Perfiles: Frederick Wiseman

Hal Himmelstein
The Museum of Broadcast Communications

Frederick Wiseman is arguably the most important American documentary filmmaker of the past three decades. A law professor turned filmmaker in 1967, Wiseman, in his most dramatically powerful documentaries, has poignantly chronicled the exercise of power in American society by focusing on the everyday travails of the least fortunate Americans caught in the tangled webs of social institutions operating at the community level. An underlying theme of many of these documentaries is the individual's attempt to preserve his or her humanity and dignity while struggling against laws and dehumanizing bureaucratic systems. Wiseman functions as producer, director, and editor of the films, which numbered 29 by 1996. The documentaries have all been broadcast on public television in the United States, presented by New York station WNET, and have regularly marked the opening of the new PBS season. Wiseman's documentaries have won numerous awards, including several Emmys, and a Dupont Award. Wiseman was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Prize Fellows Award in 1982, and received a Peabody Award for his contribution to documentary film.

Wiseman's aesthetic falls squarely in the "direct cinema" tradition of documentary filmmaking, which emphasizes continued filming, as unobtrusively as possible, of human conversation and the routines of everyday life, with no music, no interviews, no voice-over narration, and no overt attempt to interpret or explain the events unfolding before the camera.

Wiseman calls his films "reality-fictions", reflecting his tight thematic structuring of the raw footage in the editing process. Eschewing "leading characters," Wiseman skillfully interweaves many small stories to provide contrast and thematic complexity.

Wiseman's debut as a documentarian was both auspicious and highly controversial. His first film, Titicut Follies (1967), was shot in the Massachusetts State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater. Here we see the impact of a social institution--a publicly-funded mental hospital--on society's rejects. Often described as an "expose," (a description Wiseman rejects), Titicut Follies chronicled the indignities suffered by the inmates, many of whom were kept naked and force-fed through nasal tubes. Titicut Follies caused a public outcry and demands for institutional reform. The film was officially barred from general public showings until 1993 by order of a U.S. court on grounds that it violated an inmate's privacy.

A succession of critically-acclaimed documentaries quickly followed. In High School (1968), Wiseman examined a large, largely white and middle-class Philadelphia high school and the authoritarian, conformist value system inculcated in students by teachers and administrators. The official ideology reflected in the educational power structure was largely seen as an expression of the value framework of the surrounding community.

Law and Order (1969) was filmed in Kansas City, Missouri. Here, Wiseman cast his gaze on the daily routine of police work in the Kansas City police department. Most of the sequences were filmed in the black district of the city. Examples of police brutality and insensitivity were juxtaposed with other examples of sympathetic patrol officers attempting to assist citizens with a variety of minor, and Wiseman sometimes humorous, problems. On the whole, however, police behavior was depicted as symptomatic of deeper social crisis, including racism, poverty, and the resultant pervasive violence in the inner city.

His next film, Hospital (1970), for which Wiseman won two Emmys for Best News Documentary, was set in the operating room, emergency ward and out-patient clinics of New York City's Metropolitan Hospital. As in Law and Order, Wiseman used an institutional setting to examine urban ills. Stabbing and drug overdose victims, abused children, the mentally disturbed, and the abandoned elderly pass through the public hospital. But unlike the authority figures in Titicut Follies, the doctors, nurses, and orderlies at Metropolitan come off as much more humane, responding to patients with sympathy and understanding.

In Juvenile Court (1973), as in Hospital, Wiseman reveals the compassionate side of authority. The court officials in the Memphis, Tennessee juvenile court discuss, with evident concern, the futures of young offenders accused of crimes such as child abuse and armed robbery.

Welfare (1975) is one of the most provocative and understated of Wiseman's institutional examinations. Shot in a New York City welfare office, the documentary, in seemingly interminable shots, chronicles the frustration and pain of abject welfare recipients who spend their time sitting and waiting, or being shunted from office to office, as the degrading milieu of the welfare system grinds on. Welfare bureaucrats are largely seen as agents of dehumanization.

The Store (1983), Wiseman's first color film, at first glance appears to depart from the typical "weighty" subject matter of most of his previous films. That, however, is deceptive. For while the institution under scrutiny, the world-famous Neiman-Marcus department store in Dallas, Texas, may seem to be light-weight material, Wiseman's treatment of the activities of store employees and the mostly wealthy customers ultimately reveals the shallow lives of America's economic elite and those who service them. Conspicuous consumption is everywhere in evidence. The clientele while away days in the store's dressing rooms, trying on expensive gowns and furs. A compliant group of saleswomen are led in smile exercises as they prepare to meet their condescending customers. The bourgeoisie and proletariat are complicit in this sordid dance of money and unproductive leisure. The Store stands in stark and powerful contrast to the despair depicted in Welfare.

The ethics of Wiseman's filmmaking has been criticized by some as invading the privacy of its subjects (Titicut Follies is the clearest case-in-point). Wiseman's response is unequivocal. He argues that if an institution receives public tax support, citizens are entitled to observe its operation. Reportorial access, Wiseman adds, is a constitutional right with regard to public institutions. In his early documentaries, if any subject objected, at the time of shooting, to being filmed, Wiseman eliminated the footage in question from the final cut. Later, however, he denied subjects veto rights. Some subjects, while initially pleased with their portrayals, later became upset with others' negative reactions to those portrayals. This may be one of Wiseman's major Wiseman contributions to the documentary form, to permit subjects to examine their own behavior--to confront the consequences of their own social actions--as seen through the eyes of others.


Frederick Wiseman. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 1 January 1930. Educated at Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, B.A. 1951; LL.B., Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1954. Worked as law professor; turned to television documentary filmmaking, 1967. Recipient: Emmy Awards, 1969 and 1970; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, 1980-81; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship, 1982-87; International Documentary Association, Career Achievement Award, 1990; Peabody Award, Personal Award, 1991. Address: Zipporah Films Inc., One Richdale Avenue, Unit #4, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140, U.S.A.

Television Documentaries (all as producer, director, and editor)
1967 Titicut Follies
1968 High School
1969 Law and Order
1969 Hospital
1971 Basic Training
1972 Essene
1973 Juvenile Court
1974 Primate
1975 Welfare
1976 Meat
1977 Canal Zone
1978 Sinai Field Mission
1979 Manoeuvre
1980 Model
1982 Seraphita's Diary
1983 The Store
1985 Racetrack
1986 Blind
1986 Deaf
1986 Adjustment & Work
1986 Multi-Handicapped
1987 Missile
1989 Near Death
1989 Central Park
1991 Aspen
1993 Zoo
1994 High School II
1995 Ballet
1996 La Comedie Francaise