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Over the course of his very long career, director Frederick Wiseman has always worked in nonfiction, in the realm of the real, yet his films may best be described as novelistic. Embedding himself in hospitals, schools, theater and dance groups, neighborhoods, and towns across the United States and occasionally Europe, he uncovers human drama, pathos, and psychological detail that escape the eye of the ordinary observer.
He began making films almost 60 years ago and has continued at the astonishing pace of just about one documentary a year ever since, his most recent film coming in 2023 with the magnum opus Menus Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (a four-four-long movie the New York Times hailed as “absorbing start to finish.”).
To recognize this unparalleled body of nonfiction cinema, Film at Lincoln Center is honoring the director with a retrospective titled “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution.” It got underway Friday with screenings of Wiseman’s first three documentaries: Titicut Folies (1967), High School (1968), and Law and Order (1969), and it concludes March 5 with screenings of Ballet (1995), Domestic Violence 1 (2001), and Domestic Violence 2 (2002). More than 30 films in the retrospective have been newly restored in 4K “from their original camera negatives and sound elements by Zipporah Films and overseen by Wiseman throughout a five-year restoration process,” as FLC notes, “serving as one of the most essential restoration projects of recent years.”
DEADLINE: What does this retrospective mean to you? It’s certainly very prestigious and well-deserved.
Frederick Wiseman: There couldn’t be a better place to have a retrospective in America than at Lincoln Center. The retrospective is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for what I’ve been doing, lo these many years. I’m very pleased that they’re showing 40 films. That’s fantastic… I worked very hard on the color grading of the films, and I’m pleased with the way they look, and it’s nice to be able to share it with a public that’s interested.
DEADLINE: As you were restoring the films, did it make you reflect on how much American society has changed over time, or perhaps ways it has stayed consistent?
FW: I have a hard time generalizing. First of all, for most of the subjects of the films that I’ve done, I haven’t been back to the places… It’s hard — it’s impossible for me to comment on how the places might have changed or whether in fact they’ve changed. So, I don’t think I can answer that because I don’t know how.
DEADLINE: One thing that has changed, certainly, are HIPAA privacy laws. It’s almost impossible to imagine making Hospital today, for instance.
FW: Yes, it is true of Titicut Follies, Near Death, and Juvenile Court, and maybe even Welfare, and many of the films. I inadvertently lucked out because in my own naive way, I asked permission and I got mission, and people were happy to have a film made at the time. I made quite a few films [in recent years], none with the possible exception of State Legislature were they of the same kind of, for lack of a better term, “social subjects” like Welfare, Juvenile Court or Hospital. I think you’re right. I think it would be very difficult to make them now. Too bad. But I was able to do it, and naturally I’m pleased that I had the chance.
DEADLINE: When I interviewed you a few years ago for your film Monrovia, Indiana, you made the observation that your films are not really journalistic, they’re more novelistic.
FW: That’s what I think, right. I work extremely hard on the structure… I don’t know if a novelist would agree but from my point view, the structure of one of my movies is more like the structure of a novel.
DEADLINE: After seeing your films, I still don’t understand how you do it. Part of it, I think, is pacing. There’s not an obvious arc to the films, and yet they are as gripping as any great novel. There’s such incredible subtlety about the way you do it.
FW: Thank you. It shouldn’t be obvious.
DEADLINE: Does the structure really emerge in the edit bay? I wonder if while you’re shooting, there are scenes where you’re thinking, “Ah, yes, I know where this can go in the film.” Or does that all emerge in the edit?
FW: It all emerges in the editing. Naturally, there are scenes that I like during the shooting and say to myself, “Oh, use this.” Am I likely to use it however is a consequence of the editing… I may have said this to you other times when we’ve talked, but I have to think that I understand what’s going on in every sequence, first of all, in order to know whether or not I want to use it, second of all to know how I want to edit it. And third, where I want to place it and how it fits in relation to the other sequences… That all happens in the editing.
DEADLINE: I might say that your approach in filming is observant rather than “observational,” because “observational” evokes the cinéma vérité tradition of, well, you just kind of set up your camera and see what it captured.
