Jean Rouch And Cinema Verité : Chronicle D`un Été

Jean Rouch is considered to be as one of the most pioneering figures in documentary film. His films were mostly concentrated on the demonstration of everyday life (habits, traditions, culture) of the African people. As a sociologist and ethnographer himself he pursued to capture the visual anthropology by the use of the camera. One of his most significant and well known films is the Chronicle d`un été. This is Rouch`s first film that was actually taken place in Paris and not in Africa. And it`s also the first film where Rouch uses the term cinema verité (cinema of truth); a term that was first used for Dziga`s Vertov film Kino Pravda. Cinema verité is a style of documentary film with specific and stylized techniques. This form of documentary tries to reveal the truth of life and people within the film. In cinema verité the filmmakers are always present in the film, either to narrate or to introduce us to the protagonists or to argue and discuss with them. The film Chronicle d`un été is an experiment of Jean Rouch and his partner Edgar Morin (sociologist) where they tried to discover the boundaries of truth within the film; and tried to see if the truth can indeed be revealed through the mean; and moreover what is the relation that can be developed between the camera and the protagonists. These are the two basic questions that we would try to answer through this essay: How realistic can a human reaction be when the camera is present? Is the cinema verité a cinema of truth or a cinema of lies? Cinema Verité is a movement that was born in 50`s and its essential goal was to explore the reality through some certain casts of society who were living on the edge; for example criminals, poor and immigrants. The movement`s element didn`t have a specific tension or a certain concentration to a topic; it was more like a chance to show through reality the side effects of the world`s changing. As we have already mentioned the term Cinema verité was established by Jean`s Rouch film Chronicle d`un été. Due to the fact that Jean Rouch was an ethnographer who spent his life in Africa, his awareness of the society became the potential for his whole work. Through his, based in Africa, films he tried to capture real moments of regular people and tried to point out the difficulties of their everyday life. Jean Rouch first went to Africa in 1941 and started filming and sending articles back to France. The story of one of his first films, Chasse á l` hippopotame (Hippopotamus hunt, 1947) is much known; but it`s important to refer to it once again as that incident was meant to change the filming techniques and be established as a style of documentary framing. While Rouch was filming, with a 16mm camera, the procedure of hunting, he lost his tripod and he continued filming with a hand-camera. The `liberation` of the camera caused by the technological innovations in the late 50`s, gave to documentary filmmakers the chance to create a new environment between the object and the observer. The frame limitation belonged to the past as the camera became portable and a new relation between the camera and the reality was about to explore. The `direct cinema` of Richard Leacock and the Maysles Brothers was born. Their intention was to capture reality out of the studios and observe the everyday life. Jean Rouch used this innovative equipment in his film Chronicle d`un été, in collaboration with Edgar Morin:

We have the feeling that the documentary wants to leave the world of production in order to show us the world of consumption, to leave the world of the bizarre or the picturesque in order to research the world of intimacy in human relations, or the essence of our lives. The new cinema-verite in search of itself possesses from now on its "camera-pen," which allows an author to draft his film alone (16 mm camera and portable tape recorder in hand). It had its pioneers, those who wanted to penetrate beyond appearances, beyond defenses, to enter the unknown world of daily life.

Chronicle d`un été introduce us to these achievements, and as Steven Feld mentions in his introduction in the book Cine - Ethnography:

The film is associated with the origins of the term "cinema verité" to refer to a process, visual aesthetic, and technology of cinema. Additionally some took it as an ideology of authenticity, as well. But in the context of the experimental gestures in Chronicle of a Summer, cinema verité came to mean four things: (1) films composed of first take, non-staged, non-theatrical, non-scri pted material; (2) non-actors doing what they do in natural, spontaneous settings; (3) use of lightweight, handheld portable synchronous-sound equipment; (4) handheld on-the-go interactive filming and recording techniques with little if any artificial lighting. Rouch summed it up more directly, simply claiming that Chronicle was the first film to show that "you can film anything anywhere". ("Ciné - Anthropology")

Chronicle d`un été begins with the two creators (Rouch and Morin) exposing their ambition about the film and its experimental nature. Their appearance is noticeable during the whole film. The project takes place in Paris, in 1961, and while the Algerian war was about to come to an end. The creators wanted to get through ordinary peoples` lives and see how they live and what they do in their life and find a way to attach this with the society and the historical changes that were about to explode. The project begins with the idea of asking the simple question: "How do you live?" a question that doesn`t refer only to the basic way of living, but also to the deeper question of "How do you manage your life" and "What is your way of living?" Rouch and Morin collected their protagonists motivated by the perspective of exposing the individuality, the solitude, the poverty and the isolation of people living in Paris, starting with the simple question "How do you live?"

