Cahiers du Cinèma – Interview with Fred Wiseman

Hospital (1970)

Cahiers: All your films are in black and white, why?

Fred Wiseman: The first reason is that I love black and white, and I believe that for the everyday, documentary things that I film, that’s the best look. There are also the problems of light: it’s simpler than with color. The latter has become much better but it’s still not good enough for the bad lighting conditions in which I work. As long as color is being used, it should be truly spectacular. Finally, there are the questions of cost: my films would cost on average 5000 dollars more if I made them in color, which is ridiculous if it doesn’t add anything important to the film.

C: Why a better look?

W: Maybe because, when I was young, I watched all the news in black and white and that I prefer them like this. I saw all of the Second World War in black and white... But that’s in the past....

C: Doesn’t the fact of shooting in black and white pose problems of production and distribution for you?

W: I make films for the Public Broadcasting Service (P.B.S.) and that doesn’t pose any problems for me right now. It evidently poses some problems for the countries where color is required...

C: In France...

W: In France it’s a bit special: I haven’t yet managed to meet with the person accredited to talk about it so far.

C: Do your films show anywhere other than on television?

W: Very few in theaters, except in small theaters of the big cities. There is, above all, an important university circuit where films like mine are shown.

C: Are the length of your films compatible with the norms of television?

W: Yes, on the public channel. Yet the films are shown in important viewing hours, in the evening. The only requirement is that every hour they can say: “You are tuned into the Public Television”. So they say it and the film resumes! The contract I have stipulates that the film can be between 90 and 120 minutes long. In reality, it’s often more. But they don’t say anything.

C: Has it been this way for all your films?

W: The first film that I wanted to make didn’t interest anyone. I had a lot of trouble finding the money. I found very little from private capital, but I’ve above all found a laboratory in New York that consented to an arrangement. I didn’t have to pay them immediately (they kept the negative as a guarantee). That reduced the budget considerably. But I must say that I only settled it seven years later. For the second film, I obtained a grant from a private foundation (a third of the film’s cost); for the rest, lab credit and borrowed equipment. My third film was produced by Public Television. For my fourth, I got a bit of money from Public Television at the end of the shoot, about half of what the film ended up costing. For my fifth I didn’t obtain anything, and I sold it to Public Television once it was completed.

After that, I obtained a contract with Channel 13 (the public channel of New York): five years for five films. It was renewed for another five films three years ago. This channel has the TV rights for the United States, I retain the other rights. They don’t provide very ample funding, but enough to make a film. What’s more, I’m the owner of the film and I can make a living from it thanks to the 16mm university distribution circuit.

This way, I can continue to make films and I am totally independent. The contract foresees that I have to obtain approval for every subject that I propose, but they’ve never refused me a subject. And they don’t see any of the film, neither the rushes nor anything. When everything is finished, someone—the boss—comes from New York to Boston; I show him the film. He has never demanded any changes.

C: How do the filming sessions go?

W: There are three of us: I take the sound and I choose the things that we’re going to shoot; there is a cameraman and a third person who always has his hands in the changing bag because we always shoot a lot of footage. We have an Éclair, a Nagra IV and a Sunheiser mic.

C: It’s a very directional mic.

W: Yes, very directional.

Juvenile Court (1973)

C: Weren’t certain scenes shot with two cameras?

W: Yes, sometimes. For example, for some of the scenes in Juvenile Court, because it was impossible to get all the events of a trial with a single camera. One camera was constantly directed at the judge, because you never know what he’s going to say nor when he’s going to react. The other camera got the rest... but that’s the only time.

C: You intervene very little in the shooting. For example, you don’t question people.

W: People aren’t good actors and in the interviews, it always seems false. As soon as you ask them to do something, it doesn’t go well, because they’re not Laurence Olivier or Louis Seigner and it rings false.

C: You don’t grant much importance to the camera as a dramatic agent either.

