Online Response #6: The Reflexive Mode

Chronicle of a Summer is at its most reflexive in the last ten minutes of the film as Rouch and Morin have a discussion with their subjects, who have just seen themselves on film.  Says Rouch: “You’ve just seen yourself on screen.  Edgar and I would like your opinion.” 

            While the cast has trouble agreeing on anything, their responses point towards an understanding of the constructed nature of documentary.  Speaking of the discussion between Angelo and Landry, one subject says, “It’s all unnatural, it’s completely phony.”  Another subject says of the entire film, “Looking at it, I found the film extremely painful.  When it’s not totally boring, it’s at the cost of total decency.”  Mary-Lou adds, “In order to get a sparkle of truth, the character has to be alone and on the verge of breaking down”—a reference, most likely, to her appearances they chose to put in the film. 

            In their argument of what (or what’s not) true, the subjects of Chronicle of a Summer admit to a feeling of alienation in seeing the way they are presented on screen.  The ending, in turn, has an alienating effect on the audience, at least in the sense that their understanding of the way things are is upended as soon as the subjects begin to question their representation and the film as a whole.  Nichols explains the intentionality of alienation in the Reflexive mode, as it “separates us from prevailing assumptions” (199).  It “[induces] an ‘aha!’ effect, where we grasp a principle or structure at work that helps account for how we understand and represent the world” (199). 

            With a little editing, Chronicle of a Summer very well could have turned out as a Participatory doc.  That the majority of the film appears as it does—a documentary belonging to a more recognizable mode—invites the audience to consider what subjects of other documentaries would say about the way they are presented if given the chance.   For example, what would Paul from Salesman say about his scenes in the film?  What opinion would any characters from Harlan County USA have of their portrayal, be they strikers, union brass, or corporate men? 

            In Chronicle of a Summer, like other Reflexive documentaries, “it is only as the film unfolds” that we notice the jarring techniques that produce alienation effects (198, 199).  Similarly in Land without Bread, it is only after the accumulation of insults dealt by the narrator that the audience realizes the film is inviting them to question elements, such as the objective Voice-of-God narration, of the Expository mode.  The focus on formal reflexivity—as seen in all of the Reflexive docs we have watched in class—is subtler than a purely political reflexive performance.  Though belonging to a different medium—theater—Anna Deveare Smith’s Fires in the Mirror begs us to question our assumptions about race, as she performs blackness and Jewishness.  Its alienating effect is apparent from the beginning.  For another example of outright alienation as a means of questioning our assumptions, see Sandra Bernhard’s Without You I’m Nothing.