Frederick Wiseman Movies

One of America's most respected documentary filmmakers, Frederick Wiseman, presents a glimpse into the inner workings of a respected ballet company in 2009's La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet. Wiseman and his camera crew traveled to France and watched from the sidelines as the company's choreographers and dancers (among them Emilie Cosette, Aurelie Dupont, Marie-Agnes Gillot, Benjamin Pech, Laetitia Pujol and Wilfried Romoli) worked out the details of the major pieces for their 2008 program. In addition to the dancers honing their craft, Wiseman trains his eye on the people backstage who help make the ballet a reality, from the artistic directors and financiers who raise the funds to pay for the production to the stage crew who build the sets and the cleaning crew who sweeps up after the show. La Danse was Wiseman's second film about classical dance, after 1995's Ballet (which documented a year in the life of the American Ballet Theater); it received its North American premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman makes his second fictional feature with La Dernière Lettre (The Last Letter). Anna Semyonova (Catherine Samie) is locked up in an occupied Ukrainian ghetto in 1941. Adapted from Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate, the film consists of the woman reciting a monologue of the final letter she wrote to her son before the Nazis came for her. Shot in black-and-white, the only other characters in this film are the shadows on the wall. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Frederick Wiseman, one of the giants of American documentary filmmaking, spent a month in the fall of 1996 shooting 110 hours of footage of life in a small New England town, and this four-hour-and-eight-minute feature was the result. As is his custom, Wiseman has added no narration or explanatory titles and prevents his camera from intruding any more than is necessary; the result is a lively and direct look at how a community functions. The city of Belfast, Maine has suffered an economic downturn in recent years, and the town is gearing up for a new business (a credit card collection facility) that it hopes will give the local economy a boost. In the meantime, the people of Belfast go on with their lives, trapping lobsters, canning fish, making doughnuts, teaching school, handling court cases, helping the poor and indigent, staging a local production of Death of a Salesman, celebrating holidays, and trying to make the most of their evenings and weekends. Belfast, Maine enjoyed an enthusiastic response in its screening at the 1999 Montreal Film Festival and was scheduled for broadcast on PBS early in 2000. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Frederick Wiseman was allowed to make the first documentary about La Comedie-Francaise, the French national theater and the oldest continuous repertory company in the world, founded in Paris in the late 17th Century. In the company's prehistory, the Illustre Theatre was co-founded by Paris-born upholsterer's son Moliere (1622-73) in 1643. Moliere's company left to tour the provinces in 1645, and when they returned to Paris in 1658, the king granted a theater in the Louvre, the Theatre du Petit-Bourbon. This troupe became the core for the union of several companies into a new theater, officially titled Comedie-Francaise in 1681.

For this 1996 documentary, Frederick Wiseman had a backstage pass allowing unprecedented access. For the first time, a filmmaker was allowed to explore the art, commerce and all other aspects of this great theater as the company prepared for four plays during the winter of 1994-95. Wiseman spent 11 weeks filming actors, stagehands, administrative meetings, casting, set and costume design, rehearsals and performances of four classic French plays by Moliere (Dom Juan), Racine (La Thebaide), Marivaux (La Double Inconstance), and Feydeau (Occupe-toi d'Amelie). Opening and closing scenes show the troupe's traditional celebration of Moliere's birthday, and another birthday party is held for a 100-year-old actress who says the Comedie-Francaise "was like a religion to us."

The camera pokes into box office and boardroom, costume and scene shops, the rehearsal hall, and the wigmaster's area, observing the minutiae behind the magic -- a technician worrying about a mask's movable jaw, someone stringing beads, actors applying makeup at dressing-room mirrors, an actress pleading for financial aid for retirees, talk of funding cuts and budget problems, set construction, a seamstress working on costumes, actors and their director discussing Marivaux's intentions with La Double Inconstance, administrators plotting negotiation strategies for dealing with the stagehands' union, and theatergoers standing in ticket lines. These lengthy, non-narrated sequences are intercut with exterior shots of the theater, excursions through the streets of Paris, and sunsets seen from other Paris locations. In French with subtitles. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