W: No, indeed. I don’t really have a theory on this, but I have some practical experience. I don’t think that the camera is that important. Some people imagine that, because the camera is there, things happen that wouldn’t happen otherwise. I believe that it’s impossible to know. When making a film, you have heaps of judgments to bear (not to assert that so-and-so is right and not such another, but to uncover certain problems). Like all those whose work brings them into contact with loads of people (doctors, professors, lawyers, insurance agents, salesmen...). That should allow you to notice, when you’re making a documentary, if someone fools around in front of the camera, plays a role, exaggerates; then you stop. If you only become aware of it at the editing stage, then you eliminate that sequence. That doesn’t mean that you possess the truth. But you rely a bit on your judgment: you have the ability to do so because, for a documentary, out of the twelve hours that you are present, in a center of social assistance for example, you only shoot for two hours. The rest of the time, you’re sat talking to people, observing what’s happening. You end up really sensing how people act in this type of situation. So, when someone whom you spoke with or whom you have seen speaking starts acting in a different way when the camera is rolling, even if outwardly they continue their work as before, you then have the ability to tell yourself: it’s no longer as it was half an hour ago.

C: When you arrive at a place, do you know where you’re going to film? How is the location scouting carried out?

W: That depends. Let’s take a film like Welfare: I first see the director of the establishment, then I ask him to gather everyone and to tell them that we’re going to film with them, then I explain to them everything that I want to do. In fact, the first time I entered the system of Welfare, I didn’t know what I wanted. I started following some people for two days... Generally, people come to see you afterwards and tell you: “in a moment, such and such an interesting thing is going to happen in such a room, on such a floor”. I always have a little notebook divided into days and hours on me, and I note all that down. We are very dependent on information (in the good sense of this word, not in the sense of the F.B.I.). People need to educate you on what happens, things that you cannot see, at the place where you are. And then there are those that you can see: someone with a pretty hat, interesting clothes... an attitude that gets a hold of you, you come into contact with it.

My system is a bit anarchic, because during all the time of shooting, I’m not thinking about themes, but simply about shooting good sequences. A very important thing that I learned after a few films is to have a lot of inserts. You need a lot of shots that seem innocuous at the time of shooting for the editing. You don’t yet know what exactly they will be used for when you’re shooting, but it’s necessary to have them. This is very important for the construction of the film, especially if you consider a dramatic construction, because you need moments of transition. If you have many inserts, you have a choice.

Basic Training (1971)

But sometimes, that’s more difficult: for example, in the zone of the Panama Canal, it’s no longer a question of a building but of an important area. So my predisposition there was to choose the events that take place in the same kinds of institutions that made up the subjects of my other films (court of justice, school, hospital...). It amuses me and gives a possibility of choice.

C: You attach great importance to the delineation of the frame: a specific location, walls...

W: What attracts me to these institutional series is the ability to effectively enclose a place within its geographical limits: a building, or in the case of Canal Zone, a territory (10 miles by 50 miles), or in the case of the film about the police of Kansas City, a police district. In each of these places there are rules. It’s like in tennis, there is always a net, you have to get to know it before anything else... rules, often written down, that prescribe the way in which the game must unfold... that’s the net. By limiting oneself to walls or to a delineated territory, I think that it is possible to have a more intense look, because what we see already has a certain unity even before we intervene, a certain link. Through the editing, you’re going to link all of that in a different way. If, instead of making a film about a hospital, I were to go into people’s homes, into the private clinics of doctors, the places where people work, the schools that children go to... I would be spreading myself too thin. By focusing yourself on one place, you attain an intensity and a complexity that would be impossible otherwise.

C: Aren’t there things that you would’ve wanted to film that are inaccessible to you? Where is it impossible to film in the United States? When we see your films we have the impression that it is possible to film everything over there, the smallest moments of life, the institutions at work, the law in action...

W: So far, I’ve never had a problem with something being impossible to shoot. There are still things that cannot be filmed in the United States: those that concern National Security for example, but for ordinary life, for everyday activities, there aren’t any problems. I’ve talked to many French filmmakers and all of them tell me: it’s impossible to shoot all of that in France. But I ask myself if they’ve really tried.

