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00:21This is the story of a quest to capture reality.
00:28Of how filmmakers gained the freedom of movement, which allowed them to shoot real life on the
00:36hoof.
00:40It all happened in 1960, the dawn of a new era.
00:51Two teams of filmmakers, one in America and one in France, each developed a new camera.
01:01It was a real, real, real revolution.
01:07They shared the same dream of a camera that could capture life as they saw and heard it.
01:15In the history of storytelling, that never happened before.
01:20They changed the way we saw the world, factually, cinematically, and poetically.
01:29In 1960, that's when everything started.
01:43It started with a camera, and the camera changed the world.
02:12Richard Leacock is a giant of documentary filmmaking.
02:16His work spans its history.
02:26Today, he's 89.
02:29But in his youth, he helped invent a portable camera that sparked a revolution.
02:42The revolution happened in 1960, in France and in America, when a handful of filmmakers pioneered
02:53a new kind of documentary.
02:59They made it possible to simply pick up a camera and follow the action.
03:07They made it possible to record a person's voice in the moment.
03:16They wanted one thing, to capture the immediacy of life.
03:23I know that I was obsessed with it.
03:26I was looking for something that gave you the feeling of being there.
03:31In the 1950s, Leacock's dream was impossible to achieve.
03:36The problem was the equipment.
03:38Look, it's Alexander Palace here.
03:40Can you get the sound camera up from Plymouth to St Morgan?
03:44Now, we're going to send sound down from London.
03:46If it is, I'll tell these jacks to get a move on, will you?
03:50Cameras were designed for shooting drama in a studio.
03:54They were as heavy and cumbersome as a lawnmower, so needed the support of a tripod.
03:59And there they remained.
04:06BBC on Santosi calling Harrods. Hello, Harrods. Can you hear me?
04:10The sound gear was even heavier than the camera, needing two or more men to cart it around.
04:17The result was documentaries as stilted as the equipment.
04:22There's the country solicitor, the sort of man whose clients stop him in the street.
04:27I've got a bit of a problem with these coach parties coming past the farm and throwing their rubbish over
04:31the hedge.
04:32Come in and see me this afternoon at three o'clock and let's see what we can do.
04:36Much of Ukrainian folklore's quaint appeal is to be found in a favourite song of its peasant girls.
04:45My God.
04:48Leacock dreamt of following the action as it happened.
04:52But the bulky camera equipment of the 50s made this impossible.
04:57We didn't have the equipment. It didn't exist.
05:00It was hopeless.
05:05God help you if you had to boo.
05:16In 1958, a French filmmaker thought he'd found an ingenious way around the technical problems.
05:25Jean Rouche was France's leading ethnographer.
05:29I tried to make films about men.
05:32About the life of every day, of the small villages, where I spent weeks and weeks, months and months.
05:41In this way, I made a film, Moi et Noir.
05:47Today, it's Saturday.
05:49And on Saturday, even the maneuvers don't work.
05:52How are you going? It's going very well, my dear friend.
05:55And today, it's going well, I believe.
05:57Because the soil won't work on Saturday night.
06:01Moi et Noir follows the lives of immigrants living on the Ivory Coast.
06:07It seemed to capture the feeling of being there that Leacock and others were after.
06:17In the late 50s, Michel Brault was another cameraman desperate to revolutionize the documentary.
06:23Jean Rouche, he's a pioneer.
06:27I see Moi et Noir, and I'm in full discovery right now.
06:32You know what?
06:37You have to realize that filmmakers were longing to see people, their sound.
06:44Their sound of life, their language, their music, their rhythms.
06:53That was a very important goal.
07:04Moi et Noir is full of life in a way that was extraordinary for its time.
07:11Bourche achieved this by ignoring conventional camera technology.
07:16Instead of the bulky equipment used by professionals,
07:19he shot solo with a small, wind-up camera.
07:22The kind used by amateurs.
07:25I used only a very light camera.
07:28The 16mm Berenhaal.
07:32With his tiny handheld camera,
07:34Oosch could follow the action wherever it took him.
07:39But the wind-up device had serious drawbacks.
07:45You have to wind it.
07:47And the action is going on.
07:51Then you can shoot.
07:5220 seconds.
07:54That's it.
07:56The problem was that Bourche could only capture the world in 20-second chunks.
08:01And that wasn't all.
08:04It makes noise.
