Favorite Documentaries from 1930-70s

[MortSahlFan]

I love looking at them comparatively, just look I can't wait to see what they say about this decade 30 years from now (if I'm still here).. Doesn't matter the country, either - I love to get as many different ones as possible.

-Place De la Republique
-Chronicles of a Summer
-Seven-Up
-Salesman
-Le Joli Mai

[garnish]

Sorrow and the pity

[bgmnts]

They're not documentaries as such but I love those old Pathé 30s/40s public information film kind of things. There is one, not Pathé but its a 40s doc, where Burgess Meredith goes around the UK, its a public information film for American GIs to learn about British culture. I find it hypnotic in its quaintness and history.

[Z]

Categorising Seven Up as one seems a bit of a stretch. Unless you specifically mean the first one, which is quite insubstantial by itself, the second is outright terrible (moody teenagers saying fuck all). 21 Up through to about 42 up is where it's at.

Marjoe from 1972 is a pretty great one that doesn't seem to get mentioned enough. This child evangelist does a documentary about how the whole things bullshit while touring around pedalling the bullshit.
Other than Salesman, the Maysyles had a good few there. Would recommend checking out their Marlon Brando short.

Harlan County USA is a good documentary about an American workers strike before that country became a hugely partisan totally fucked shithole.

Frederick Wiseman started hitting his stride in the 70s with Welfare. Got some good stuff before that but hadn't really settled into being a whole thing of his own.

Agnes Varda and Louis Malle are supposed to have loads of good documentaries from around then, not that I've seen them.

[MortSahlFan]

Categorising Seven Up as one seems a bit of a stretch. Unless you specifically mean the first one, which is quite insubstantial by itself, the second is outright terrible (moody teenagers saying fuck all). 21 Up through to about 42 up is where it's at.

Marjoe from 1972 is a pretty great one that doesn't seem to get mentioned enough. This child evangelist does a documentary about how the whole things bullshit while touring around pedalling the bullshit.
Other than Salesman, the Maysyles had a good few there. Would recommend checking out their Marlon Brando short.

Harlan County USA is a good documentary about an American workers strike before that country became a hugely partisan totally fucked shithole.

Frederick Wiseman started hitting his stride in the 70s with Welfare. Got some good stuff before that but hadn't really settled into being a whole thing of his own.

Agnes Varda and Louis Malle are supposed to have loads of good documentaries from around then, not that I've seen them.

I was putting all the Seven-Up together as one.. I loved Harlan County USA (and some others of his), and everything I saw of Wiseman, Maysles were great.. "Place de la Republique" might be my favorite, which was done by Malle.

"High School" is interesting to compare.. I had "Marjoe" but needed space - thanks for the reminder!

[sevendaughters]

Night Mail is a classic of the Griersonian 'poetic documentary' style. Gimme Shelter just sneaks in the timeline as a great boring-story-becomes-interesting-by-something-unexpected-happening classic. Titicut Follies is a tough watch but the beginning of one of the all-time careers in documentary making. Chronic d'ete is a nice experimental spin on the anthropology doc by Jean Rouch. Portrait of Jason is another ethically-weird one, probing and plying a person with booze and getting them to talk shit, kind of like the invention of the podcast in a way. Rocky Road to Dublin is a good one about, basically, the state of Ireland half a century after the Easter Rising. Salesman, Primary, the various great propaganda films by Capra and Jennings. Blood of Beasts too.

[Neomod]

Off the top of my head

The London Nobody Knows (1969). Based on the book by Geoffrey Fletcher it's a look at rapidly disappearing old London.

Ken Russell's documentaries for Monitor particularly Pop Goes the Easel (1962) and A House in Bayswater (1960).

[Sin Agog]

If you can ever find this one, (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0242845/) Peasants of Second Fortress, it's about some farmers who are going to be forcibly ousted from their land so the Japanese government can build a new airport, but instead of doing what they're told, they hunker down, dig tunnels, build a rickety fort, and engage in all-out warfare with their own government for almost a decade.  The doc is almost raw footage of some of those battles, and it beggars belief.

Another good counter-cultural doc from Japan from around the same era is Eros Plus Massacre (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064296/).  I most vividly remember the section with the mixed-race children of Japanese women and black American GIs.

Also Tokyo Olympiad's on Criterion.  I like how antithetical it is to your usual sports doc.  Doesn't give a fuck about rousing underdog stories, or talking heads telling us how much pressure they were under.  Just a lot of bodies balletically doing their thing.

Love some of the cats mentioned already like Wiseman, Maysles and the 7 Up series, but I'm mostly just thinking of Japanese ones right now.

[Absorb the anus burn]

Off the top of my head

The London Nobody Knows (1969). Based on the book by Geoffrey Fletcher it's a look at rapidly disappearing old London.

Yes, this is lovely.... Well worth seeing.

