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Frederick Wiseman at Lincoln Center

An American Institution Celebrated

By: - Jan 19, 2025

Film at Lincoln Center is presenting  “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” a retrospective featuring an extensive selection of films spanning decades of the filmmaker’s prolific career, all newly restored in 4K. Eleven of Wiseman’s films have been selected for the New York Film Festival since 1967. This series celebrates the long-standing relationship between FLC and this documentary filmmaker. The series will be presented from January 31 through March 5, 2025.

Frederick Wiseman is arguably the most important documentarian to have worked in America.  He has consistently produced major documentaries. He is too intelligent to claim that his presence at the shooting location (he always does the sound recording) does not make a difference. Yet, even if he does not claim objectivity, he means to be fair.

Documentary filmmaking is often explained as a look at subjects and settings that can’t be seen by the ordinary eye. Thus we have underground and underworld projects.  With the exception of his first venture, Titicut Follies, filmed in the mental ward of a Massachusetts State Correctional institution, Wiseman has looked right at the heart of middle America.  

Wiseman does not offer voice-over commentary.  His films speak for themselves.  At the start, the films were harsh. Though they seem to soften over the years, Wiseman is always imaginative and critical. The films become less obvious and outrage is buried.   

Wiseman is not bound by chronology but rather creates ‘medleys’, small structures which tell little stories and have rhythms. These medleys can be easily grasped by the viewer.  As they are built into a larger structure, meaning becomes more elusive. The viewer’s intelligence puts the medleys together into a story.

Wiseman casts his gaze on many elements of our culture. He often looks at the interface of an institution and society. Institutions of course “reflect a cultures' hues” (Wiseman).  Ironic events occurring in this space are not highlighted. They are left for the viewer to interpret.

How does Wiseman make the seemingly ordinary arresting and true?  While filming may reflect choosing images based on the surface of things, selection during shooting and later in the editing room are very much informed by an authorial grip.  Wiseman's is firm and deep.

The janitors in the lab in Atlanta Georgia where Primate was filmed are black. They are the only black people in the film. The scientists are white.  Most of them are men.  The women scientists treat the monkeys more tenderly. We are left to see these medley factoids build. 

Wiseman likes the closeup. We see closeups of hands at work. In Belfast, Maine the lobsters are cut up by fishermen's hands. The work on primates is often done by surgical hands. A broader scenic view is given in transitions made down hallways, giving you a sense of place.

The use of elevator doors as the traditional film wipe is humorous in The Store, a portrait of Neiman Marcus’s main store in Dallas,Texas. Humor can provide a defense against disturbing scenes. 

At the time The Store was filmed, ultrasuede was a new, popular dress material. What Wiseman does not do, but it happened all the time, is to show one member of the Dallas upper class buying an ultrasuede dress, only to have her sisters-in-law buy five the day after they saw hers. Stanley Marcus understood how this response worked for him. Wiseman reveals it straight on. No editorials.  

Humans are not the stars of the films. (In cinema verite, following a celebrity often provides the film's arc.) Instead, the institutions are the stars.  

Wiseman always records the documentary's sound and has spoken about knowing what’s important:: listening. He is free to look around a space while the cameraman’s eye is on a specific shot. He cues his cameramen.

Four different cameramen have shot the films over decades. Because all of Wiseman's films have the same distinctive marks, claims can’t be made that cinematography is a unique contribution to any particular film. 

These films feature many privileged moments that Wiseman does not point out by distinguishing their medley or, god forbid. making a verbal statement. We as viewers have to find the privilege and that is part of our pleasure. 

Wiseman’s choice not to use voice-over and instead to show medleys and let us decide what is happening is part of the brilliance of his work. He uses the human face (and those of primates) as distinctly as Ingmar Bergman does. His transitional shots of hallways and his street shots are as important to his films as Yasujiro Ozu’s are. Over and over his films are stamped by his particular gaze.

Wiseman’s work is monumental. Yet he is a highly unusual artist, both sensitive and aggressive in getting what he wants.  In the end, he is a poet.  His films work not as narrative but as poetry.  Try them in the extraordinary retrospective put on by Film at Lincoln Center from January 31 to  March 5.

Tickets here.

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