08:05Can you record my sound?
08:07Yes, you can, but you hear the camera running.
08:12Okay?
08:14Impossible.
08:14So you don't record sound at the same time as you record the camera.
08:22It has no sound.
08:25So the film was shot silent.
08:31It's soundtrack created after the film was edited.
08:36For me, it's only the same day that I'm happy.
08:40Outside of the same day, my whole life is broken.
08:45Oosch had brilliantly found a way around the limits of camera technology
08:49and made a classic film.
08:53But he knew that to really capture life on the hoof,
08:57he needed a different camera.
09:00One not yet invented.
09:18At the same time in America, by strange coincidence,
09:23another man was about to join the revolution.
09:28This is a head slate.
09:37Journalist Bob Drew was working as a picture editor for Life magazine,
09:41famous for its spontaneous photo essays.
09:51I worked with life photographers, and with them, we could go anywhere
09:56with that little camera, nobody would even see the camera.
09:59And we could record pictures that had emotion and power.
10:06In the 50s, Drew began wondering why these qualities were missing
10:10from documentary films.
10:13Documentaries couldn't record the kind of drama that we were getting
10:16to capture real life and convey it.
10:22Seeing opportunity, Drew came up with a blueprint for a new type of documentary,
10:27as dramatic as any fiction.
10:30It would be a theatre without actors.
10:34It would be plays without playwrights.
10:36It would be reporting without, uh, without summary and opinion.
10:42It would be, uh, it would be the ability to look in on people's lives at crucial times
10:48from which you could deduce certain things,
10:52and see a kind of proof that, uh, can only be gotten by personal experience.
10:59A film that will put across the feeling of what it was like to be there.
11:06Drew had ideas, but he was no filmmaker.
11:10To realize his ambitions,
11:13he knew he'd need to join forces with someone who was.
11:18I found Richard Leacock because I saw a film that he made on television.
11:24All right, uh, unloosen it right here.
11:25Take it off the bag.
11:26Take the bag off down here.
11:27Just pull it down on the sides.
11:28That's it.
11:31Leacock had made a film about a travelling tent theatre in Midwest America.
11:36It gave Drew the feeling of being there.
11:40The way the film was made, it made you feel like you were in a tent with the show.
11:45That really knocked me out.
11:47And we had drinks together.
11:50He came down and found me.
11:53Over drinks, Leacock came clean with Drew.
11:56The film's spontaneity was an illusion.
11:59One involving many months of filming.
12:03I managed to get a semblance of being there by cheating.
12:08And I cheated all over the place.
12:13Because of the heavy equipment,
12:16Leacock had carefully choreographed every shot.
12:22Drew wanted to capture real life as it happened.
12:25Leacock explained how it was impossible with the cameras of the time.
12:34I found out a couple of things.
12:36That anybody with ideas can't do anything.
12:40Because it was technically impossible.
12:47But Drew was a man who would not admit defeat.
12:51If no portable camera existed, he'd find a way to make one.
12:57The problem was, it was going to cost a bomb.
13:01I needed a million dollars to make the equipment smaller.
13:06Drew made Life Magazine a proposition.
13:09If they gave him the money to create a new camera,
13:12he'd make gripping films that would break into the lucrative television market.
13:18In 1958, Drew got his money.
13:22And that's how we finally got started.
13:38Ricky Leacock was quick to point Drew in the direction of a group of co-conspirators.
13:43Ricky was a kind of godfather.
13:47He...
13:49He helped guide me.
13:52The first person he led Drew to...
13:56was Don Pennybaker.
13:59Well...
13:59Oh.
14:01Here it is.
14:07These days, he's seen as a founding father of American documentaries.
14:12Wonderful.
14:14Back then, he was a 19-year-old engineering graduate, messing around with cameras.
14:23Oh, God, you see that case is in poor shape.
14:26OK, this is it.
14:27It's heavy.
14:28I haven't done this in so long.
14:35The equipment was still just old-fashioned equipment.
14:38Nobody had gotten the next step, but...
14:40Drew came in.
14:42He had the money.
14:44And that was interesting.
14:46From then on, it was really a do-or-die effort to get a camera that would work.
14:55There must have been a million dollars of that purchase order issued, and nobody was on to us, you know.
15:02There was a sense of, you know, I'll just do it if I want to.
15:09Work on the equipment began with a critical decision.
15:11To take an existing camera and adapt it to their purposes.
