Perhaps the simplest way to gauge the nature of the current relationship between the worlds of film and politics is with an easy verbal test: Ask someone on the street to name the White House Chief of Staff. When the question proves too challenging, ask the same person to name a flabby, liberal documentary filmmaker.

A commentator with ample creativity and righteous fervor, but few tangible political qualifications, is now a subject, and not merely a stimulator, of heated national debate. The occupant of arguably the country’s most powerful appointed position—that being Andrew Card—is comparatively anonymous. For the first time in American history, the views of the men and women behind the camera, more than the actions of the men and occasional woman in front, have seized the public’s political consciousness.

A History of Cinéma Vérité

Michael Moore, of course, is not alone. The recently released conservative rejoinder, Celsius 41.11, Robert Greenwald’s Uncovered: The War on Iraq, and George Butler’s Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry have all thrown their support firmly behind one of the two major candidates in the upcoming presidential election. Political documentary filmmaking bears increasing resemblance to partisan advertising.

It hasn’t always been that way. Perhaps to the surprise of contemporary moviegoers, the modern political documentary is a branch of a tradition rooted in objectivity and artistic unobtrusiveness. That tradition is on display (alongside fictional feature films) at the Harvard Film Archive’s election prelude, entitled “Direct Democracy: The Presidential Election on Screen,” that began Oct. 14 and runs through Sunday, Oct. 17.

Robert Drew’s 1960 film Primary, which kicked off the HFA film series on Thursday, chronicles the efforts of John F. Kennedy ’40, who was also a Crimson editor, to defeat Hubert H. Humphrey for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. It is widely seen as the first foray into the politics of cinéma vérité (sometimes termed “direct cinema”), a subset of the documentary genre featuring factual portrayal of the subject’s activities, with minimal interference by the director.

Drew, a reporter for Life Magazine, theorized—while a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1955—about filmmaking that used candid footage to present news. Using the shoulder-held, synchronized-sound camera newly invented by his associates Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, he turned theoretical writing into 16mm film. Condensed to 26 minutes and relegated to local stations owned by the Time-Life corporation, Primary was a commercial flop, but its frank and intimate portrayal of political maneuvering and its use of new technology made cinematic history.

In addition to such accolades as the blue ribbon at the American Film Festival, Primary won Kennedy’s approval, and he invited cinéma vérité directly into the Oval Office. The result was the 1963 film, Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, which documented the federal government’s standoff with Alabama Governor George Wallace over educational integration. Few films since have chronicled presidential power with such immediacy—an immediacy too acute for the tastes of the New York Times editorial page, which lambasted Kennedy for making a mockery of the governing process.

Of course, not all political film-making of the past was characterized by such straightforward objectivity. The 1964 feature The Best Man, based on a stage play by Gore Vidal, resonates with today’s negative politics, as it dramatizes several candidates’ efforts to smear and outmaneuver their opponents behind the scenes of a political convention. Vidal criticized both ends of the political spectrum, basing her Machiavellian politicos on real-life figures ranging from Adlai Stevenson to Barry Goldwater.

Despite such exceptions, and despite the impossibility of again obtaining the unvarnished access to decision-makers that Crisis featured, the observational tradition of political cinéma vérité survived. Pennebaker, the former member of Drew’s team, directed the 1992 film The War Room, a character study of slogan-toting Democratic consultants James Carville and George Stephanopoulos and an analysis of the effects of their rapid response campaign strategy. The film plays this evening at HFA.

In 2000, Alexandra Pelosi’s Journeys With George persisted in this vein of candid impartiality, depicting then-presidential candidate George W. Bush as alternately savvy and befuddled and his horde of media followers as alternately hardy and sycophantic.

The Modern Move Towards Bias

But if the future president joking about margarita-loving reporters into a handheld digital camera is the essence of cinéma vérité, Michael Moore’s decision to hire an ice cream truck to drive in circles while he broadcasts the Patriot Act would seem to be a gaudy emblem of cinéma faux.