Chronicle of a Summer

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.

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.

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.

It's Paris in the summer of 1960. This film has no professional actors. It's everyday people and their slice of life in the style of the new cinéma vérité. A group of sociologist filmmakers starts doing interviews with different people. They grab them on the streets, at their work, or anywhere else. There are little fascinating snippets like the girl who used to make fake antiques. There are a lot of rambling discussions about anything. It must have been unlike most cinema from that time. This may not be the absolute first, but it is pushing the envelope wide open. I do find myself falling in and out of the film.