Submarina: If I were a rich man

"Is considered by historians to be the first non-fiction theatrical feature to chronicle "regular" people going about their ordinary lives. "

"The whole film hangs on Paul," says Albert Maysles.

"To me, Salesman is a movie about failure," says Lilian Brennan, a retired Arlington, Massachusetts, secretary who divorced Paul Brennan decades ago because then he was an alcoholic. "Paul had a very good personality. He was intelligent. But it was one job after another. At the end of the movie, he gives up on his selling. That's the story of his life."

"If a guy's not a success, he's got nobody to blame but himself. What everybody's got to do is to quit making alibis and excuses and accept responsibility if a success or failure."

Cómo no sentirnos hartos de estar viendo puertas cerrándose y cuartos de hotel. Por un momento, parece que viviéramos la vida de estos vendedores.

El Direct Cinema partía de una cámara que está, sin interactuar, que observa y poco a poco se va metiendo en la vida de estos personajes. Es una cámara silenciosa y discreta, cuyo gran mérito (en parte) es entrar a habitaciones de hotel, y volverse parte, y a su vez invisible y capturar lo que pase.

Since there is no external narrator and little forward movement, the interest has to be taken up by the characters themselves. The film must be flat unless the camera finds someone who has the quirks and contradictions to hold our attention.

(...) The narrator is present through the work of editing and arranging..

Que quede claro que no vemos la vida de los vendedores de todo Estados Unidos. Estamos viendo a cuatro personajes, de los cientos que existen vendiendo de puerta en puerta. Y a uno en partícular, desajustado, que sin confesiones a la cámara ni una voz en off, sabemos (sentimos) que está desacomodado. Talvez, y viendo la cita de arriba, la más grande aportación de esta película puede ser abrir el panorama y la pantalla grande a individuos, que parecería que no destacan, sino que son individuos y encontrarle lo interesante e único a eso.

"The practice of documenting the activities of average people engaged in their everyday lives has become routine, even something of a cliché, in recent years. "

No, ni hay que pensarlo. Esto, no es el comienzo del reality.

Documentary Superstars: How Today's Filmmakers Are Reinventing the Form (link)

SALESMAN
BY TOBY MILLER

En ningún momento la cámara parece incomodar, pero estoy segura de que tuvo que haber sido molesta en algún momento a alguien, es gente normal y que derrepente abrían la puerta y se encontraban con un vendedor y una cámara. Me parecería un poco más direct que lo mostraran.

(...) the filmmakers ability to identify the real drama that is being played out gradually before their eyes - the weakness of one of the salesmen and his declining faith in his ability to clinch the deal - and their skill in bringing this often unspoken narrative drive visually to the forefront.

Ésto se rescata como escencial, haber encontrado, dentro de cuatro vendedores particulares, a un hombre, a quien se le está escapando la vida.

– find a lead, search for an opening, establish a rapport with the customer, and close the sale before they have time to even consider they have the option to say no. If you fail to make progress at any stage, it’s best to make an early exit and get on to a better prospect. Time is money.

Direct Cinema

From the beginning, direct cinema, was a documentary movement that prized a radical ideological stance in its output; though, as it turned out, different film-makers had conflicting opinions on how openly the camera's presence should be acknowledged in their pursuit of filmed truth. The Maysles were firmly in the fly-on-the-wall camp, and Salesman is a masterpiece of apparent unselfconsciousness on the part of its subjects. You get only the most fleeting glances at the camera - none of which come from its principal "characters". (Zwerin, the editor, expresses amazement on the audio commentary that the salesmen were so unaffected by the filming.)

La aparición e inmediata efervescencia del denominado cine directo a finales de los años 50 permanece como uno de los escasos puntos de inflexión en la historia del cine. Sus planteamientos eran de una filmación directa, no controlada, y espontánea de la realidad circundante.

La aparición de nuevos equipos técnicos (más ligeros y manejables) confluyen en una etapa única presidida por la reflexión constante sobre el propio fenómeno, las dificultades para reconocer el carácter subjetivo y manipulable de toda decisión más los complejos rasgos que esto implica (voyeurismo, dilemas éticos, construcción dramática, distanciamiento, captación de lo impredecible).

Direct Cinema is the result of two predominant and related factors--The desire for a new cinematic realism and the development of the equiment necessary to achieving that desire"^[2](Monaco 2003, p. 206) Many technological, ideological and social aspects contribute to the Direct Cinema movement and its place in the history of cinema.