FW: Well, I think that’s a lot of bullshit. I mean, I never liked that word. A movie — any movie, mine or anybody else’s — is made up of thousands of choices. And the term “observational cinema” somehow suggests you’re just sitting in the corner and watching what’s going on. But that’s not the case. You’re making choices about what you’re going to shoot, how you’re going to shoot it, and how long you’re going to shoot. And that is apart from all the choices you make during the editing; the whole process is totally rooted in subjectivity.
DEADLINE: Are there scenes you have captured in your films, in some cases going back decades, that really stay in your mind? There are so many that are indelible for me and I’m sure for others, because in many cases they are of people in some sort of grave distress. It could be physical ailment, often it’s psychological duress, and it’s so poignant.
FW: The young man in Hospital who has taken psilocybin, and they give him a drug that makes him throw up to get rid of psilocybin. It’s a very dramatic scene. And it’s also very funny and it’s very sad, but when he says at the end of the scene, “You can’t do nothing with life, you can’t do nothing with nothing. I think I’ll just go home to Minnesota and get a job,” it’s funny, but it’s sad. It’s basically sad.
DEADLINE: You don’t use music in your films, which would signal to the audience how to feel about a situation.
FW: I don’t add music.
DEADLINE: Right, you don’t add music.
FW: But there’s a lot of music collectively in the films.
DEADLINE: Yes. Ambient music, for instance, in the rehearsal space in Ballet.
FW: Right.
DEADLINE: And you don’t use narration. Have you ever been tempted to use voiceover or score?
FW: No, no. no. I think the sequences speak for themselves.
DEADLINE: The titles of your films are very brief, succinct. I am also struck, as with Ballet, that we as the audience are getting to know individual dancers, choreographers, but they’re not biographical films about a single person. It’s not, for instance, the “Misty Copeland Story” or something like that. Why do you think you’ve been drawn to these larger questions of how people function within institutions?
FW: I don’t know that I have a good answer to that question. The few biographical documentaries I saw, I didn’t particularly like. And it seemed to me that I could cast a wider net if I didn’t follow one person. I am sure some people made very good biographical films following only one person. For me, the place, the institution, is the star rather than “the institution as by Bob Dylan” — rather than just following one person… I’m sure people make very good films following one person, but for some reason — I’m not dodging in telling you, I just don’t know the reason — I just thought it would be interesting to make the place the star.
DEADLINE: Early on in your career, the great New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael took notice of your work. What did that mean to you?
FW: Pauline’s review of High School was the first major review that I had, and it made a big difference because she recognized what I was trying to do, and she gave my work the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval… She was a great critic. As a result of that review, I got to know her a little bit. She was a very smart, very tough woman and very funny.
DEADLINE: In Ballet, there are some wonderful scenes with the dancer-choreographer Agnes de Mille filmed late in her life. At one point an interviewer asks her, “Given the difficulties of creating, what is it that keeps you continuing to do it?” I thought maybe I could turn that question to you and ask of this extraordinary career of yours that’s continued well into your 90s, what keeps you doing it?
FW: I like it. Obviously, I like it. In fact, I’m depressed when I’m not working. I like to be completely absorbed in work, in a film… I sit in a chair for months at a time and live in the world of the film. And it’s not that I don’t do anything else, but I work 8, 10, 11 hours a day on the editing. I’ve never felt it tiring because editing is fascinating work. I see how the movie’s going to come out. It’s nice to have an opportunity to follow the flow of my ideas, such as they are.
DEADLINE: And on that score, are you planning another film?
FW: Unfortunately, the last year I’ve been sick, and I don’t actually have the energy to do a film, so at the moment I’m planning nothing. It’s difficult for me because I’ve been working steadily since 1966, but I perhaps have to reconcile myself to the fact that I’m 95. At the moment, there’s no other film in prospect.
DEADLINE: Do you plan to attend many of the screenings as part of the Film at Lincoln Center retrospective?
FW: I think I’ll be there on the 15th [of February]… It’s not easy for me to travel to or stay in New York. I think I’ll just be there for the talk and then screening on the 15th.
DEADLINE: I hope you enjoy the retrospective when you’re there with the audience.
FW: I’m sure I will.
