The Use of Documentary Film as Historical Recollection - Essay Example

THE VISUAL CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY The Use of Documentary Film as Historical Recollection INTRODUCTION In this paper we will examine the role ofthe documentary film in the way people examine, construct and reconstruct historical and important life events, and to identify the limitations of documentary film to that end, and its impact on providing a realistic, historical record of fact that serves the collective cultural goals of historical collection and accounting of events. From the time of its invention, when Thomas Edison created the kinetoscope,1 film has served to entertain, inform, educate, and broaden the perspective of those who viewed it. Evolving from Edison’s sequenced series of movements, to “snippets,” to motion picture entertainment, giving rise to television’s often mundane and vegetative serial programming, to news programs, and to the concept and use of film as a historical record through documentary; the use of film as a tool to create a visual record of important events and telling in the individual and collective life and history of mankind has become both common place and inextricably essential to the process of historical documentation. However, with the development of, and access to, modern technology that allow people to easily and speedily take upon themselves the creative processes of filmmaking, people no longer rely on professional news media people or Hollywood filmmakers to bear either the burden of, or responsibility for, deciding which events occurring in a moment or over a prolonged period of time in their public or private life experiences should be documented on film. Today, individuals are taking that role upon themselves, and using the documentary film process as a tool to not only document experiences in their lives that they feel compelled to share with others, but which serve, too, as a cathartic experience for expelling psychological demons and inhibitions that prevent personal and social growth and fulfillment. Research Rationale To determine how the use of documentary films to record historical events are constructed and reconstructed in film in order to awaken, reawaken, and to serve as a historical record of permanent reminder for the events documented, in order to broaden, serve, and expand viewer perspectives and to stand as a permanent historical resource to bring about social awareness and an improved social condition without distorting the facts or surrendering the truth to creative falsehoods to achieve those goals. Literature Review The works selected for this paper were based on their relationship to the questions and directional points to be made through the finding the answers to the questions, and how those answers could best be supported through the literature. As the scope of the research involves a large and expanding field of available information and resources, the decision was made in favor of pursuing a pedagogical approach to selecting the works for support of this paper, which would allow for the information to be analyzed and extractions for support of the questions in as accurate and timely a fashion as possible. The use of the main documentary source, Marian Marzynski’s A Jew Among the Germans,2 was selected for its relationship to the thesis question of how people reconstruct from their own memories and present information of a significant historical event in comparison to the event, the existing perspectives of and on the event, and the presentational impact on those perspectives and the event itself. To this end, the documentary by Marzynski serves to lend itself to the thesis, is easily accessible to the reader because it is featured on-line, free of access to the reader, and can be used simultaneously and in conjunction with the reading of this paper. Further, the documentary is a full length 60 minute documentary and has achieved credibility in being established in the Public Broadcasting System’s (PBS) expanding on-line collection of documentary archived works and library of visual works available to researchers, educators, and the public. The PBS sponsored site is one of the few and rare sites on-line that can be utilized from the academic perspective. The selection of the film documentary ‘Memory of the Camps,’3 was made in an effort to provide real-time, raw footage taken directly from the scenes of the camps as they were being liberated by the allied forces at the end of World War II, in order to serve as contrast of Marion Marzynski’s memory of a time specific and the events that he has admittedly made a concerted effort to distance himself from since that time; and the events recorded as a purely visual and factual record of those events. The footage recorded in “Memory of the Camps,” is taken directly from the film archives of the British Ministry of Information and the American Office of War Information.4 The footage, which was originally the source of a documentary project that involved Alfred Hitchcock, was, for whatever reason, never finished and remained stored in the British archives until the mid 1980s.5 While the footage reveals the facts of what the Allied forces encountered upon entering the death camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen and “other Nazi concentration camps,”6 it is for the most part raw footage with a narrative background, and is difficult to watch because editing of the actual footage appears to have been kept to a minimal in order to serve the goals of the documentary. The selection of the HBO film ‘Conspiracy’,7 was made to demonstrate Hollywood’s role in, and use of, historic material in creating the “Hollywood documentary,” wherein it is demonstrates the use of historic fact as influenced by the creative processes of the Hollywood filmmaker; which renders it interesting, based on fact, but not a reliable source of historical reference. Nonetheless, Hollywood “docudramas,” tend to creatively convey the director’s perception of the characteristics of the people involved in important events, and often times those people – as is the case with the holocaust – are no longer living; therefore it is difficult to gain insight into the ways in which their personalities might have served the events that are the focus of the film. In the case of the HBO film, Conspiracy, the film becomes significant in its use as a Hollywood docudrama because the film focuses on the single, one hour meeting between key figures in Hitler’s government and military who met in a country home located in Warnasee, Germany; just outside Berlin. It was at Warnasee where the secret meeting between key figures of Hitler’s government and military that the “final solution,” to the Jewish “problem,” was unveiled. In the Marzynski’s documentary, the same location and same meeting is featured as a historically significant place and moment in the fate of World War II Jews being held in concentration camps. Thus, in this way, the Hollywood docudrama serves as a useful comparative tool to the reality of a particular and important event. The books and journals selected for use in this paper and listed in the reference list at the end of this paper were chosen based on their potential to contribute to the paper’s persuasive argument in support of the thesis; and, to a more limited extent, the counter thesis which, of course, must be presented within the discussion in order to properly identify it, address it, and to resolve the problems raised by the counter thesis light of the thesis here. Andrew Hoskins (2001: 333-347), Leeds University Professor, wrote an article that appeared in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, titled ‘New Memory: Mediating History.’8 The article was selected for use here because it explores the use of the documentary as a tool for the event or events that is the subject of the documentary, but, also, Hoskins discusses the use of the documentary in denying the past, the events, and the commemoration of historical events. This article is appropriate for use in this paper for those reasons, and especially because Marzynski’s documentary is about commemoration of the past, the design and selection processes surrounding the official united Germany memorial to the victims of the holocaust. Also, Hoskins talks about the use of the documentary in terms of denial of the past, and denial of the past is reoccurring theme in Marzynski’s documentary. To better understand some of the concepts that are examined in the Marzynski documentary, including denial of the past, the recurring conversation about guilt, and other notions, especially that of the German youth as regards a prevailing attitude towards the subject of the holocaust; Lenore Ter’s book (1994), Unchained Memories: True Stories of Memories Lost and Found,9 for use as a valuable reference in making a connection between the psychological indicators as to what Marzynski, the German youth and, in some cases, their adult parents, and others who are part of Marzynski’s documentary, experienced and in some cases perhaps continue to experience as regards the holocaust and its continuing impact on their lives. While the Ter book does not focus on the holocaust as an event, Ter has done some interesting work with respect to the conditions suffered by victims of traumatic events, especially children. Given that Marzynski’s experience of the holocaust and his subsequent adult venture into resolving that trauma through his documentary stem from his traumatic experience and exposure to violence as a young child, the Ter book was selected to help lend insight into the recovery and expression of those events in Marzynski’s documentary and to tie together the other sources used in support of the thesis and resolving the questions stemming from the research of the holocaust events that now reside in the often buried memory of those experienced those events. The book, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and its Aftermath, by J.D. Zimmerman (2003)10, was selected for use as a topical comparison of the written versus the visual presentation of memories from the events of the holocaust. How the author and the filmmaker deal with the challenges of recalling events would, one would anticipate, be very different in the film for viewers versus the written presentation to readers. However, because Zimmerman’s work is topically related, it was, in addition to the use of it as a comparison and contrast mechanism to support the persuasive argument of the thesis and to resolve questions posed or raised by through the research, selected for use here because the author’s focus on contested memories. The process for selecting each of the works listed in the reference section of this paper was, again, examining the content of the individual work selected for use and incorporation into the analysis of this paper in support of the thesis, and to resolve questions and to contrast and compare ideas and concepts in the analytical section of the paper. The selection of the individual books, journal articles and film works was made based on what was felt their logical contribution to the paper. More than 40 individual works were initially considered, reducing that number to the 20 selected for use in this paper. Each of the works considered for use in this paper were selected from the journals, books and documentaries available to the public and found in most public libraries or other public resource centers for students and educators, such as on-line university and private libraries. Each individual work is published and copyrighted, and as such has been handled and treated in accordance with the laws governing their reproduction and use as resource materials. Interpretation and Analysis The use of film as a means to bring the viewer into the moment of a historical event or information, or as a record of events to later be presented to viewers, is not a new concept. It has, since the onset of television nightly news, been used to advise and inform the public, and to give people a camera view of live events – even though, early on, those live events were presented to the public mostly in a post event format under the control of news conglomerates whose experts carefully edited the film footage to help the public see the point of view from the perspective of the media controlling it. The use of film has altered the way in which news is presented to the public today.11. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of “news devoted” television shows, the rise of cable news networks, and especially those shows like Dateline NBC12, 60 Minutes (Rather), and other specialty type shows that bring to the viewing public a sort of documentary in brief, featuring stories designed to maintain and hold viewer‘s interest throughout a longer than nightly news segment of story telling through film. The public’s interest in documentary viewing, having become apparent, and modern technology having delivered to through hand-held video equipment, audio equipment, and other easily accessible and user friendly devices, the means and, thus, the opportunity for people to become the story tellers of their own stories in documentary format to stand as testimonial, a resource, and often times a first-hand recollection of past events of social and historical importance, as well as continued public interest. Marian Marzynski, a survivor of the World War II concentration camps that served as human holding pens for the eleven million people who would die as a result of Germany’s quest to annihilate the European Jews; took his turn in front of the camera to create his own documentary, to tell his story his way, and to look at the historical events and places that led to the death of his family members and friends. Marzynski’s documentary, A Jew Among the Germans, served as a cathartic process that helped him confront many of the horrors he had refused to face for the past 60 years, and to answer questions that he had in his own mind as to where modern Germans stood on the issue of the holocaust. Marian Marzynski is the first to admit that he has spent the greater part of his life trying to put the traumatic events of his early childhood years behind him. Marzynski, now 68 years old, was eight years old by the time World War II ended.13 “The German language alone strikes discord to my ear,” Marzynski says in the opening moments of his documentary, sharing with viewers his “phobia,” to all things German.14 Marzynski, as described by therapist Lenore Ter (1994), has invoked a “wide array of defenses,”15 to cope with the horrors of his experiences. One of Marzynski’s defenses has been to avoid, until the time of his documentary, anything German – even the sound of the German language. Just as the patients in Ter reports in her book on the patients who need to re-establish contact with the source of their fear to conquer that fear,16 Marzynski goes to Germany, “in order to see again the places where their memories took root.”17 There comes a time in each victim’s life when even repressed memories surface, and demand to be confronted. For Marzynski, that time was after the Berlin Wall separating East and West Germany since World War II was finally opened, and the two sides of the city, which had stood separated by the World War II wall that kept the communist versus non-communist sectors apart, was again reunited as a one. Now, in 2005, Marzynski walked the streets of the reunited Berlin to see what remained of the old – which was very little – and to observe what has been constructed as the new, and to get a first-hand look at site and plans the city had undertaken to construct a holocaust memorial. The memorial, not yet having been decided upon in design at the beginning of Marzynski’s documentary, will occupy a large space directly across the street from one of the few remaining World War II sites that housed Hitler’s government.18 In the opening of the documentary, Marzynski expresses his concerns about the memorial on several levels; first, is a memorial to such a catastrophic event appropriate, especially when it is to be located in the heart of the country and the very city from wherein emanated the hate that lead to the systematic murder of six million European Jews? As Marzynski looks to understand the answer to that question, he seeks, too, to understand the present mind-set of Germans as it pertains to the holocaust, and to Jews living in Germany today. It is important to bear in that Marzynski and his family were not among the German Jews who were the first victims of the holocaust. Marzynski and his family were Polish Jews, and were first imprisoned in the Wausau ghetto. Marzynski, just a child at the time, survived because he was “hidden,” on the Christian side. In his documentary, Marzynski meets with young German students at Wannsee, once the home of a pre World War II German Jew, taken over by the Germans during the war, and which served as the secret meeting place for Adolf Eichman and other top military and government aides to Hitler. It was at Wannsee where these top members of the government and military met and talked about Hitler’s final solution.19 The HBO film ‘Conspiracy,20’ featuring the acting talents of Stanley Tucci as Adolf Eichman, and Kenneth Brannaugh as General Heydrich, key figures in the “final solution; was based entirely upon the secret meeting at Wannsee, and serves as an excellent example of Hollywood docu-drama, or the Hollywood version of film documentary.21 While the movie takes creative liberties, it gives substance to the characters and their individual roles in the events and because the basis for the film is an event of extreme historical significance, it is for that reason interesting and, because of the collection of talented actors, entertaining. At Wannsee, now a museum dedicated to understanding the war and the Holocaust, Marzynski meets with young students and explains to them that he survived because he was uncircumcised – which was one of the ways Germans were able to recognize Jews who attempted to hide as Christians. Marzynski polls the students, asking how many of the young men sitting in the classroom today are circumcised; the response is just one of the 10 or 11 young male students is circumcised. Marzynski is concerned that the young people in Germany are not in touch with the impact of the holocaust, and his concern is supported by the response of the young students he meets with to discuss the holocaust. “People my age don’t need any Jews,” a young female high school student advises Marzynski, “They don’t have any problems with the holocaust because it doesn’t exist in their lives.”22 If Marzynski is looking to find people in Germany who have a problem, a conscience, about the holocaust, but it is clear he will have to look to other than the “third generation” – those children born to parents after the war post World War II Germans. There are few with an interest or conscience of the Holocaust among the third generation; thought Marzynski says that during the 1960s, second generation Germans attacked their parents for their role in the Holocaust.23 The young German population, the “third generation” Germans, as they identified as being by Marzynski, meaning that they are removed from their “perpetrator” German grandparents who lived during the war, and especially those who might have been assigned to the death camps; have received their information about the holocaust largely from public resources, historical recounts of the events. They have been raised in an atmosphere of avoidance, where their parents, most of who were too young to have experienced the actual events of the war, received little information about the war from their own parents. “Is it true,” Marzynski asks a German, “that in German family you cannot ask how many people you killed?” The response is, “No, there will be no answer.”24 The response indicates that even now, 60 years after the war, Germans find it difficult to discuss the holocaust or the events of World War II. Is it avoidance, or guilt? Marzynski tries to understand. Marzynski thinks it has something to do with the lack of warmth, vitality, in the designs being considered by the city of Berlin for the holocaust memorial. Marian Marzynski’s documentary served to help him move forward in his own life, but as a work of significant historical record, it is perhaps not as effective as are other holocaust documentaries. Marzynski’s documentary, though he questions whether guilt is what people looking to build a monument to an event should experience, indeed seeks to serve as an indictment of the German people for their role in the holocaust. In fact, the filmmaker seems to be on a quest to find Germans who, like himself, are willing to assign to the Germans that guilt, and to establish that the mindset that existed that once allowed Hitler to prevail in murdering six million European Jews during the World War II years; continues to exist in Germany today. To that end, Marzynski was successful. Who, then, is the audience for who Marzynski intended his documentary? What purpose does it serve as a useful document of historical significance? How does its presentation on video serve the purpose behind it, and impact the audience for who it was intended? Certainly if Marzynski had wanted to horrify people and remind them of the horrors of the past, he would have not have had far to go or search to access material that would have accomplished that. There is no end to the supply of horrific photos featuring victims of the concentration camps with which to do that. “No pictures portray horror and evil so persuasively as do the photos of Holocaust atrocities, and their cultural cachet is invoked in the media at regular and patterned intervals.”25 Rather, what Marzynski seemed to be going for in his use of film for his documentary, was indeed to show the potential continues to exist in Germany, the country itself, in the German people, young people who are not – though it might be healthier for young males – circumcised today; and young women who stand boldly before a nearly 70 year old survivor of the Holocaust to proclaim, “People my age don’t need any Jews. They don’t have any problems with the Holocaust because it doesn’t exist in the lives.” Marzynski has successfully used his film to demonstrate both the lack of sincerity that supports a Holocaust memorial in the city of Berlin; and to show that the potential still exists in the hearts and minds for the catastrophic hate that lead to those events to once again, amongst these very people, raise its head again. The Germans are a threat to modern Jews. The use of film as a documentary to commemorate, document, or reveal information can be more easily accomplished with film than through just journalistic or memoir writings. “By situating the narration in the present, these filmmakers reveal their conscious desire to redress errors and point out lacunae in the officially acknowledged history of World War II, and to make a testimonial for the enlightenment of future generations; each film, however, perhaps unknown to its maker, also speaks to its own present that made investigating the past event necessary and possible.”26 Still, Marzynski seeks to establish between himself and Germany a bridge of humanity, that which links him, them, and mankind as human beings. To that end, his film is, again, successful. “If we remove ourselves from the society in which we live today, we do so by positioning ourselves among other human beings in another milieu, for our past is full of representations of those we have known. In this respect, we can escape from one society only by opposing another to it. (Halbwachs, 1994: 109).”27 Conclusion The use of film documentaries as a tool by which to further inform an audience, and to serve as a permanent historical record of events, is a valid and reliable tool for accomplishing those goals. In the case of Marzynski’s