15:16The camera that we started with was the Oricon.
15:22The Oricon was the smallest camera available.
15:25But it was still too heavy, weighing over 30 pounds.
15:31The problem was, we had these Oricons, which meant to go on a tripod.
15:37They had a little hole underneath, and you put it on the head and you cranked it.
15:42And I could see that we were going to use tripods, ever.
15:46The tripod was something we didn't want to have anything to do with.
15:48Because you couldn't set them up.
15:50You couldn't carry them around.
15:51You couldn't deal with them.
15:54To get a camera they could carry, the Oricon would require brutal adjustments.
16:01He made the camera lighter by cutting off pieces of it and throwing it away.
16:09After months of ruthless adaptation, the camera had lost a third of its weight.
16:14It was now light enough to carry.
16:16But how?
16:18I drilled a hole in the front and threaded it, and we put that handle on the front of the
16:23camera.
16:24And that was it.
16:25When we did that, suddenly the whole thing became that, you know, the handle on the camera.
16:31I should have patented it right away, but I didn't know how to patent anything really.
16:34But that was the thing that changed the whole camera operation to everybody could put it on their shoulder.
16:43Here they are.
16:43Well, here's the camera.
16:51Always the handle, from the very start, so that we didn't put it on the tripod, we put it on
16:55our shoulder.
16:56But I just would hold the camera like this, and I learned by looking in the mirror and watching
17:03exactly how to hold it to know that I was getting you, or you, or you, you see.
17:09And that was very helpful in many instances.
17:11And getting it on your shoulder meant it was going to be steady, because as long as you could lock
17:15the camera against your cheek
17:16and support it with your shoulder, you could shoot anything.
17:21The Orkhan probably wouldn't recognise them, they'd probably disown them, actually.
17:26But, but they were, they worked.
17:29They worked, and they worked in ways that, that you could carry them around easily, it didn't look like much.
17:34You know, it still was a pretty good camera.
17:37Well.
17:44By early 1960, the team had transformed the Orkhan into the first professional, lightweight, hand-held camera.
17:52This is basically an Orkhan camera, which, which weighs at least a third, the Orkhan weighs at least a third
18:00more than this, maybe half again as much.
18:02And this one has been cut down.
18:05There's probably a hundred thousand dollars of special engineering in that camera alone.
18:13Drew and his team could now go out with their new camera.
18:19And if people moved, they could follow them.
18:23That camera took months and months to make.
18:26That camera made the revolution possible, but just barely.
18:40At exactly the same time in France, a small group of engineers were facing the same challenge.
18:56So, you know.
19:01You know.
19:02Jean-Pierre Beauviala has had a lifelong passion for hand-held cameras.
19:06He's one of the great technical innovators of camera history.
19:10You know, every time, TV, TV team are coming here.
19:15And they're asking, would you, would you sit, we prepared, you know, they had lamps, a stool.
19:25Please, sit on that stool.
19:27And the camera was there, and there, and the lamps, and all that stuff.
19:31And I said, you are doing that to me?
19:36You know.
19:39You are doing that to me?
19:46And I said, no, au revoir.
19:49And I left.
19:50And I left them with their cameras.
19:52And, you know.
19:54I invented, more or less, the more mobile camera in the world, through the shape of the camera, through the
20:03high tone code and all that.
20:04And they want me to be on a stool.
20:06Don't make this mistake.
20:10Yeah.
20:11I think so.
20:13If I remember.
20:16If I remember.
20:21France's legendary camera manufacturer, Eclair, employed Beauviala straight out of Engineering College.
20:31I think the film is in the reverse.
20:37He followed in the footsteps of another gifted camera inventor, Eclair's chief engineer, André Couton.
20:44In 1960, he was on the same quest as Bob Drew, but with one major difference.
20:50Instead of adapting an existing camera, Couton was making a new one from scratch.
20:56He was very smart.
20:58He was a very good listener to people's requests.
21:04Couton learned from listening to filmmakers that standard cameras were too noisy.
21:09The cause of this was the mechanical claw that pulled the film through the camera.
21:21The secret secret was in the claw movement.
21:25This claw must enter the perforation, pull down the film and then get out, you know, doing this.
21:33Down, out, up, in.
21:37Understood?
21:39And the way Eclair invented the silent, the quietness, is that while you are entering the perforation, you are slightly
21:52gliding.
