SURPLUS OPERATIONS AND INSTRUMENTS: EXPERIMENTS IN CINÉMA VÉRITÉ AND PSYCHODRAMA

IN THE COMPANY OF MEN and EMERGENCY WARD respectively exemplify the seemingly opposed tactics that Greaves used to extract truth from reality: psychodramatic performance and cinéma vérité. Psychodrama was a tool that Greaves used in his acting classes but which was originally developed for therapeutic use and involves breaking societal roles through deep subconscious digging in group therapy skits. Cinema verite is nearly the direct opposite and requires non-direction to allow reality to play out as it would but in front of a camera. 

The notion that brings them together is spontaneity, which for Grieves was the explosion of truth that occurs at the peak of both forms. A performance when it reaches a state of therapeutic internal awareness or when the camera happens to catch a nurse when she has a few moments to share about the stress she goes through at her work. In these two short films we see Greave’s laying the groundwork for his long-term ambitions to make documentaries that spoke to the needs and interests of the Black community and to push acting through artifice and back into the real.

IN THE COMPANY OF MEN (1969)

Produced by Newsweek, IN THE COMPANY OF MEN offers profound insight into how psychodramatic role-playing and sensitivity training can generate constructive dialogue between white supervisors and Black employees. Concerned with increasing numbers of the “hardcore unemployed” during the late 1960s, companies began hiring consultants to foster honest conversations that uncovered mass resentment among workers toward their managers’ overt and covert racism. In an echo of his SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM experiments, William Greaves calls upon raw, guerrilla-style camera work to observe how African American men use these sessions to express long-suppressed anger in the face of consistent professional humiliation. Among the outcomes is their bosses’ dawning recognition of the brutal realities that encourage so many skilled laborers to suffer unemployment rather than endure the demeaning American workplace.

EMERGENCY WARD (1959)

Made in 1958, Greaves's first NFB effort EMERGENCY WARD is a fascinating work that reflects the transition in documentary from didacticism to Direct Cinema and its director’s clear glee at finally having a full toolbox. A half-hour portrait of the emergency ward at Montreal General Hospital, the film is driven by several tensions: between a calm narrator who reassures us of the staff’s “expert knowledge” and Greaves's urgent, off-camera voice asking them blunt questions about “mistakes”; between static shots of dull routine and handheld shots of frantic chaos; and between the faith in institutions urged by the film and the suffering and loneliness it depicts. Beautifully shot by Wolf Koenig and kinetically edited by Greaves, the film is an explosion of technique that boasts several unforgettable images and announces Greaves's arrival as a filmmaker – he even appears on camera at one point, leaning against a window while listening to an orderly’s rambling anecdotes. Nevertheless, one gets the sense that Greaves is itching for a freer form or more expansive subject, honing his craft while waiting to make the films he wanted to make. (Brian Belovarac)