Lecture Twelve:
The Documentary Noir
11/8/2005

Unlike the other two films noirs we’ve watched, Double Indemnity and Leave her to Heaven, docunoirs attempt to offer realistic and objective accounts of crime.

Time Frame: 1944-1952. It is in the cultural and technological climate surrounding World War II, the semidocumentary noir finds its roots.

For during this period the documentary itself gained a new degree of sophistication and popular acceptance, mainly because it proved so important to every aspect of the war effort, especially the home-front publicity. Directors like Frank Capra (It Happened One Night) made many war documentaries. Capra, in fact, did a series called “Why We Fight.” Together with the period’s popular newsreels, particularly Fox’s The March of Time, the war documentaries helped create an audience for a new kind of fictional film.

Indeed, in the immediate postwar era, every film-producing country had a resurgence of realism.

These war efforts led to the development of lightweight cameras, safety-base film stock for use in 16mm combat cameras, faster stocks for shooting in limited or uncontrolled light, portable lighting equipment for such conditions, and magnetic sounds for higher fidelity recording.

In 1947, the ZOOM lens was introduced. This offered not only a new kind of observational technique but also the potential for more economic shooting by limiting the need for tracking shots and multiple camera setups.

Technology was thus moving in the directions of recording reality, toward devising more effective—and economical—ways of telling the story of actual life.

In the meantime, the costs of set construction and decoration shot up dramatically as a result of America’s economic crisis during the war. These increases, along with the appearance of more independent production companies during the mid 1940s, led to more and more films being shot beyond the confines of the Hollywood studios.

Formal characteristics of the docunoir:

• voice-of God narration.
• Incorporation of actual footage
• On-location shooting.
• Narrative is based on actual crime cases or histories.
• An “outside” view of crime and criminal life—unlike typical film noir, which provides us with an “inside”, psychological portrait of crime. Interest in law and police work.
• realistic cinematography
• reenactment of events so effective that it simulates reality itself

These docunoirs share many similarities with the “New Documentary” movement, which began in the early 1980s. Characterized by self-reflexivity and interactive techniques, the New Documentary marks an attempt to overcome any simple dichotomy between truth and fiction. The foremost figure in this movement is Errol Morris, whose widely acclaimed film The Thin Blue Line garnered so much critical attention because it questioned its own participation in the representation of truth.

Films from which clips were taken:

• He Walked by Night (1948)
• Call Northside 777 (1948)
• Kansas City Confidential (1952)