21:52You are not going this, boom, noise.
21:58Noise, noise, noise, like in all other cameras.
22:03He was landing like this.
22:08The claw.
22:12Okay, down, in, up, out.
22:19Like this.
22:21So you only have this nice gliding noise which is virtually noiseless.
22:28Voilà .
22:30It was a real, real, real revolution.
22:34Real revolution.
22:38The change to this tiny part of the camera was an engineering masterstroke.
22:45It would become the foundation for a completely new camera.
22:50The prototype was designed for carrying around and weighed a mere four pounds.
22:57This was a major step in the camera revolution.
23:01Portability, instant magazine, viewfinder, position on the shoulder.
23:06But the revolution was the quietness of the machine.
23:21Back in America, Drew was under pressure.
23:26In 1960, having spent vast sums of life's money, it was time to deliver a film.
23:34I had to find a story.
23:36But finding stories was my job at life.
23:39I knew how to do that.
23:40And I looked at the country and I looked at what was going on and what the stories were.
23:45And I liked this young senator who was running an impossible race for the presidency.
23:54I said, we won't ask you to do anything.
23:57We won't write it.
23:58We won't interview you.
24:00But you'll have to let the camera be with you all day long, every day.
24:04And you can't think about the camera.
24:07You can't worry about when it's on and off.
24:10Just forget it.
24:11He thought that over for a while.
24:13And he said, are you out to get me?
24:17And I said, no.
24:19He said, if I don't call you tomorrow, we're on.
24:22He didn't call me.
24:24We went to Wisconsin and made primary.
24:27Because he's got what all the rest lacks.
24:30Everyone wants to back the doctor.
24:34Back him on the right track.
24:35Primary follows the story of a young senator's campaign to win the Wisconsin Democratic primary.
24:41The first stage of the race for the presidency.
24:45The candidate was John F. Kennedy.
24:48A millionaire outsider from the East Coast.
24:55Drew's team were about to make filmmaking history.
25:04You're having a wonderful time.
25:11Primary was filmed in just four days with four two-man crews.
25:16Ricky was shooting with the new camera that had been silenced and made smaller and so forth.
25:22I'm Richard Leacock.
25:24This camera is as light, quiet and portable as we can make it.
25:29Drew was recording sound with an early portable recorder.
25:34Another young filmmaker, Albert Maisels, had joined the team.
25:41Like Penny Baker, he would become one of the great documentary cameramen of his time.
25:47Penny Baker, Leacock and Drew are about to do something revolutionary in filmmaking.
25:53And it would be great if I came on board.
25:56Penny Baker and Maisels were shooting with air flexes.
25:59Just regular cameras.
26:01They made a racket.
26:03We had Terry Philgate, who was terrific.
26:06The final man to join was Terry McCartney Philgate, an ace cameraman from the Canadian Film Board.
26:13So I was fortunate to have really good cameramen who were gung-ho.
26:27There was just one rule.
26:30Follow the unfolding action.
26:32That meant no tripods.
26:36If someone moved, the camera would go with them.
26:49When you see Primary, you feel that you're in the shoes of JFK, Jackie.
26:55The films had such a sense of freedom, being in a real place with real people.
27:00We weren't directing people.
27:02They were doing it for a huge audience and we just were getting what the audience got.
27:06That was very exciting.
27:10I was really able to get close to Jackie.
27:14And I walk around back and get her hands which were going like this.
27:19Because it was the only thing by which you knew that she was nervous.
27:25You try to be witness to all of the driving forces of a story.
27:30So that later when you edit it and put it together, you have the material.
27:34That's just like the material you'd have from actors if you were doing it with actors.
27:38It's no different really.
27:42Like in that wonderful scene where I held the camera from up high down onto the back of Kennedy's head.
27:52One of the most remarkable shots in Primary shows the power of the approach that Drew and his team were
27:57pioneering.
28:01This 85 second shot reveals Kennedy's star power.
28:23This could never have been understood without seeing it in real time, as it happened.
28:33Up to now, all presidents were old farts.
28:37And suddenly here's a young guy who might be president.
28:41That was sort of interesting.
28:45You kind of wanted to hear him and see him as a person and not as a sort of a
28:51public aperture.
28:55It was the newly adapted Orican used by Leacock with Drew recording dialogue that really went beyond the public figure
29:02to reveal Kennedy, the man.
