Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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Few films can claim as much influence on the course of cinema history as Chronicle of a Summer. The fascinating result of a collaboration between filmmaker-anthropologist Jean Rouch and sociologist Edgar Morin, this vanguard work of what Morin termed cinema- verite is a brilliantly conceived and realized sociopolitical diagnosis of the early sixties in France. Simply by interviewing a group of Paris residents in the summer of 1960—beginning with the provocative and eternal question “Are you happy?” and expanding to political issues, including the ongoing Algerian War—Rouch and Morin reveal the hopes and dreams of a wide array of people, from artists to factory workers, from an Italian emigre to an African student. Chronicle of a Summer’s penetrative approach gives us a document of a time and place with extraordinary emotional depth.

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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The Criterion Collection has been catching up of late with classic, experimental documentary titles, what with Sans Soleil by Chris Marker and last year's A propos de Nice, Jean Vigo's influential docu-satire from way back in 1930. These pictures are frequently referenced in film studies texts, yet are rarely screened. Joining them now, and easily justifying its exalted reputation, is Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch's intellectual experiment in documentary technique Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d'unete). The filmmakers attempt to record a 'real' snapshot of French life as it is being experienced in the summer of 1960; the idea is to see if it is indeed possible to create a cinema verite. What's more, the film reflexively documents its own experiment. It begins and ends with the filmmakers explaining their aims and assessing what they've achieved.

Filmmaker Jean Rouche was casting about for ideas after working on documentaries in Africa for a few years. He found a collaborator in sociologist Edgar Morin, who is more of a theoretician. They want to find out if the presence of a camera necessarily distorts the behavior, the 'reality' of interview subjects. They engage associates and friends as their subjects, and begin by sending two women onto the street to ask Parisians, "Are you happy?" When that avenue seems exhausted, the filmmakers set their little group down to eat together, with the idea that the social situation will dispel the pressure and allow them to act naturally. And finally, the friends pair off to ask questions of one another. At one point the group travels to St. Tropez, for a change of scenery and to open the film up with a little water skiing, dancing, and an interview with a "photo girl", an alluring young woman in a revealing outfit who earns money posing with strangers for souvenir photos.

Eventually the group is convened in a screening room to debate the results of the experiment. Some think that natural, honest behavior was recorded, while others opine that the film subjects were simply projecting a 'camera safe' personality.

The truth is somewhere in between. Morin and Rouch picked a very interesting group of people, or that is, they have interesting friends. A worker for Renault debates with a student whether one is living a better life than the other; they get right to the issue of having to make enough money to live. An artist and his girlfriend talk about their carefree lifestyle. The worker has an interesting discussion with an African immigrant. Two younger students seem to be competing to 'score points' for coolness with the camera, but become more serious when the subject of the draft comes up (there's a colonial war on in Algeria). In a controversial scene an emotional young woman from Italy called Mary Lou bares her feelings to the camera. In the reassessment scene, one opinion is that she's being sincere, while another feels she is creating an exhibition. Finally, the somewhat careworn-looking Marceline, a woman in her thirties, expresses dismay that her younger student boyfriend does not treat her well. The camera eventually tilts down to Marceline's forearm – which bears a Nazi number tattoo from Auschwitz. Morin's academic circle includes students, artists, and potential lost souls.

The film works as its makers hoped… we accept what we see most of the time, if only because we're more inclined to believe in the sincerity of interview subjects from back before media awareness and saturation transformed many of our lives into "reality programming". Morin and Rouch also found an excellent cameraman in Canadian Michel Brault, and credit much of the film's success to his previous familiarity with progressive documentary techniques. The idea of 16mm cameras that could record synchronized sound was very new in 1960, with almost everyone (Maysles, Pennebaker, Brault) using partly homemade equipment. Interestingly, from the evidence we see, the film rarely has technical problems.

Chronicle of a Summer has a double value now as a tangential reference to the fringes of the French New Wave. A couple of participants became well known in their own right. One of the young students, is Regis Debray, who would later become a political radical. Viewers familiar with documentaries about revolutionary politics in South America (like Marcel Ophuls' Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie) will remember shots of bearded Debray in a Bolivian prison – he was arrested and jailed for some time after being caught aiding Che Guevara. The emotional Mary Lou is seen later in the show beaming and happy, after her love life has taken a turn for the better. She is really Marilu Parolini, and her new boyfriend is Jacques Rivette, the respected New Wave director. The "mixed up" Marilu later took a writing credit on Bertolucci's The Spider's Strategem, among a score of other films.

The movie is far from dry. The personalities involved are lively and the discussions uninhibited. One woman explains why she wouldn't sleep with a black man; he doesn't take offense. We're so accustomed to fiction depicting concentration camp survivors as wounded neurotics that Marceline's everyday equilibrium comes off as liberating. She even jokes about the number on her arm, saying that an Italian wanted to jot it down so he could bet on it in the lottery.

The show ends with a brief discussion between the filmmakers in a museum. Jean Rouche feels they've succeeded while his academic friend expresses doubts. Chronicle of a Summer should be required
~ Glenn Erickson

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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Chronicle of a Summer / Chronique d'un ete (1961) [The Criterion Collection #648]

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