The first time Sight and Sound ran its international critics’ poll of the top-ten films in 1952, Louisiana Story, Robert Flaherty’s 1948 documentary about oil exploration, tied for the number-five slot with D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Yet by 1962 it had slipped out of the winners’ circle, and no documentary has figured on any subsequent list. If such polls offer an informal snapshot of changing critical tastes, there would appear to be a consistent bias against documentary film - the more surprising perhaps in that the whole complex genealogy of cinema descends from humble actualités. But here we have already hit on the answer. Prosaic scenes of workers leaving a factory or waves crashing against the shore were enough to enthral the earliest audiences because they bore witness to a modern miracle - the world itself uncannily doubled by a machine. Random fragments of reality could initially be justified on the grounds of spectacle alone, but soon wore out their welcome. For film to exceed its limited shelf life as a curiosity, that pristine reality must be sifted, condensed and organised meaningfully. Cinema had to cease to be mere technology and become art.
BFI | Sight & Sound | A Little Learning
Posted 1 year ago