Their protagonists are laborers in Renault, an African student, an Italian ex- drunker, a cover girl, a couple who had confronted the ugly face of homelessness and a girl who had survived from a Nazi concentration camp. The last one is Marceline and she`s the first to be appeared in the film, where she seats with the two creators and their explaining to her, in front of the camera, the experiment they`re about to do. In the next scene we`re watching Marceline in the streets of Paris holding a microphone and asking people if they`re happy. In the upcoming scenes we`re getting to know the protagonists and parts of their lives. The creators tried to present them in a way that wouldn`t look like an interview, but more like impulsive reactions of the object that we observe. In this case Rouch and Morin faced their first collapse in their experiment. Morin wanted to capture the naturalistic point of his `objects`, but for Rouch the idea of entering some fiction elements in the project was necessary and inevitable. In one of the lasts scenes Rouch decided to film Marceline at the Place de la Concorde and Les Halles, where she had many bad memories to remember from her transport to Auschwitz. This particular scene shows Rouch`s need for a more "poetic" and fictionalized approach of cinema verité; Marceline is walking alone on those streets talking to herself, reliving her experience and narrating in a way that she looks like she`s acting based on a scri pt.

At the end of the film when the creators screened it so their protagonists could see themselves and argue about it, most of the participants thought that Marceline was actually acting in front of the camera and that this was a non realistic scene. Marceline argued that she really felt the things she was saying and that for her it was a personal moment of recalling these bad memories. On the other hand, during the creators` discussion about the film and the protagonists` diverging opinions, it`s becoming very clear that even Rouch and Morin weren`t sure if Marceline was playing a role or not. Barbara Bruni is pointing out a very interesting argument about this relation between fiction and reality; and of how even a simple person can play the role of his self when the camera is on:

There is never a moment in which fiction can be separated from reality, and the dynamics of the relationship between the two is a constant source of meaning. As a consequence, the concepts of time and space, and the function of the characters and their impersonators, become non-linear and multi-layered, the results of which can be noted during the screening of Chronicle of a summer to its participants, towards the end of the film, in which the audience had extremely diverging opinions about what was `real` and what was not.

Sociologically, even if Marceline is acting by making a serf presentation, we still have a personal confession - document of a person`s experience in the concentration camp. So, if we agree that a person`s reactions in front of a camera can`t be real and that the essence of narration and fiction are always present, Rouch`s approach still can`t considered to be a failure; because on a first level Marceline`s monologue on the streets of Paris might look like a framing `lie`, but this lie is based on her own truth, fictionalized by her narration. As Ian Cristie notices:

Going beyond the simple idea of the non-professional or `real-person` within a film, Chronicle d`un été proposes that filming can never be neutral, but unavoidably creates a dynamic of representation and self-presentation. This has sometimes led to the conclusion that Rouch is, in effect, making fiction, since he is using many of the strategies of fictional narrative and the audience is responding similarly to the interpersonal drama of these characters. But this is surely simplistic. Chronicle d`un été remains rooted in an ethnographic perspective on society.

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Bibliography

Bruni Barbara , "Jean Rouch: Cinéma-vérité, Chronicle of a Summer and The Human Pyramid," Senses of Cinema Issue 19, March 13, 2002, Revised June 9, 2011.

Cristie Ian , Disbelieving documentary: Rouch viewed through the binoculars of Marker and Ruiz, Building bridges: the cinema of Jean Rouch, edited by J. T. Brink, Wallflower press, London, 2007.

Levin G. Roy, Documentary explorations; 15 interviews with film-makers, Doubleday, N.Y, 1971.

Morin Edgar, "Chronicle d`un film", Jean Rouch Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003.

Rothman William, Documentary Classics, Cambridge University Press, USA 1997.

Rouch Jean , Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003.

HYPERLINK "http://www.der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php?id=about" http://www.der.org/jean-rouch/content/index.php?id=about , accessed on 8/4/2012.

Edgar Morin, "Chronicle d`un film", Jean Rouch Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003, p. 231. Jean Rouch, Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003, p. 7-8. Barbara Bruni, "Jean Rouch: Cinéma-vérité, Chronicle of a Summer and The Human Pyramid," Senses of Cinema Issue 19, March 13, 2002, Revised June 9, 2011. Ian Cristie, Disbelieving documentary: Rouch viewed through the binoculars of Marker and Ruiz, Building bridges: the cinema of Jean Rouch, edited by J. T. Brink, Wallflower press, London, 2007, p. 271. Barbara Bruni, "Jean Rouch: Cinéma-vérité, Chronicle of a Summer and The Human Pyramid," as above. Barbara Bruni, as above. Edgar Morin, "Chronicle d`un film", Jean Rouch Ciné-Ethnography, edited and translated by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003, p. 238-239. Edgar Morin, as above, p. 257-259. G. Roy Levin, Documentary explorations; 15 interviews with film-makers, Doubleday, N.Y, 1971, p. 134.