the filmmaker who changed documentary cinema forever

Frederick Wiseman, who died yesterday at the age of 96, was an American filmmaker whose carefully observed works changed documentary cinema forever, shedding light on institutions, individuals and everyday life.

Born into a Jewish family in Boston in 1930, Wiseman studied law at Yale and then taught law at Boston University. At the same time, he was fascinated by documentary cinema, producing The Cool World in 1963, a film directed by Shirley Clarke about a youth gang in Harlem.

While teaching legal medicine, he came across the subject of his first documentary: the Bridgewater State Hospital for the “criminally insane”. This film would eventually become Titicut Follies, released in 1967.

With unflinching realism, the film depicts the stark cells of the inmates, the practises of force feeding and the bullying and apathy of the hospital staff. The film was banned in the United States for 20 years but was shown in Europe to critical acclaim.

Honing an observational style

Titicut Follies kicked off what Wiseman described as his ongoing “institutional series”, which focused on the inner world of American institutions, with films like High School (1968), Law and Order (1969), Hospital (1970) and Welfare (1975).

These films established Wiseman’s trademark approach: no voice-over narration, no interviews, no talking-heads experts, no music and no overt reflections by the filmmaker. Instead, he adopted an observational style, preferring to sit back and watch, allowing the film’s subject matter to emerge organically on camera.

His films were described by critics at the time as “Direct Cinema”, the American wing of the cinema verité movement, a French term meaning “truthful cinema”. He was compared to Direct Cinema filmmakers like Robert Drew – best known for his film Primary (1960), about the Democratic Party primary which elected John F. Kennedy – and D.A. Pennebaker, famous for Don’t Look Back (1967) about Bob Dylan.

While Wiseman rejected the Direct Cinema label, his films shared one very important similarity with this movement. He was deeply influenced by the freedom of using small, lightweight, hand-held cameras and portable sound-recording equipment. This relatively unobtrusive gear allowed Wiseman and his crew to shoot in high-school classrooms and hospital waiting rooms, establishing his trademark “fly on the wall” style.

Wiseman was always aware of the tension between fact and fiction in documentary filmmaking. He described his films as “reality fictions”, insisting his movies had “a dramatic sequence and structure”.

This dramatic structure emerged by paying close attention to what was happening around him when the film was being shot and later in the careful process of editing. “The principal that governs the shooting is chance”, he once said.

His crew would shoot 100 to 150 hours of footage, which was then edited into films often two or three hours long. In the editing room, Wiseman developed the subtle rhythm of his films, rewatching footage for details and connections.

This painstaking editing process often took nine to ten months.

The viewer creates meaning

For most viewers the drama of Wiseman’s films is subtle but enthralling.

In High School, we watch students and teachers go about their daily tasks in the classroom, in detention, and on the sports field. In the final sequence, a teacher reads out a letter from a former student now serving in Vietnam.

This connection between the school and the military-industrial complex is all the more devastating given Wiseman’s lack of overt narration. It is the viewer who makes the connections, creating meaning from the carefully witnessed scenes.

Unlike many documentarians, like Michael Moore, whose films start out with an explicit agenda, Wiseman’s films have a disarming sense of neutrality.

He said:

“I don’t go in with a thesis I try to prove or disprove. The shooting of the film is the research. My response to that experience is what the final film is about.”

Yet his work has a deeply political core, driven by a commitment to questioning the power structures within institutions and investigating their role in shaping American life.

Welfare (1975), considered by many to be his masterpiece, is a deeply moving portrayal of New Yorkers living in poverty, depicting the daily indignities of trying to access benefits and food stamps in the face of a complex unfeeling bureaucracy.

Over the course of more than 50 films, he documented everything from Central Park, the Neiman Marcus department store, the ski resort town of Aspen, and a boxing gym in Austin, Texas.

His final film, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (2023), made when he was 93, films the French restaurant Le Bois sans feuilles.

His influence on documentary cinema has been enormous, with directors from all over the world citing Wiseman as an inspiration. Two of the most recent are Alice Diop, a French filmmaker who chronicles immigrant life in the Parisian suburbs, and Wang Bing, whose Youth trilogy follows migrant workers in China.

Wiseman’s oeuvre is a testament to the power of documentary cinema as an art of the real. He has left us a series of works whose artistry and ethos deserve careful study, the same kind of attention he gave to everything he worked on.