C: What do you say to people when you’re going to film them?

W: I tell them the truth... In practice, I look for someone who is close to the administration of the place where I want to shoot and who wants the film to be made. They become my “political counsel” when it comes to permits. They guide me to the right persons. They inform me about the obstacles towards permits. Which means that I already know what to expect. And when I meet the head of the place where I’m going to film (the director, governor, etc.), I tell them the truth. I’m going to make a film, be there for a month, I don’t know what events I’m going to keep... I’ll edit for the six months that follow and if they want, I’ll show them the film. But I keep all the editing rights. And then we put all of that down on paper. Because I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings about the rights.

C: It’s a contract.

W: Exactly. It’s a contract.

C: And once you start filming people in the agreed place?

W: It’s different there, because we can’t have an exchange of letters with everybody. If there’s time before we start shooting, I explain my work. But most often it’s afterwards: I explain to them what I’m doing and I leave the tape recorder running (I tell them that it’s running); I thus keep a record where everything I said in response to them is engraved. If they say no, I don’t use that sequence; but that almost never happens. This way I have proof of my good faith if they then refuse to be in the film.

C: Have you ever had problems of this kind?

W: Yes, with my first film; I had a lawsuit, the film was censored.

C: Do you have any kind of political, psychological or ideological point of view over what you film, a preconceived idea?

W: It’s a rather anarchic point of view. I very often have a minimum thesis over what I’m filming initially, but as I keep progressively filming I realize that my thesis is insufficient. You can start a film with a thesis, but you don’t make a film with it because you learn a lot of things during shooting, and it is important to put the things that you learned during the shoot in the final state of the film. Otherwise, it runs the risk of being a film that illustrates and imposes the thesis that you had before starting. So the finished film is always a surprise for me, and that’s one of the interesting things about this profession. It’s during editing that you discover what you really think about the subject: there are 40 or 50 hours of film, and so you have to bury your head in your hands to keep the two or three essential hours, and to arrange them in a certain order for a film to be made from that.

C: In any case, your point of view never passes as a commentary.

W: The point of view is the editing.

Law and Order (1969)

C: There lies the question. We have the impression that you always film from an institutional, conventional point of view, as if you were following a guide (one of your informers-in-the-good-sense-of-the-term perhaps). It’s always a question of closed spaces, into which you introduce yourself by granting their entire rightful place to the technological operations, to the technology of management of this place. And we have the feeling that you also film according to this issue, which is that of the institution.

W: I believe that it’s true. My effort involves trying to capture all aspects of life within the place I film, and the finished film is a reflection on this complexity, the complexity of the life that we saw in this place. We try to condense things, not to simplify them but to make them very complex because reality is very complex. I don’t want to make simplistic films.

C: As a result, you place the camera from the point of view where it will be able to capture the maximum number of things.

W: The thesis of the finished film is not Mao’s or Stalin’s, or Ronald Reagan’s... it’s mine. It’s more interesting for me to discover what I think of the subject that I’ve filmed. That’s not necessarily more interesting than what someone else thinks, but I can’t put myself in the head of this other person!

By making the film I find what I think. Deep down, what interests me the most in the direction of these films is the structural aspect... The relationship between the structure of documentary films of this kind and other narrative structures lifted from fiction, like plays or novels. It’s also the manner of organizing the material that brings the experience that you have had in the field into a formal framework: the relationship between this experience and a more general experience, what we call (I may be using a comical word) the metaphorical character of your work; the resonance that makes itself heard between the experience you recorded through the film and the experience that you have from elsewhere. If you like, the rushes are the experience of the novelist and the writing is the editing. From the relationship of the two memories, (your own and that of the shoot recorded on film) the film emerges through the editing.

C: How is this relationship of the two memories resolved? There are enormous amounts of waste in your films...

W: 96 to 97%. A bit less for Canal Zone: the film runs for three hours and I had about fifty hours. We spend many hours editing, and more and more progressively as it advances, it becomes more and more interesting and we spend more and more time on it. I have lists of the most interesting shots and this list progressively diminishes as the work progresses. I’m playing, it’s a game.