29:06There's Ricky.
29:08Get him.
29:10That's my little Ricky poos with his big ears.
29:14OK, on we go.
29:15Yeah.
29:20In this scene, the Orican faced its first test.
29:24In the middle of the first day, John Kennedy jumped out of the car, ran into a photographer's studio, and
29:32sat down and posed for a photographer.
29:35Ricky and I were right with him.
29:38We went through the doorway, shot everything that happened, and we stopped and looked at each other and grinned.
29:43And this was the first time.
29:47This was what we dreamed of forever.
29:50Not time to smile yet, brother.
29:53It was the feeling of being there.
29:56It wasn't telling you what it was, it was just showing it.
30:00It was the first moment when we really fastened on a character, went through a doorway, into a room, shot
30:07what happened, came back out.
30:09It exercised all the difficult things to be done, to shoot, and it worked.
30:21It was with the Orican that Leacock captured one of the film's most powerful moments.
30:26On the last day of filming, his camera was in Kennedy's private suite, as he awaited the final result.
30:33One question.
30:35What did Nixon do in the fourth and fifth?
30:37In the fourth and fifth, give me Nixon.
30:40Leacock got the whole thing.
30:43There's the microphone.
30:45And you see it in the ashtray.
31:06The ninth is gone.
31:10The third, we have a chance in.
31:14But just a chance, it really depends on the cross.
31:18The tenth, we have a chance in.
31:20Yes, sir.
31:22Just a chance.
31:23The seventh?
31:25Yeah, I guess the...
31:26Hi.
31:27Hi.
31:30How are you?
31:31Good to see you.
31:33Well, we'll see what happens.
31:358.7 for Jack, 92 for Humphrey.
31:3820 and a half to 10 and a half would be a 2 to 1 victory for Jack on Delegant.
31:44It would be a great victory, actually.
31:46It would be a great victory for people.
31:47Everyone wants to win, win, win, win.
31:52Kennedy won the Wisconsin primary and moved on, taking his campaign to other states.
32:00But Drew and his team were going nowhere.
32:06As they began cutting their material in a makeshift edit suite, their problems had only just begun.
32:14Watching their footage, they feared their new method had failed to deliver a film.
32:20None of the sound recorded by Drew matched the images they'd shot.
32:25All of the stuff that Drew had done on his tape recorder, none of it was in sync.
32:31The problem was that Drew's tape recorder ran at a different speed to Leacock's adapted Oricon.
32:36This meant that all the voices, though recorded, weren't perfectly synchronised with the pictures.
32:42He shall determine what shall be our policy on Berlin.
32:46He shall determine whether we shall...
32:47Even the slightest breakdown in sync is painfully obvious on the screen.
32:52And I run for the presidency, because like you, I have strong ideas about what this country must do.
32:58A huge job now faced the team.
33:01Every spoken word had to be synchronised to the image of the person speaking.
33:07I had to set up the way of getting it to be able to be in sync.
33:11So I had to set up this transfer arrangement in this hotel room.
33:17Penny Baker devised a machine that would adjust the speed of the sound to lock it in sync with the
33:22pictures.
33:24He sat there for weeks turning that crank.
33:27With all of us behind him saying,
33:29No, turn it to the left. No, turn it to the right. Turn it faster.
33:33The problem was that it could vary.
33:37It could go in and out and you couldn't keep track of it.
33:41So it would drive you nuts.
33:42But we all sat there and made one for all of us.
33:46Even for Al, who never edits.
33:48Al just grinds it through and looks at it over and over again.
33:53Editing is not interesting to him.
33:56Every night we'd collapse on the floor of the hotel without even getting into bed, without even getting undressed, you
34:03know.
34:04For Drew, the pressure to overcome the technical problems was intense.
34:10About three weeks into the editing, I went blind.
34:15I couldn't see.
34:17My angels had to lead me around to a chair and so forth.
34:21And I thought, well, it's finally happened, you know.
34:24I finally broke under the strain.
34:27Well, it turned out I'd broken for a day.
34:29I got my sight back the next day.
34:32He shall determine what shall be our policy on...
34:34After weeks of work, they managed to sync up people's voices.
34:39But some scenes escaped them.
34:41And I run for the presidency.
34:42In primary, you'll see some scenes that are out of sync.
34:46Now, anybody I didn't get, because I guess we're late.
34:50You can hear that thing straining to get voice into sync.
