I guess these ratings have little to do with the 'quality' of the movie, and much more with the different political positions of its raters.

Because a vote of 1 means 'awful' in IMDb terms, and because I find this movie actually 'awful', I cannot but give it a vote of 1.

Which is a shame, really, because if this movie had been purely fictional, it would have been a decent film with an interesting, albeit somewhat weird plot, and a screenplay that left something to desire. I might have given it a '5' then.

But the fact is that the makers of, and contributors to this movie knew full well, as does their audience, that the premise of this movie is decidedly NOT fictional, but envisions to portray 'real life events'. Here starts the 'awful' feeling for me.

At the end of the day, there is not a shred of proof that the events as displayed in this movie actually happened. And the makers know that. It is not just a case of 'personal opinion', like it is not a case of 'personal opinion' whether Kennedy was murdered, or that Harvey Weinstein attempted to take advantage of young actresses.

By portraying Alfred Hitchcock in this sensationalist light, and making bucks out of it, the makers deliberately hurt the memory of a man who is not around to protest anymore. The makers should have asked themselves: would we dare to make this movie, in this way, had the man been still alive? Would the evidence weigh up to the doubt and the protest? And they would have concluded that it wouldn't. The fact that they dared make this movie now Hitch is dead, shows a cowardly attitude behind it.

Why then, you ask me, is it unlikely that the events portrayed in the movie ever happened? For starters: because the many, many people who were around at the time vehemently deny any misbehavior ever happened, and just as vehemently assert that these events were *very* unlikely to happen with the Hitchcock they knew. The other actors, the other set personnel, the people close to Hitch, Mrs. Hedren's assistants, no one ever came to the fore with anything substantial that corroborates Hedren's story; instead they deny it, or at least deem it unlikely it happened without them noticing it.

Second, Hedren kept her mouth shut for many decades. That would be somewhat credible if during that time, she hadn't given such praise and devoted such warm words to her experience with Hitchcock in the mean time - which she did. It was only at the end of her career, which was not particularly successful, and only after Hitchcock was dead & gone, and only after Donald Spoto interviewed her for his Hichcock biography, that she told this narrative of an 'abusive' Hitchcock. As if she needed a reason why her career post-Hitchcock never took off - a reason outside of herself.

Thirdly, because there is ample material evidence that refute important elements in Hedren's narrative. There is a trainload of contemporary documentation (business correspondence, personal letters, media publications) that prove Hedren's memory wrong. You can get a good taste of that on the website SaveHitchcock.com, which attempts to provide objective information about the actual events. Here is a good place to start: a rebuttal to Hedren's recently published Memoirs: https://savehitchcock.com/2016/10/19/tippi-a-memoir/

In sum, this movie is a cowardly attempt to discredit and vilify a great director and a great personality, who is vulnerable because he cannot defend himself from accusations of sexual predatorism, which are based on hearsay from exactly one source.

I don't find it troubling that a single disappointed actor (Hedren) at a certain point in her life chose to follow this path; she is the only one to know her reasons for it, and whether they are honest or not. Yet I do find it disappointing that a large group of professionals in the movie industry chose to make money from trampling on someone's corpse by making this very one-sided movie. And most of all I find it troubling that the American audience seems to love it, falls for this manipulation of history, and appears to embrace this sensationalist story with a vengeance.

I am glad that Hitch is not around anymore to live through this totally undeserved character assassination.