C: We have the impression that much of the editing is done on the sound. That’s perhaps due to the fact that it’s a live recording. There is some slight desynchronization (for example, in Canal Zone, the noise of the machines) which allows shots that follow to be joined through sound.

W: It’s in order to create a smooth gliding. If one cuts sound the same way as the image, it becomes jarring between sequences and that’s not the reality. I personally try to make films where things give off the impression that they’re happening as if you were there, as if you were seeing them in reality. That’s why I attempt to eliminate, as much as possible, anything that runs the risk of suddenly reminding one’s consciousness that this is a film. I eliminate the bulk of the zooms. I don’t keep the shots where someone looks at the camera.

Likewise, if you cut sound the same way as the image, it gives the impression of a rupture, it creates a shock; and more often than not there are no such ruptures in the places where I film, there is no cut.

C: We often have the impression (especially in the sequences where wide shots dominate) that it’s the sound that guides the editing: even in the wide shots there is quite an astonishing quality of sound. How does that take place between you, the taker of sound, and the taker of images?

W: It’s a question of coordination and of form: taking sound is also a sport. I operate the boom of course, and me and the cameraman are constantly looking at each other.

C: You film real, objective situations, where we see Americans situated in spaces that are already some kind of studio (an apartment building, etc.), or you film Americans abroad (in the Sinai for example). We get the impression of an American society cut from its roots, functioning on its own.

W: Yes, it’s one of the things that particularly interests me in my two latest films: Panama, the Sinai. Panama, which is an old experience (Americans have been there since 1910), and the Sinai (where they have only recently been: that there is the “future”). In places like this, we have the opportunity to see American life almost in its purest state.

Sinai Field Mission (1978)

C: It’s like a laboratory. As if they were being filmed in a fish bowl, in vitro... And then there is something else. All your films have, as their subject, places in which, in principle (and by principle), there is no crisis, no war: they’re places where there is peace, or a cold war, if you prefer. Let’s say that you aren’t a filmmaker of burning conflicts. Everything happens smoothly in your films and this very smoothness becomes terrifying, because there is another aspect to these places, which is that they’re always more or less places where people are entrapped: for a few hours (the high school of High School), a few days or a few months (Hospital), for a given period (Sinai Field Mission), or placed after several generations (Canal Zone)... Whether the barriers are visible (the walls of the high school) or not (the boundaries of the zone of the Panama Canal, the desert that surrounds the American mission at Sinai), all these places resemble a little to concentration camps.

W: Life there isn’t so atrocious, however. It’s not true that life in all these places is very concentrated... but that’s due to the fact that there are points of resemblance that exist in all institutions. As such, the most important book regarding the institutional future is the book by Hannah Arendt (“Report on the Banality of Evil”). It’s something that we find everywhere: how people can administer other people, and how the latter can be so passive. If there is one thing that is flagrant everywhere, it’s the passivity.

C: Your films draw out this automatism. What’s scary is that we see people applying themselves to their gestures, their functions; doing, as they say, their job conscientiously...

W: But it’s even more complicated than that because, very often, these people who administer or who have responsibilities believe that they’re doing good. At the hospital, the nurses and the doctors do all they can. It’s not that they’re mean or stupid, they try but the problems they deal with are beyond them, beyond the institutions, place themselves outside them. It’s also a way of setting the limits of the institution.

C: When we see a film like Sinai Field Mission, we can very well think of Capra’s Why We Fight series. We find there the same machine which no longer has to produce this violence of war, but which continues to function smoothly, with the same spectacular effects as a musical comedy. And at the same time, there is a humor that recalls the Marx Brothers.

W: That really pleases me.

C: This burlesque side comes perhaps from this impression that you always film Americans in studios.

W: Ha, ha... You don’t mean to say that I’m hiring fake real Americans, actors?