34:55That's because we were just too tired to synchronize that last scene.
35:03Anyway, we were able to synchronize enough to make a primary.
35:10While Kennedy went on to make history, documentaries would never be the same again.
35:27Leacock, with an adapted Orican on his shoulder, had given birth to the Fly on the Wall documentary.
35:40That was April 1960, in Wisconsin.
35:45But in May, in Paris, another new camera was about to turn over.
36:00A bunch of intellectuals and filmmakers were soon to embark on a major film production.
36:09The director was France's most famous ethnographic filmmaker, Jean Rouche.
36:15The man behind the groundbreaking Moi Noir.
36:18Last spring, one of my friends asked me a very embarrassing question.
36:24He said, why are you always making films in Africa?
36:29Maybe we can try to make another film here in Paris.
36:33An anthropological film in Paris, in the Paris jungle.
36:39Savage people in Paris.
36:49Chronique d'Anete was an experiment in documentary filmmaking that set out to explore the lives of ordinary Parisians and
36:55follow them over a summer.
36:59It was a collaborative effort.
37:03Marceline Laurida-Yvennes was one of the film's protagonists.
37:06She also helped out behind the scenes.
37:09She also helped out behind the scenes.
37:10There was a lot of courage to go down the street and realize people who lived their lives.
37:19I was both an assistant on this film and also a protagonist.
37:27At the start of filming, they shot with a standard camera that weighed over 40 pounds.
37:33Too heavy to carry, it had to be put on a tripod.
37:39Houche soon became frustrated by a familiar problem.
37:42The restrictive and bulky equipment.
38:01A few weeks into the shoot, Houche got a message from Eclair's chief engineer, André Couton.
38:10He had just produced a prototype for a new kind of camera.
38:13It was portable, and it was silent.
38:18Would Houche like to try it on Chronique d'Anete?
38:22All of a sudden, the arrival of the camera was clear.
38:26It made the cinema much easier.
38:29It made a style of images, of sequence, of freedom, of walking the street.
38:37But Houche needed a cameraman equally obsessed with hand-held cameras.
38:46A man like Michel Brault.
38:50I asked Michel Brault to come to Paris to try to experiment together
38:57the problem of shooting and shooting with a portable camera.
39:03So...
39:04I go...
39:05As fast as I can, I'm there.
39:08I arrive in Paris,
39:10and Jean puts in my hand
39:14a camera designed by André Couton from the Maison Eclair.
39:22First camera that I have in my hands that can shoot out in the open
39:30without a tripod, and it's light, it's silent.
39:37It's silent.
39:38With Couton's prototype, Brault's hand-held skills,
39:41and Houche's desire to experiment,
39:44the camera moved from the dinner table into the streets.
39:50What was exciting is that we could finally shoot in the streets,
39:55in the houses,
39:57without bringing a huge camera.
40:00There's no difference between life and shooting.
40:06There's no difference between people.
40:07One of the first to see the impact of this hand-held style
40:10was the film's editor, Nena Baratier.
40:14Jean Rouche a fait venir Michel Brault
40:17because he was attached to the person who filmed,
40:21the most close to the people who filmed.
40:24He had a souplesse, even in his face, in his body.
40:29He wanted to attach to the people.
40:33All the hand-held materials were shot by me.
40:43Having the camera on the shoulder and walking with that,
40:48like a tiger, you know?
40:49There is a special dance, you know?
40:52You have to put your legs like this.
40:58That is the trick.
41:05You cannot walk like that, you know?
41:10You didn't do that?
41:12He had to invent the dance with the camera, with the cat.
41:20C'est ça l'événement.
41:21C'est la première fois qu'avec sa caméra,
41:24on a filmé l'intimité.
41:26PHONE RINGS
41:31Brault filmed a factory worker as he wakes
41:33and has brought breakfast by his mum.
41:39Capturing a tender moment in everyday life.
41:46Jean wanted the camera to see the people,
41:49the French people, in their homes.
41:55They were able to express it for the first time.
42:03It's all these new techniques that made it possible
42:08to go behind the official aspect of the people.
42:19The French fell in love with having the freedom to follow real life.
42:25But as the camera developed,
42:27Rouche wanted to push its role further.
42:32In one scene, he asked Nadine Ballot and Marceline
42:36to collude with the camera to ambush reality.
42:42Madame, s'il vous plaît.