[Sin Agog]

Oh there are some good ethnographic and nature docs that just came to mind.  First off, Jean Painleve is thee nature documentarian for me, even more so than Attenborough.  First saw some of his shorts projected in the background at an industrial gig, but then Criterion released the amazing Science is Fiction a few years later.  Every single one of his films is mesmerising, and surprisingly forensic and advanced considering his career began in the silent era.

And I'm always bringing up Dead Birds (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059091/) to people.  It follows a Papua New Guinea people who, every few weeks, gather in a field and engage in half-ritualistic, half-real warfare with a neighbouring tribe in order to keep things vital.  There were casualties, though not a massive amount.  You get the weird feeling like they may actually lose a lot when they pack it in and rejoin the civilised world (I seem to recall seeing a later doc set there in which the people had been reduced to lacklustrely selling trinkets to idiot tourists). The director Robert Gardner's done some great stuff, including one of Herzog's favourite movies, Forest of Bliss.

[Herbert Ashe]

Another good counter-cultural doc from Japan from around the same era is Eros Plus Massacre (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064296/).  I most vividly remember the section with the mixed-race children of Japanese women and black American GIs.

Also Tokyo Olympiad's on Criterion.  I like how antithetical it is to your usual sports doc.  Doesn't give a fuck about rousing underdog stories, or talking heads telling us how much pressure they were under.  Just a lot of bodies balletically doing their thing.

Are you thinking of Imamura's History of Postwar Japan as Told By A Bar Hostess? Eros + Massacre definitely isn't a documentary.

Agree with you 100% on Tokyo Olympiad.

[Sin Agog]

Haha, the one I meant was called Extreme Private Eros (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233809/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_6) so you can see where I went wrong.  Not a harakiri-worthy mistake.  (I've mentioned it on here before, but that same filmmaker later shot a doc about an unhinged war veteran/activist who goes around to sickly old ex-officers and beats them up until they admit that they ATE the lower-ranked recruits in WWII.  Was made in the '80s, but it's probably one of the most fascinating docs I've ever seen).

[biggytitbo]

Off the top of my head

The London Nobody Knows (1969). Based on the book by Geoffrey Fletcher it's a look at rapidly disappearing old London.

Ahh is that the one where James Mason is stood in some of the original Ripper locations shortly before they were demolished?

[Neomod]

Ahh is that the one where James Mason is stood in some of the original Ripper locations shortly before they were demolished?

Yeah and states that there are people around there that still remember the killings. Shoreditch was still grim looking when I worked there in the mid 90's.

[biggytitbo]

Yeah and states that there are people around there that still remember the killings. Shoreditch was still grim looking when I worked there in the mid 90's.

Yeah that doc was 1967, so 79 years from the killings, be lots of old people who were kids when it happened. Amazing to think it was still in living memory when Sergeant Pepper was released.

[Sin Agog]

Just remembered Allan King's docs are worth a go if you want something else with a bit of a Wiseman/Maysles feel.  A Married Couple is especially memorable, a sort of non-fiction A Woman Under the Influence, about a marriage fracturing before the cameras.   Actually, I wonder if it influenced Albert Brooks' Real Life at all, as there are a bunch of parallels when I think about it.  It's amazing how much honesty the couple brought to the project.  Saw a much later video of the wife talking about the doc, and was happy to see that she'd mellowed into a lovely, thoughtful old Canuck lady.

[Replies From View]

Marjoe from 1972 is a pretty great one that doesn't seem to get mentioned enough. This child evangelist does a documentary about how the whole things bullshit while touring around pedalling the bullshit.
Other than Salesman, the Maysyles had a good few there. Would recommend checking out their Marlon Brando short.

Marjoe and the Maysyles?  Sounds bloody brilliant, whatever it is.

[MortSahlFan]

Just remembered Allan King's docs are worth a go if you want something else with a bit of a Wiseman/Maysles feel.  A Married Couple is especially memorable, a sort of non-fiction A Woman Under the Influence, about a marriage fracturing before the cameras.   Actually, I wonder if it influenced Albert Brooks' Real Life at all, as there are a bunch of parallels when I think about it.  It's amazing how much honesty the couple brought to the project.  Saw a much later video of the wife talking about the doc, and was happy to see that she'd mellowed into a lovely, thoughtful old Canuck lady.

Very good, here is that video (current Antoinette)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x8IsGjGZ0o

[nero]

Can't go past Grey Gardens for a bleak comedown.

The Edies with their accents and pet raccoons/cats living in the shambolic fallen past old mansion ("It's the Hamptons darling! Isn't it marvellous?")

Bukowski narrated a great little doc called 'The best hotel on Skid Row' or something like that, about the residents living week to week in a cheap hotel in LA.

Again, fascinating stuff.

[Namtab]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U68tMGEqL5o

[Sin Agog]

^ Good call, one of my favourite Herzog's, that.  Certainly his most mature documentary.  Really inspires you to see humans intrepidly finding some means of communicating with the outside world, despite almost everything about their physiognomy telling them that they can't.