Sinai Field Mission (1978)

C: No, not at all, these are real Americans, I’m convinced of it, and that makes the manner in which they act even stranger. It seems that the fact that there is a camera there poses absolutely no problem. Isn’t there a phenomenon of an exclusively American relationship with the image of cinema (or of television) over there?

W: Perhaps it is indeed cultural. But actually, there are no rules for filming the way I film, it’s very practical, it depends on the situation each time.

C: Concerning the performance of these actors of the real that you film, it seems very close to the performance of true actors. For example, the American commander who congratulates his troops in Sinai Field Mission has this intonation, this particular inclination of the head when he speaks, this manner of standing, that one would expect to see in an American fiction film. One thinks of Rod Steiger...

W: It's quite a complex problem, because all of us have more experience in cinema than in the rest of the world. It’s possible that the commander recalls a commander of fiction, but it’s perhaps also that those who have directed characters of army commanders in their films were well-informed, they’ve looked closely at real commanders. It’s a very complex relationship. For me, I always have trouble entering into fiction films, it’s always too simple; not enough density. Everyday life is much more interesting than the reconstruction of reality, except among the very great directors...

C: Which ones?

W: [laughs]. The Marx Brothers, for example...

C: Let’s come back to this question of the osmosis between fiction and reality. Marcel Mauss had recounted that, having been injured during the war and finding himself in a hospital, it seemed to him that the nurses were taking on the gait of the actresses in American films. That’s somewhat the perspective that you bring in your films. Beyond a vision of the institution, there is a dimension of spectacle.

W: Yes, what interests me are the dramatic things that happen in everyday life without us seeing them; all of these dramas that go unnoticed. And often it’s a lot more intense than what we can see in fiction films or plays. To describe what happens in the hospital from Hospital, or in the building from Welfare, one must be a really great writer (to reconstruct it in a narrative).

C: For you, the camera allows the making of this inventory or this catalogue.

W: In a certain sense, it’s a Natural History. Each sequence is a small history. The historians of the next century will have all these films in addition to all the books of our time... That’s a heavy blow for them. It’ll be an immense job.

C: Something struck me in Sinai Field Mission (which ends on an image of desert): this willingness to show the operation of peace between two camps that are still in a state of war, and within, men, Americans who speak of a lost object (distant from them in any case): America. And it really seems that this lost object that the soldiers speak of were also, in a way, yours. As if this society existed as a lost myth for you.

W: It may be that I’m a lost naif... Actually, for me, the question is always the same one (and in a sense I only make a single film, longer than others). The question is the correspondence or disparity between ideology, mythology and reality... There is a distance between the History of the United States as it’s read in the universities and the reality.

C: As if the myth were going round in circles... We often have the impression of characters in your films who speak a lot and that it doesn’t mean anything.

W: What interests me on top of everything is language. In principle, it’s for everyone, but you meet a lot of people who don’t know how to employ words. They cannot express themselves with this language.

C: Language is indeed important in your films. Very often, it appears in a judicial manner in texts, regulations, laws.

W: For me, speeches always very strongly condense what seeks to be said in the film (in the institution that I’m filming). They’re akin to very dense summaries of what is being said diffusely in the film, of all its themes. For example, at the end of High School, this letter that the Principal reads, from a former student of the school who is now in Vietnam, is a summary of all of the film’s themes; and, at the same time, it’s a document that allows one to think about the relationship that exists between what is taught at the High School and war, between American society and war. Here, the school also appears for what it is, like a factory. The student says that, in Vietnam, he simply feels like someone who is doing a job; he’s a product of this particular factory and he accepts this incredible instruction: he talks about jobs!

C: Impossible to conclude without asking you what your next project is.

W: I believe that, for the first time, it’ll be a true fiction film. I’ve just written a script: it’s the story of a very timid man (me?); I don’t know if I’ll be able to shoot it. Anyhow, I’ll still have to finish my contract with Channel 13 in New York (5 years, 5 films).

High School (1968)

Interview directed by Dominique Bergougnan, Yann Lardeau and Serge Le Péron.