42:43Je pratique déjà beaucoup, alors là .
42:45Est-ce que vous êtes heureux, monsieur ?
42:47Bon, ne parlez pas tout ça.
42:48Si vous prenez des cartes...
42:50Wesh.
42:50Non, non, qu'une philosophie.
42:51Oh là là , non.
42:52Je ne suis pas à dire ça.
42:56Parce que moi, j'ai revu Chroniques d'un été,
42:58je suis donc allée au Forum des Images pour le revoir.
43:02Tu étais là , plantée,
43:04sur tes jolies jambes, avec des talons et tout ça, magnifique,
43:07avec ton grand cou, c'est belle comme tout d'ailleurs.
43:10Et alors, t'avais...
43:11Alors, monsieur, est-ce que vous êtes heureux ?
43:12Monsieur, s'il vous plaît, êtes-vous heureux ?
43:15Il m'a dit, qu'est-ce que ça peut vous foutre ?
43:18Il y a un type qui te répond,
43:20Oh, foutez-moi la paix avec ça.
43:22Toi, tu ne te l'as pas du tout laissé intimider.
43:26Alors que moi, j'étais désespérée en me disant,
43:28Oh là là , quelle horreur !
43:30S'il vous plaît, êtes-vous heureux ?
43:34N'ayez pas peur, on ne veut pas vous faire de mal.
43:37Oui.
43:39Et toi, perturbable, tu faisais parler des gens.
43:42Heureuse de vivre, malgré que j'ai 60 ans.
43:45C'est 60 ans ?
43:46Oui, et que je fais 20 kilomètres tous les jours pour venir travailler à Paris.
43:49C'est pas vrai.
43:51Ce film a joué un rôle dans nos vies.
43:54On était innocents, on ne savait rien du cinéma.
44:01Les documentaires avant, c'était extérieur.
44:04Le réalisateur et l'opérateur étaient toujours extérieurs au sujet.
44:10Là , ils étaient en communion.
44:12C'est ça la grande différence, à mon avis.
44:15Bon, alors, la question c'est de savoir si on a trouvé quelque chose,
44:20si on a découvert quelque chose autour du...
44:23Enfin, de vérité.
44:24Sans doute des petits moments de vérité.
44:27C'est-Ã -dire que...
44:27C'est-Ã -dire ?
44:29C'est-Ã -dire ?
44:32C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:08C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:17C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:25C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:26C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:27C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:28C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:48C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:57C'est-Ã -dire ?
45:59C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:13C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:29C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:30C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:31C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:33C'est-Ã -dire ?
46:34the Nagra. Stefan Kudelski is one of the best engineer I have ever met. Being in
46:48optic, mechanical, design, he is really a genius, Stefan Kudelski. And we fell in
46:57love with each other, you know. He was a real master. Kudelski's genius was to discover that the answer to
47:07synchronous sound lay in clocks.
47:18That is the first time this lady is wearing a longine.
47:24Inside this watch is a quartz crystal. It emits a precise electrical pulse, the most accurate in the world.
47:34This was the secret to the Nagra's precision. It too had a quartz crystal controlling its motor, making it as
47:43reliable as the camera.
47:46And the crystal is the reference, you know, the crystal beats at a very, very high precision. So it means
47:52that after 10 minutes, you have the same signal in the camera and in the recorder. Simple.
48:04In late 1960, the Americans took delivery of their first Nagra.
48:09My doggy.
48:12Now they were armed with a new handheld camera. With a Nagra recording sound in sync with it, nothing could
48:19stop the revolution.
48:25One of the first films on which they used this combination was Yankee Nub.
48:34Filmed after Castro had swept to power in Cuba, Drew and his team went to document the political and social
48:40turmoil erupting in Latin America.
48:52There was one wonderful moment when there was a big meeting. Everybody from all the various states was there.
49:02This tense meeting between the US and Latin American states was filmed by Leacock and recorded by Drew.
49:11There was the American Secretary of State.
49:14Can you hear me now?
49:16And Raul Roa, Cuban emissary at the UN.
49:21I rejected completely and utterly the allegations made in this resolution by the Cuban government.
49:29I'm going to say no more and we will be glad to have the vote taken on this resolution.
49:39There came this fantastic moment and the entire Cuban delegation got up and walked out.
49:48And Ricky with his camera walked right out with him.
49:52So we got them walking in the streets singing and going down.
