Underground (1976 film)

Last updated
Underground
Directed by Emile de Antonio
Mary Lampson
Haskell Wexler
Starring Bill Ayers
Kathy Boudin
Emile de Antonio
Bernardine Dohrn
Jeff Jones
Mary Lampson
Haskell Wexler
Cathy Wilkerson
CinematographyHaskell Wexler
Edited byEmile de Antonio
Mary Lampson
Distributed bySphinx Productions
Release date
  • 1976 (1976)
Running time
87 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, founded as a militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960s and 1970s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests of the time. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler, and Mary Lampson, later subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen.

Contents

Overview

Underground combines interviews with and archival footage of the Weathermen to provide a picture of this group, their opinions on American society, and their hopes for the future. The filmmakers use the material from their interactions with the Weathermen Bill Ayers, Kathy Boudin, Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones and Cathy Wilkerson to structure its exploration of the formation and direction of the group. The film begins by presenting images and words that describe the Weathermen's process of being radicalized in the 1960s through the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and communist revolutionary struggles in Cuba, Russia and China, as well as historical struggles in the United States over Native American rights and labor issues. The film moves on to discuss the Weathermen's analysis of American society, addressing those who have inspired them, and further explaining the reasons behind their militancy, while also introducing the issue of tactics. The final section of the film addresses the group's use of property destruction as a way to bring about change and destabilize the current, and in their view, corrupt system. They state that "no revolution can take place successfully without an armed confrontation with the state." While the radicals themselves are reluctant to discuss the specifics of their bombings due to their unstable position as underground fugitives, the filmmakers provide us with a list of actions which they have undertaken. Underground provides an intimate look at the inner workings of the Weather Underground, and we see their discomfort with being filmed, their strong internal collective identity, and their isolation from society at large. The filmmakers do not use the interviews and juxtaposed images to promote the group or support their actions, and it is apparent that their motives for the film differ from those of the subjects that they are presenting. In the end this film provides an unprecedented look at how a bunch of middle-class Americans became self-styled militant revolutionaries, raising questions not only about the merits of their struggle, but also about past and future radical actions.

Historical context

This film is informed by the political and social unrest of the 1960s in the United States. The civil rights movement, Vietnam War (and subsequent anti-war movement), McCarthyism, unemployment and urban decay, and liberation struggles across many nations not only played into the creation of the Weather Underground, but also were a significant factor in Emile de Antonio's decision to use them as the focus of his film. It was made in 1975, following the group's involvement in bombing the Pentagon, and an accident at their Greenwich Village townhouse in which a bomb exploded prematurely, killing three Weathermen and driving the rest underground. Emile de Antonio attributes his decision to make this film to his own Marxist beliefs, his fascination with the political climate of the '60s and '70s, and his specific interest in the Weather Underground after reading their manifesto Prairie Fire (Rosenthal, 1978). He made contact with the group, and after gaining their consent to take part in the project enlisted Mary Lampson (with whom he had worked in the past), and Haskell Wexler (an established cinematographer with leftist sympathies). The three raised the money and put the film together themselves. The Weathermen agreed to participate on the condition that the filmmakers would not contact them again after the film's completion (Paletz, 1977).

Style

The situation of the Weatherman as fugitives wanted by the FBI necessitated an unconventional style in conducting their interviews. The footage was filmed in only three days, and Wexler shot the participants from behind or through a screen in order to conceal their individual identities. The film is unique in that the viewer is able to see the filmmakers but not the subjects themselves. The interactions between the Weathermen and filmmakers raise many questions about the role of documentary film and the contrived nature of its set-ups. This is apparent at several points in the film where the Weathermen express concern over the filmmakers catching their faces on camera, or complain about the artificiality of the overall conversation taking place. In fact, de Antonio describes going out and burning a pile of possible incriminating film negatives following the filming (Rosenthal, 1978). The collective nature of the group led the filmmakers to use group interviews, and allow individuals to talk at length about their thoughts on the American social and political climate, as well as their role in this situation and bringing about change. Unlike many documentaries that actively probe interviewees, the directors of Underground instead sit back and allow the Weathermen to speak. While they do interrupt at times, and do provoke the group with probing questions, there is a recognition of the unstable position of the people they are working with, which, in the end, results in their stepping back and letting the group express itself on its own terms. This film uses the voices of the Weathermen as narration, while employing mainly archival footage to create juxtapositions that illustrate the words. As in his other films, de Antonio purchased the rights to use images from a number of other prominent radical documentaries including Gray and Alk's The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), Chris Marker's film covering The Pentagon demonstrations, The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1967) often discussed along with Norman Mailer's non-fiction novel about the same incident, titled The Armies of the Night (1968), [1] [2] Cinda Firestone's Attica (1974), [3] Wexler-Fonda-Hayden's Introduction to the Enemy (1974), and his own Oscar-nominated In the Year of the Pig (1969).

