[
CRAZY HORSE screens Saturday May 12th at 7:10 pm and Sunday May 13th at 8:30 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Adults only.]
Review by Pamela Zoslov
Frederick Wiseman,
who is now 82, has been making his own brand of documentary films
since 1967. A lawyer who became a filmmaker, he created a style
that has been called “observational cinema,” in which his camera
captures the daily life of an institution – a high school, a public
housing project, a battered women's shelter, a welfare office, a
racetrack and, in
TITICUT FOLLIES (1967),
Massachusetts' Bridgewater Hospital for the criminally insane. Wiseman rejects the term “cinema vérité” as pompous and meaningless. He
doesn't merely “hang around,” he says; he edits the hundreds of
hours of film he shoots rhythmically and meaningfully to tell a human
story.
Many
of the films are deeply moving, and in some cases, they have exposed
abuses and helped bring about reforms. TITICUT FOLLIES,
after being banned for many years, influenced the eventual closing of
Bridgewater. But not every subject is equally well served by
Wiseman's technique. In recent years, he has focused on lighter
subjects – a boxing gym, the American Ballet Theatre, the Paris
Opera Ballet and now, The Crazy Horse, the legendary Paris cabaret. CRAZY HORSE,
Wiseman's 39th
film, follows rehearsals, preparations and backstage activities in
preparation for the club's latest
nude dancing extravaganza, called Desir.