50:05And all the others, you could see them all with their big tripods.
50:09They couldn't move.
50:18That's what you could do with a camera that you could carry.
50:21That's what you could do with a camera that you could carry.
50:36How did you do with my Google?
50:39In their films you hear real voices as you watch the unfolding stories.
50:52They followed the drama of a lawyer's fight to save a man facing death by electric chair.
50:58the second doctor and the third doctor they proceed around and then they give you your
51:02findings you turn to them all three agree you walk out and pronounce the man as he said to
51:10the five victims of snow were bashed in i'm sorry i treated you my former employees that way we got
51:19to make interesting films we got to prove a lot of our points they captured the extreme reaction
51:26to the desegregation of white schools in the deep south we feel that this is a communist
51:32front movement pushing these colored people to try and destroy our nation
51:52that's what they are niggas
51:59they are the white people they are the negroes and i mean he said negroes and i would have been
52:04he
52:04might have said niggas it's the most frightening situation i've ever been in
52:11the crowd is after you it was scary as hell the films reveal pivotal moments of american history
52:23but for the television networks they seemed shockingly raw
52:30it was like what we were doing was some sort of thievery that it wasn't really television and we
52:36were pretending it was or something i i don't know what they really thought we were never accepted by
52:40television in america none of our stuff was sold it turned out that the networks
52:49were never going to be able to make these films like these i wanted it to be total theater and
52:55tv was
52:56never going to go that way tv was just going to sell soap as fast as it could
53:04in 1963 drew gained unrivaled access to the most famous man in america
53:12but the television networks still weren't interested
53:16one of them said you've got some good footage there bob
53:20and without a narration and a correspondent they didn't see the story
53:26they didn't want to have any part of it they didn't even want to see us
53:30they wanted to be as far away from it as they could get
53:40in 1963 drew and his original team of filmmakers went their separate ways
53:47their ambitions too big for television
54:03in france it was a different story
54:09at eclair the prototype evolved into a fully developed professional camera made by engineers
54:16for the mass market in 1963 it was released with huge success as the eclair npr
54:28so that's the clear that made most of the cinema in the world was a very popular camera i even
54:37think
54:37that for one year it was the biggest exportation of france
54:44because item of exportation in france
54:48we conquered the whole world with this
54:55by the end of the 60s the eclair was the world's most popular handheld camera
55:01the orican remained the tool of a handful of art house documentary filmmakers
55:07but the eclair conquered the world
55:09but i think there are other reasons for being happy in life than making cameras
55:18so modestie, modestie
55:21well
55:25well
55:26well
55:29well
55:37well
55:38well
55:39saying
55:39i'm not the medicine
55:40i'm on the paid man
55:41thinking about this government
55:42a man in a trench coat
55:44franchise laid off
55:45says he's got a bad call
55:47wants to get it paid off
55:48but you're going to be a good
55:49boviala may caution modesty
55:51but since the invention of the hand-held camera
55:54the world has never looked the same
55:56wearing a man in a huge scheme camera
55:58in safety
55:58we still were a rich man
56:00we have a good idea
56:02the camera changed the world
56:03but it wasn't really the camera
56:05It was the idea that changed the world.
56:18From the 60s onwards, the handheld camera became witness to a rapidly changing world,
56:25capturing history as it happened.
56:28We could see the people running everywhere. It was fantastic.
56:34Documentaries could now take their audiences into places that were previously inaccessible.
56:41You can see them because I filmed it.
56:45That never happened before.
56:47In the history of whatever it is, of storytelling, that was never possible before.
56:55That's something so amazing that that should take place.
56:59I feel lucky to have lived during that period.
57:04Don Pennybaker and Al Maisels went on to make classic cinema documentaries.
57:13Drew, Leacock, Roo and Roush also went on to make films, each true to the spirit of their early ambitions.
57:28The handheld camera gave us a window on the world.
57:34But it would also give us something else.
57:39As time went on, this window on the world became our window on the past.
57:50And it would also give us a chance to see the camera, the camera, to be immortalized, to be able
57:58to preserve all these rare moments and that they could disappear.
58:18When I've looked at these films so many times, it's just part of my life.
58:44We get a glimpse of Harold Bame's Britain on Film here on BBC4 tomorrow at half past eight.
58:50And coming up this evening, we explore the lost world of Mitchell and Kenyon next.
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