TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, France
Key Genres: Documentary, Culture & Society, Social Issues, Biography, History, Law & Crime, Politics & Government, Military & War, Psychology, Sports, Sociology, Animals
Key Collaborators: John Davey (Cinematographer), William Brayne (Cinematographer), Pierre-Olivier Bardet (Producer)

"A leading exponent of 'direct cinema', Frederick Wiseman differs from figures like Pennebaker and the Maysles Brothers in that he uses documentary not for individual portraiture but for a mammoth socio-political investigation of specific American institutions. If the dispassionate tone of much of his work sometimes suggests a rather woolly liberal reluctance to take sides or to analyse, there is no denying his ability to evoke a wider social context through the relentless, intimate observation of human behaviour." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)

"After studying law at Yale University, he became a documentary film-maker; his first major work, Titicut Follies (1967), was a controversial exposé of life inside a state hospital for the criminally insane. He subsequently turned his camera onto other US institutions - schools, hospitals, courts and the police force - using a distinctive non-chronological style without narration." - Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

"In 1967 he directed his first and most controversial film, Titicut Follies… His subsequent documentaries were frequently concerned with institutions of various sorts (a school, a hospital, the police, the army, a law court), depicted without commentary in cinéma-vérité style, but with some implied comment in the editing." - The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema, 1983

"Frederick Wiseman is a legend among filmmakers, a documentarian who’s been chronicling American life and institutions with a keen eye. His 41 winsome, thoughtful, and often funny films — about everything from ballet companies to mental hospitals to meat processing plants — pack a punch, slipping cultural critiques and implications below the audience’s radar by focusing on the fascinating people in front of the camera… Wiseman has cataloged some of the most fascinating and important institutions of our civilization, using his films to make stealth political arguments that circumvent the easy generalizations and partisan catfights that often erase citizens from the very systems that are meant to serve the public good." - Alissa Wilkinson (Vox, 2018)

"Wiseman is not an open polemicist; his films do not appear didactic. But as we are taken from one social encounter to the next, as we are caught up in the leisurely rhythms of public ritual, we steadily become aware of the theme uniting all the films. In exploring American institutions, at home and abroad, Wiseman shows us social order rendered precarious. As he has put it, he demonstrates that ‘‘there is a gap between formal and actual practice, between the rules and the way they are applied.’’ What emerges is a powerful vision of people trapped by the ramifications and unanticipated consequences of their own social institutions." - Andrew Tudor (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 2000)

“A leading exponent of Direct Cinema. Most of his documentaries are made for National Educational Television (NET). His method is to enter various institutions with his hand-held camera and shoot a vast amount of footage over a long period. He then edits it dispassionately, being careful not to give special weight to any particular scene in case it makes a subjective point. The films are shown without narration or music. The results are often fascinating eavesdroppings on institutions… but which cry out for some editorial comment.” - Ronald Bergan (A-Z of Movie Directors, 1983)

"His minimalism is decent, but puritanical and repressed. It does nothing to prohibit the power of atmosphere and experience in his films. His loyalty to bureaucracy is as great as Kafka’s, but Wiseman has so purged himself of his own reactions that he sometimes makes what seem like unattended films, sustained by the listless momentum of the system and the demoralized complicity of all of us who are involved in it. Shy of ideological commitment and formal construct, and alarmed at the prospect of his own anger or dismay, Wiseman often seems as meek as the animals who engage his sensibility most strongly—in Primate and Meat." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2010)

"Arguably the greatest documentary maker in America, Frederick Wiseman's work comes with no added ingredients. No narration, no music, no inter-titles, no obvious narrative devices. With his unflinching eye and hand-held camera, the director seems to present us with raw, unmediated and bruising reality in the tradition of Direct Cinema. But this is only an appearance. As Wiseman is the first to point out, there's little vérité in his cinema, which is both highly selected and subjective." - Lloyd Hughes (The Rough Guide to Film, 2007)