Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960) (1961) [Repost]

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960) (1961) [Repost]

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A joint effort by French ethnographer-filmmaker Jean Rouch and French sociologist Edgar Morin (The Stars) yielded this remarkable 1961 documentary investigation into what Parisians — regarded as a “strange tribe” — were thinking and feeling during the summer of 1960. This was when the war in Algeria was still a hot issue, although many other topics are discussed as well, private as well as public. At first, everyone is asked, simply, “Are you happy?” More generally, the film catches the shifting emotional tenor of a few lives over a certain period.

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The filmmakers treat their interview subjects with a great deal of respect and sensitivity. Among them are Marilou, an Italian emigre working as a secretary at Cahiers du Cinéma; a French student named Jean-Pierre; a factory worker named Angelo; an African student named Landry; a painter and his wife named Henri and Maddie; and a pollster named Marceline assisting with some of the other interviews.

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Not only do we see these individuals in diverse groupings, even on holiday in St.-Tropez; we also see many of them becoming friends over the course of the film. Finally, Rouch and Morin screen a rough cut for the participants and film their highly divergent responses, then shoot their own auto-critique as they stroll together through the Musée de l’homme.

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The biggest surprise about this seminal work is that even though it’s made by two eminent social scientists, its value winds up having relatively little to do with either anthropology or sociology. Rouch as a filmmaker had already discovered in his innovative African documentaries that you best catch people “being themselves” if you film them “playing themselves,” and this film is actually a kind of home movie about life being lived and self-consciously performed by these touching individuals in interaction with one another and in front of the camera.

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We soon learn that Marceline — who years later would become the companion and codirector of Joris Ivens, the great Dutch documentarist — picked Jean-Pierre as an interview subject because he’s a former boyfriend, and her feelings about their failed relationship become part of the ongoing discussion. The first time Marilou speaks to Morin, she’s lonely and on the edge of tears; the second time she’s much happier and we briefly glimpse her with her boyfriend when they go out for a walk (Jacques Rivette, as it happens, with whom she would later write scripts). Rouch asks Landry if he understands the meaning of the tattoo on Marceline’s arm, and she goes on to explain that she’s a Jewish concentration camp survivor. Even more than his ethnographic works about Africans, Chronicle makes it evident in its graceful spontaneity why Rouch was a key influence on the French New Wave, so it isn’t surprising to discover in the closing credits that Raoul Coutard — the key cinematographer of that movement, who shot most of the first features of Godard, Truffaut, and Demy — worked on this film as well.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960) (1961) [Repost]

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This film, made in the summer of 1960 by the sociologist Edgar Morin and the ethnographer Jean Rouch, aimed to be as 'true as a documentary, but with the content of a fiction film.' Facilitated by improved technology (16mm film, sync sound, light hand held cameras) it pioneered a direct or live aesthetic dubbed 'cinema verite'. It was to film 'true life', but engage on a subjective level, getting people to talk about their experiences and ambitions, and most notably, whether or not they are happy. What emerges is an absolutely overwhelming cinematic experience, a film that is deeply affecting but also that makes you think. The film begins with a market researcher, Marceline, on the street, asking people whether or not they are happy. This sequence seems to me both to confirm the importance of human relationships and point up the dissatisfaction that living in a society about to tip into consumerism engenders.

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The film then moves to concentrate on a set of characters. Morin was criticised for his structural approach, typing his characters (i.e. a factory worker, a petit bourgeois, a student), but a real sense of the individuals involved shines through, notably in the sequences with Angelo and Landry chatting, and Marceline recounting her experience of deportation during the war. The most revolutionary part of this film is that the makers demonstrate the impossibility of documentary objectivity when they film themselves filming - they show how the truth of the film is constructed. Questions of authenticity abound. At the end of the film, they screen it to the characters involved. Even those filmed are unable to decide whether they were acting ('hamming for the camera') or being themselves. Morin and Rouch conclude they have failed in their aim to offer a slice of life, as the very act of filming something transforms it. Truth is elusive in the attempt to represent the everyday. This film is far from a failure however - watch it and be blown away.

IMDB Reviewer,
25 out of 26 people found this review useful

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un été (Paris 1960) (1961) [Repost]

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