“In feature films, the director is God,” Alfred Hitchcock once quipped. “In documentary films, God is the director.” By this relatively narrow definition, the contemporary political non-fiction films that have been labeled documentaries are really more akin to feature films—Moore’s recitation from his commandeered ice cream truck, after all, easily qualifies as directorial lording.

Hitchcock need not be taken at its word, though. At its inception, documentary was a French term referring to any film with a factual subject, including instructional videos or promotional material.

John Grierson, whose monograph First Principles of Documentary set forth some of the genre’s initial conventions, took a more humanistic view than Hitchcock. He once stated: “In documentary we deal with the actual, and in one sense with the real. But the really real…is something deeper than that. The only reality which counts in the end is the interpretation which is profound.”

In this sense, Grierson, who believed in the use of “cinema as a pulpit,” is something of an ally of Moore, Greenwald, and their fellow partisan filmmakers. They, too, hold interpretation—the conclusions drawn by viewers—to be primary. But do these political films meet Grierson’s threshold test of “profound” interpretation? Do viewers of partisan films draw deep conclusions, or even alter in any way the convictions they held when they entered the theater?

Steven T.J. Ahn ’07, a Pennsylvania resident who describes himself as politically apathetic, notes that partisanship can energize partisans but might do little else.

“All of my Democratic and Republican friends saw Fahrenheit 9/11,” he says. “My Democratic friends were like, ‘This is so true,’ and my Republican friends were like, ‘This is horse shit.’ But both realized it was biased.”

Ross McElwee, Professor of the Practice of Filmmaking, is also skeptical that recent films will affect the election’s outcome.

“I do think this year has given us a bumper crop of political documentaries which have heightened public awareness of issues and candidates,” says McElwee. “But it remains to be seen whether or not they can be said to have registered in any significant way on the public consciousness.”

Noting the absence of empirical evidence, McElwee says, “Certainly Fahrenheit 9/11 has gained wider theatrical distribution than any documentary in history, but do we really think Republican voters are wandering into the theaters where it is playing and suddenly changing their minds about President Bush? Somehow, I doubt it.”

He adds, “It is possible that Moore’s film may have had some kind of effect on swaying independent and undecided voters, but again, without doing movie theater exit polls, how can we tell?”

The only film that could be considered to have swayed a vote, McElwee notes, was Peter Davis’ 1974 anti-Vietnam polemic Hearts and Minds, which fueled the anti-war movement before that year’s Congressional midterm elections.

Associate Professor of Government Barry Burden focuses on the more investigative function of recent films. “In revealing truths that were previously hidden from the public,” he says, “a documentary is performing a similar function to All the President’s Men”—the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward detailing the Watergate scandal that later became an award-winning movie.

Both McElwee and Burden agree, though, that the partisans’ position outside the more traditional sphere of documentary is not especially relevant. A director with an “axe to grind” is not necessary, says Burden, but it is not a disqualifying characteristic either, as “no documentary is completely impartial since it must present a limited set of facts.”

“Personally authored, highly biased documentaries, such as Fahrenheit 9/11 … deserve their place in the landscape of documentary filmmaking,” says McElwee.

Likening the array of political films to a “motion picture media bouillabaisse being offered up to the American public,” McElwee observes that the problem of “real documentary” is increasingly irrelevant.

“The really exciting thing about documentary filmmaking now is that there is such a plethora of styles, forms, approaches to making them,” says McElwee. “All the rules have been broken, and the doors have been flung wide open.”