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The study of documentary film needs a closer scrutiny of essential formal devices. This essay analyzes one of those practices with the goal of proposing a poetics of the film interview. David Bordwell explains: "A historical poetics of cinema produces knowledge in answer to two broad questions: 1. What are the principles according to which films are constructed and by means of which they achieve particular effects? 2. How and why have these principles arisen and changed in particular empirical circumstances?" (371). The importance of the interview in the contemporary documentary film requires an understanding of its fundamental principles. Many contemporary documentary films are little more than interviews and compilation material. Landmark works such as Shoah (1985) are almost completely interview based, and celebrated filmmakers such as Errol Morris establish their projects firmly on the interview. Interviews rarely operate as a neutral means of verbal explanation. Poetics can demonstrate how cinematic form shapes the interview into more than a simple question-and-answer exchange. Such a method allows analysts to examine the interplay between sound and image and enriches our understanding of the screen documentary, a mode in which content often eclipses the crucial operations of form. A poetics of the interview will make filmmakers sensitive to the impact of their formal decisions and viewers aware of how the design of the interview shapes their response.
Historical Origins
A poetics arises from historical practice, so how has the interview managed to move to such a central place in the documentary? The prominence of the interview is a noteworthy historical development that helps distinguish the contemporary documentary from its predecessors. From Nanook of the North in 1922 until the transformation of the documentary in the landmark works of 1960, particularly Primary and Chronicle of the Summer, the interview rarely appears. In his 1934 essay, "The Creative Use of Sound," John Grierson discusses sound montage, asynchronous ideas, a choral effect, and sound imagery but makes no mention of the interview (157-63). The interview begins to assume prominence only during the television era and after effective mobile sound equipment becomes employed around 1960. Thomas Waugh has accurately identified the interview as a "basic artifact of television culture" (246), and its verbal lineage can be traced back through broadcasting to...