Frederick Wiseman's The Store

Cinéma Vérité and a Department Store Christmas

Frederick Wiseman’s The Store (1983) is a documentary, hence my not including it in my Christmas movie round-up, yet somehow it perfectly captures the season for me. During the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas 1982, Wiseman was turned loose in Neiman Marcus’ flagship and offices in Dallas, filming both the public and private sides of the business.

Wiseman (who, at 93, just released his 50th documentary, the 4-hour-long Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros, about the legendary restaurant La Maison Troisgros) has spent his career largely documenting the American experience. Commonly described as having a “direct cinema” style, his films are experiential and observational. Direct cinema is “a cinematic practice employing lightweight portable filming equipment, hand-held cameras and live, synchronous sound that became available because of new, ground-breaking technologies developed in the early 1960s” and is “largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence.” He uses none of the tropes or methods of traditional documentary filmmaking—no on-camera interviews, music, captions, or voiceovers. Instead, he allows the experience of moving around and existing within an institution (as his films are almost always about institutions) to breed understanding and revelation. It’s important to note that Wiseman personally disowns “direct cinema” or cinéma vérité—instead viewing them as non-objective elaborations on a personal experience. According to Wiseman, “[My films are] based on unstaged, un-manipulated actions... The editing is highly manipulative and the shooting is highly manipulative... What you choose to shoot, the way you shoot it, the way you edit it and the way you structure it... all of those things... represent subjective choices that you have to make.” Though they lack a narrative arc, Wiseman edits the documentaries to have a dramatic structure—one not constructed from plot points but instead the drama is enfolded in each scene.