The Drawbacks of Reality

Cinema verite is one of those flexible French phrases, like piece de resistance; it covers a multitude of meanings. Back in the early '60s, the technique was its own justification, as film makers with new lightweight sound cameras trailed anyone from condemned convicts to standup comics. The idea was to produce a picture as exciting as drama but as honest as a snapshot. Now that methods and audiences are more sophisticated, pure documentary footage is no longer enough. As two new and wildly different cinema verite movies suggest, it is necessary to do more than merely capture reality to achieve art.

Monterey Pop is a color-and-stereo-phonic-sound souvenir of the 1967 festival of rock music in California. Under the supervision of D. A. Pennebaker, who made Don't Look Back, the one widely seen verite documentary, more than half a dozen cameramen prowled the crowd catching the mood--but not the meaning--of the event. Several performers (Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar) come through with a jolting, immediate intensity, but watching Monterey Pop is like listening to an LP with pictures. Twenty years from now, the film may have value as a historical curiosity. Surely the sight of such frenetically phony stunts as Jimi Hendrix mounting, igniting and finally destroying his electric guitar will seem as quaint as newsreels of the Lindy do today. But Pennebaker ultimately lets down the present as well as posterity by refusing to probe any deeper than the onstage details.

Salesman is a good deal more ambitious and successful. Producers Al and David Maysles spent almost two months following a group of Bible salesmen on their rounds (which they refer to as "your Father's business"), from Boston to Opalocka, Fla. The result is a nightmare version of, in Al Maysles' phrase, "a part of the American dream." Salesman's central figure is a middle-aged Massachusetts Irishman named Paul Brennan, whom his cronies nickname "The Badger." He holds one of the MidAmerican Bible Co.'s better than average sales records, but as the film progresses, his luck turns ("I can't get any action . . . These people are croaking me"). He finally quits to sell roofing and siding. In the film's last scene, The Badger stands framed in the doorway of his Florida motel room, confessing failure to a fellow salesman and barely brushing past an emotional breakdown.

Salesman is surely one of the most moving and accomplished examples of cinema verite so far. Yet ultimately, the Maysles brothers are crippled by the inherent limitations of their technique. Although they use flash-forwards and other devices of fictional film, they are still bound to include only what actually happened in front of their camera. They cannot re-create or conjecture; they must rely solely on the moment itself. Federico Fellini once asked, "Why should people go to the movies, if films only show reality through a very cold, objective eye? It would be much better just to walk around in the street." Salesman is a walk in a fascinating street, but the street leads only so far.

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