In High School (1969), Frederick Wiseman observed conflicts in the minefield of a lower-middle-class secondary school where administrators and teachers were more concerned with discipline than stretching minds. For a follow-up 25 years later with High School II (1994), Wiseman visited New York's Spanish Harlem where he took his camera into classrooms at Central Park East Secondary School [CPESS], a successful alternative high school with a predominantly black and Hispanic student body. Between 85% to 95% of CPESS graduates attend four-year colleges. With small classes and successful student/teacher interaction, CPESS encourages students to discuss, debate, and think for themselves. The CPESS approach to learning is revealed in their outline known as "Habits of Mind" (weighing evidence, considering multiple viewpoints, making connections and relationships, extrapolating possibilities, and assessing values). This portrait of daily life in the CPESS corridors and classrooms shows faculty meetings; teen parents; sex education; science and humanities activities; political organizers; student council meetings; family conferences; debates on class, gender, and racial frictions; students resolving conflicts; and students being asked to provide more evidence, extend statements, and add details. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Anyone who has imagined that poverty is a "solved" problem of minor importance will get an eye-opener in this documentary, which follows a plucky but desperately poor family in rural Virginia. Though the husband works, he earns below minimum wage, and his job is not full-time. The wife laboriously grows food on their small family farm to stretch his earnings, despite the fact that poor health (a cancer diagnosis) drove her from her paying job. The rules for welfare assistance are such that this family does not qualify, and they have completely fallen through the cracks in the relatively generous "social safety net" that existed before the so-called "welfare reform" measures of the late 1990s were passed. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This documentary received both the "L'Age d'Or" award from Belgium's Royal Film Archive and the Berlin Film Festival's "International Critics Prize." A six-hour chronicle of the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital, it focuses on families, patients, doctors, nurses, religious advisors, and hospital staffers confronting personal, ethical, medical, psychological, religious and legal issues about death and the decisions that must be made about continuing the life-sustaining treatment of dying patients. Janet Maslin (New York Times) wrote that "the film has time to carry its audience from an initially raw emotional response to a calmer consideration of the difficult issues raised here, and finally on to some sort of resolution." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Who presses the button? To show those at the controls of America's nuclear arsenal, famed filmmaker Frederick Wiseman made this 1987 documentary at the 4315th Training Squadron of the Strategic Air Command at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. Air Force officers are shown in training to man the Launch Control Centers for the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The film follows trainees through various stages of this training, to graduation and assignments as Launch Control Center staffers. In addition to discussions on the moral and military issues of nuclear war, the film features plans against terrorist attacks; emergency procedures; tutorial sessions; codes and communications; staff meetings; and the arming and targeting of missiles. The film introduces the viewer to the sincere, intelligent, well-trained men and women who are trusted with the responsibility for methodically and calmly carrying forth any orders they receive for the destruction of civilization. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

The School for the Deaf at the Alabama Institute is organized around a belief in complete communication: sign language and finger spelling is employed in conjunction with speech, hearing aids, lip-reading, gestures, and the written word. In 164 minutes, this 1986 Frederick Wiseman documentary attempts to show almost all aspects of this comprehensive training -- sign language instruction for both students and parents, psychological counseling, speech therapy, vocational training, disciplinary problems, visits from parents, sports and recreation, training in living and working independently, and money management. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

The Alabama School for the Blind is organized to educate blind and visually impaired students to take charge of their own lives. This 1986 Frederick Wiseman documentary, running 132 minutes, shows the daily life of students from kindergarten through the 12th grade. In addition to traditional classroom subjects (English, history, science, music), the educational programs include mobility training and braille instruction. Dedicated staff members (including some who are blind themselves) are shown dealing with student disciplinary problems. Other sequences include psychological counseling sessions, vocational training, and a wide variety of recreational and athletic programs. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed documentarian Frederick Wiseman went shopping and came back with this 1983 film about the main Neiman-Marcus emporium and corporate headquarters in Dallas. During 118 minutes, Wiseman's camera provides both corporate and consumer viewpoints, including the selection, marketing, pricing, advertising, and selling of designer clothes, furs, jewelry, perfumes, shoes, electronic products, sportswear, porcelain and other products. Management and organizational aspects include sales meetings, development of marketing and advertising strategies, training, personnel practices, and sales techniques. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Entering the world of fashion models, model agencies, print ads, and TV commercials, documentarian Frederick Wiseman examines a type of filmmaking very much in contrast to his own -- as fantasy and fashion intersect with business, advertising, television, and photography. This 1980 documentary, a 129-minute glimpse of models at work, received the CINE Golden Eagle Certificate. Male and female models are shown at work on fashion shows, TV commercials, magazine covers, and ads for various products -- designer collections, furs, sports clothes, and cars. During sessions, the models work, talk, play, and kill time. Differing fashion and product photographic techniques and styles are shown. Inside model agencies, prospective models are interviewed, and the business aspects also involve career counseling, arranging portfolios, meeting clients, and planning trips. Model was shown at the 1980 London Film Festival, the 1980 Festival Dei Popoli (Florence), and the 1981 Goteborg Film Festival. Mary Frazier, writing in London's Times Literary Supplement, observed, "We have all the fascination of looking into another world and none of the annoyance of being told what to think about it." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide