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  • Other than Vérité:Sound and Moving Image in the Rock Music Documentaries of Peter Whitehead
  • Thomas F. Cohen (bio)

When we think of music documentary and the emergence of rock in the 1960s, the classic films of American cinema verité or direct cinema readily come to mind—What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. (Maysles brothers, US, 1964), Dont Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1966), Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, US, 1968), Gimme Shelter (Maysles brothers, US, 1970), and Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, US, 1970). These works have deservedly received a great deal of critical attention. Unfortunately, their popularity suggests a homogeneous approach to documentary during this era when, in fact, alternative practices flourished. Working coevally with Pennebaker, the Maysles brothers, and others, British filmmaker Peter Whitehead forged his own eclectic approach to documentary films about popular music. These groundbreaking works included documentaries on The Rolling Stones' 1965 tour of Ireland, The Beach Boys' 1966 visit to England, and early Pink Floyd in concert and in the studio. Because of legal obstacles that limited distribution, 1 Whitehead's films are less well known than those of his American counterparts. However, viewers with sensibilities blunted by overexposure to the canon of direct cinema will discover in his films a refreshing take on the pop music scene of the decade.

Comparisons to films such as Dont Look Back are expected,2 given the apparent similarities in subject and style. Yet, while sharing certain qualities with direct cinema, Whitehead's work remains profoundly dissimilar. This difference derives in part from the geographical distance between the United States and Britain, which allowed Whitehead to develop working practices unhampered by the obsessive polemics of the Americans. Because he drew inspiration from sources both selective and wide-ranging—from the Europe an art film auteurs such as Bergman and Godard and from his [End Page 299] training as a newsreel cameraman—his diverse body of work refuses facile pigeonholing. Ultimately, Whitehead is a bricoleur of cinema, determined to get the job done with the tools at hand in the time allowed.

I focus here on Whitehead's approach to audiovisual synchronization, for I believe this aspect clearly distinguishes his work from that of his American contemporaries and also illustrates his improvisatory manner of working. Four of Whitehead's music documentaries are addressed, each of which has its own mode of treating the relationship between moving images, speech, and music. I demonstrate that such diverse approaches preclude any adherence to the doctrine of vérité.

The Doctrine

Although the practitioners of direct cinema did not conform to the caricature typically painted of them, it is nonetheless accurate to claim that they pursued naturalism as a representational practice—especially as it pertained to audiovisual components.3 For Leacock, Pennebaker, Drew, Maysles, and company, portable sync sound represented the Holy Grail.4 To reject it was apostasy. Yet sync sound was sought after without critically examining its value. Why was it so desirable? Perhaps a perceptible disjunction between what we see and what we hear makes us wonder whether some tampering might have occurred in that gap. In other words, a hiatus between sound and image presents an opportunity for the filmmaker to intervene.

The power to capture reality unawares has persisted as an ideal, but as one seldom attained. We may imagine a pure form of direct cinema, but the practice of filmmaking inevitably necessitates compromise.5 As Joe McElhaney observes, the Maysles brothers violated the codes of direct cinema "at almost every turn."6 Nevertheless, these filmmakers continued to pledge themselves to "a documentary cinema in which truth and reality are simply out there in the world, waiting to be captured on film."7 Whitehead admits that, for a time, he too "was swept up a little by that," but he soon realized that the notion of the objective documentary was "totally wrong" and "a total lie."8 Watching the films, the viewer remains aware of Whitehead's presence.

Because of this discernible presence, some critics would classify Whitehead's work as French cinema verité a la Jean Rouch. For instance, Henry K. Miller claims that "if Dont Look Back is a classic...

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