Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (1961) is one of the films in the 1001 canon that truly qualifies as an intellectual undertaking. Anthropologist Rouch and sociologist Morin set out to see if they could capture reality on camera, and in the process revolutionized the documentary genre while simultaneously influencing the burgeoning French New Wave. Taking advantage of the newly available hand held sync-sound system for 16mm film, the social scientists sent two women into the streets of Paris to ask passersby a simple question: “Are you happy?”
The responses to this question are as varied as one would expect, but the focus here is more on the interaction than the answers. They serve merely as a basis for further investigation of the individuals and their willingness to speak to others about personal matters on camera. Breaking the very rules of Cinéma vérité that they were establishing with this picture, the filmmakers choose to stage a number of the responders in conversations covering subjects as broad as debilitating depression to the Algerian conflict that raged in North Africa at the time. Some of these conversations inevitably feel forced, and with them the film drags, but in moments of genuine exchange, particularly those with regard to political opinion, the movie seems to have a life of its own – certainly in some cases apart from what even the filmmakers could have imagined. While many of the picture’s subjects have the unfortunate tendency to slip into amateur philosophizing, it is in the moments when they drop the façade of intellectualism and speak with unforced emotion that the film shines.
In these moments Rouch and Morin (and cameraman Raoul Coutard), although perhaps unintentionally, employ filmic techniques that undoubtedly manipulate the audience. Though these instances seem to betray the intent of the project to film “truth”, they inevitably speak to the unique powers that cinema holds that are unavailable to ethnography authors who employ other formats. Certainly these images had an effect on the other filmmakers working in Paris at the time, as the visual style of this picture is a clear precursor to some of the early films of the French New Wave, also heavily reliant on the hand held system that is used to such great effect here.
I tend to enjoy ethnographies as I assume that they appeal to my naturally curious nature. However, the best ones are often not those that expose the great differences between cultures but rather the films that note the vast similarities within the entire human race. Chronicle of a Summer contains a memorable sequence in which a woman who has survived the Nazi Holocaust recalls her interactions with her father during that horrific time. Her stories are told in voiceover as she traverses the boulevards at sundown. At this point they are neither particularly shocking nor overwhelmingly heart wrenching, but they are distinctly human, and the combination of that humanity and the cinematography of this sequence make for a moment not easily forgotten. A continent and more than a generation removed from the Paris of 1960, I can hardly be expected to comprehend the nuances of the politics being discussed in much of Chronicle of a Summer. However, the impact of this film is undoubtable and tangible even from my removed standpoint. Is it a masterpiece? No. But it is a smart enough film to know that its goals of “truth” may be unattainable. The film’s final sequence entails the subjects of the interviews gathering to discuss a rough cut of the project, only to perceive its message (and their fellow subjects) in a variety of different lights. After the screening, Rouch and Morin meet in the hall to compare their own reactions and almost immediately revert to discussions of the perception of truth. They hint at their own pictures shortcomings and openly confess to hoping that their own favorite subjects would be embraced by the larger audience.
The two filmmakers felt that with Chronicle of a Summer they were pioneering Cinema Vérité, and although they lay the groundwork for that movement here, many of their techniques would be dismissed by latter-day proponents of the genre. However, many scholars point to this piece as a seminal work of the Direct Cinema movement, which unlike Vérité openly questions within its texts the relationship between reality and film. In any case, this film, while somewhat slow for its 85 minute runtime, does deserve a viewing.
Language: French
Runtime: 85 Minutes
Grade: 2.5 Hats Off
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