documentary, it opens during the cold months of fall or early winter, and this important to the film because it conveys the environmental coldness of Germany. Marzynskis uses that coldness to help make his points, points with which he is concerned; that the Holocaust memorial will be a cold and unwelcoming place that will cause people to avoid it, and that it took an unequaled coldness of heart – like the weather – for the German people to allow the murder of six million Jews. Also, to emphasize that there remains an element of “coldness” in the hearts of many Germans today. Marzynski emphasizes this when, during filming of the site where the memorial will be constructed, the filming is interrupted by a German security officer who says the proper licensure has not been obtained to film the documentary there. At the time this occurs, Marzynski is interviewing an Israeli sculptor, a Holocaust survivor, who then launches into a tirade about how the racism towards Jews still exists in Germany today. This particular event, a present day event, caught on film, serves to emphasize the mark of trauma left upon the survivors of the Holocaust. Marzynski has, too, captured the sense of warning for the future, when during the interview of the young students at Wannsee, once the private home of a German Jew whose name goes unmentioned, who remains an unknown in both Marzynski’s film and the Hollywood “docu-drama”, ‘Conspiracy; serves to emphasize a missing element in the social order of life by the unidentified family who once occupied Wannsee. That Wannsee is now a museum where young students are educated about the events of World War II and the Holocaust, and a place where when Marzynski talks with these young people, he encounters, to some degree, a lack of empathy and avoidance and captures on film the young student’s resentment – saying, “We don’t need the Jews,” or “the Holocaust is not a problem for us because it doesn’t exist for us”; Marzynski has captured on film his concerns about whether or not racism stills exists, and whether it could in the future once again present itself as a threat to Jews. However, Marzynski leaves the viewer with a message of hope that comes through a “third generation’ team of eight young German authors, “a Holocaust manifesto,” ‘Nobody Asked Us. The group maintains that their third generation relationship to the Holocaust must be a question of morality and individual conscience, and not the forced images of the Holocaust found in the raw film footage like those seen in ‘Memory of the Camps,’ that show the real-time images captured by Allied forces as they liberated Dauchau, Buchenwald, Belsen and other camps.28 In the raw footage from 1945, the stark reality of what lead to Marzynski’s avoidance of all things German becomes clear and almost unmentionable as the viewer sees the actual film footage of bodies in pits left unburied, stacked one after another upon the other. The skeletal figures of the walking-dead survivors, some so weak that liberation has come too late for them, though they are not yet dead. These are the images that do not appear in Marzynski’s documentary, but those which, if he has been successful, the viewer will seek to further understand the history of, and will, through investigation of the events, find on their own. However, again, Marzynski has captured on film the third generation giving a conference on their manifesto, ‘Nobody Asked Us,’29 and as Marzynski interviews the group, he finds the bridge with German humanity that he is seeking; a place where Germans and Jews can safely cross or perhaps meets one another while quietly meditating at a memorial that stands for what once existed as a wide and unthinkable gap between Germans, Jews and humanity. LIST OF REFERENCES Becker, A. (2005). Memory Gaps: Maurice Halbwachs, Memory and the Great War. Journal of European Studies, 35(1), 102+. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5009329101 CBS (2006) 60 Minutes. Fanning, D., (1985), PBS Frontline, ‘In Memory of the Camps’ (film documentary) found on-line at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/view/, retrieved 20 December 2006. Furman, N. (2005). Viewing Memory through Night and Fog, the Sorrow and the Pity and Shoah. Journal of European Studies, 35(2), 169+. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5012122761 Hoskins, A. (2001). Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, New Memory: Mediating History, 21(4), 333-347. Lindsay, V. (1916). The Art of the Moving Picture. New York: Macmillan. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=7293452 Marzynski, M. “A Jew Among the Germans,” Frontline (on-line Documentary, 60 minutes, sponsored by PBS) on-line found at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/, retrieved 5 December 2006. NBC (2006), Dateline. Network Anchors See a Diminished World: Nightly News Loses Viewers and Substance. (2002, March/April). Columbia Journalism Review, 40, 52+. Retrieved December 27, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000723515 Pierson, F., (2001), HBO Home Video, ‘Conspiracy,’ (motion picture), United States. Reitlinger, G. (1953). The Final Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (1st ed.). New York: Beechhurst Press. Retrieved December 27, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=10996755 Terr, L. (1994). Unchained Memories: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found. New York: Basic Books. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=91216531 Zelizer, B. (1997, February 17). Journalism in the Mirror. The Nation, 264, 10. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002224691 Zelizer, B. (1997, March 31). The Past in Our Pocket. The Nation, 264, 10. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5002229077 Zimmerman, J. D. (Ed.). (2003). Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Retrieved December 25, 2006, from Questia database: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=103153008 Read More