Response

After the film was completed in 1975, the FBI learned of the project and served all three filmmakers with subpoenas in an attempt to confiscate their material and gain information about the location of the Weathermen. The filmmakers, all prominent within the Hollywood community, hired the best lawyers they could find, and with the support of other filmmakers and actors, including Warren Beatty, Elia Kazan, Shirley MacLaine, and Jack Nicholson, were able to get the subpoenas repealed. [4] The three were able to use their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech as well as the rights of journalistic integrity, which allow for confidentiality of sources, to fight the courts and retain the right to make the film. [5] [6] [7] While the legal matters surrounding the production of Underground gained it extensive media coverage, it received mixed reviews from critics, with most damning the Weathermen on the basis of their tactics, rather than addressing the style or merits of the film itself. Others criticized the film for being boring and relying too heavily on narrative by the Weathermen to hold it together, yet others praised it for its striking juxtapositions and its role as a history of the situation and motivations of the radical left. [8] In the words of de Antonio, this film is significant because "…a film always captures history at 24 frames per second and that is it". [9]

In an interview with The Motion Archive, Haskell Wexler believed he may have been removed from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest due to his involvement with Underground. [10]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weather Underground</span> American far-left militant organization, 1969–77

The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.

Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.

<i>Medium Cool</i> 1969 film by Haskell Wexler

Medium Cool is a 1969 American drama film written and directed by Haskell Wexler and starring Robert Forster, Verna Bloom, Peter Bonerz, Marianna Hill and Harold Blankenship. It takes place in Chicago in the summer of 1968. It was notable for Wexler's use of cinéma vérité-style documentary filmmaking techniques, as well as for combining fictional and non-fictional content.

Peter Watkins is an English film and television director. He was born in Norbiton, Surrey, lived in Sweden, Canada and Lithuania for many years, and now lives in France. He is one of the pioneers of docudrama. His films present pacifist and radical ideas in a nontraditional style. He mainly concentrates his works and ideas around the mass media and our relation/participation to a movie or television documentary.

Point of Order! is a 1964 American documentary film by Emile de Antonio about the Senate Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernardine Dohrn</span> American radical activist, law professor

Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emile de Antonio</span> American film director (1919–1989)

Emile Francisco de Antonio was an American director and producer of documentary films, usually detailing political, social, and counterculture events circa 1960s–1980s. He has been referred to by Randolph Lewis as, "…the most important political filmmaker in the United States during the Cold War."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Rudd</span> American anti-war activist and math teacher

Mark William Rudd is an American political organizer, mathematics instructor, anti-war activist and counterculture icon who was involved with the Weather Underground in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Haskell Wexler</span> American filmmaker

Haskell Wexler, ASC was an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild. He won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography twice, in 1966 and 1976, out of five nominations. In his obituary in The New York Times, Wexler is described as being "renowned as one of the most inventive cinematographers in Hollywood."

<i>The Weather Underground</i> (film) 2002 American film

The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical far-left Communist terrorist organization Weather Underground.

<i>In the Year of the Pig</i> 1968 film by Emile de Antonio

In the Year of the Pig is an American documentary film directed by Emile de Antonio about American involvement in the Vietnam War. It was released in 1968 while the U.S. was in the middle of its military engagement, and was politically controversial. One year later, the film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1990, Jonathan Rosenbaum characterized the film as "the first and best of the major documentaries about Vietnam".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Jones (activist)</span>

Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bill Ayers</span> American professor and activist

William Charles Ayers is an American retired professor and former militant organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a far-left revolutionary group modeled that sought to overthrow what they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.

Scott Braley was a leftist activist and a regional organizer for the Michigan State University's chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society, better known as SDS. Braley became a member of Weatherman in 1969 and remained so until the group disbanded in 1977. Braley was one of the original members of the Revolutionary Youth Movement, a group devoted to anti-racism and Third World struggles which later evolved into Weatherman.

<i>One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest</i> (film) 1975 drama film based on the novel by Ken Kesey

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a 1975 American psychological drama film directed by Miloš Forman, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey. The film stars Jack Nicholson, who plays a new patient at a mental institution, alongside Louise Fletcher, who plays an austere nurse. It features a supporting cast of Will Sampson, Danny DeVito, Sydney Lassick, William Redfield, as well as Christopher Lloyd and Brad Dourif in their film debuts.

Eric Mann is a civil rights, anti-war, labor, and environmental organizer whose career spans more than 50 years. He has worked with the Congress of Racial Equality, Newark Community Union Project, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Black Panther Party, the United Automobile Workers and the New Directions Movement. He was also active as a leader of SDS faction the Weathermen, which later became the militant left-wing organization Weather Underground. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters on November 8, 1969. He was instrumental in the movement that helped to keep a General Motors assembly plant in Van Nuys, California open for ten years. Mann has been credited for helping to shape the environmental justice movement in the U.S. He is also founder of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles, California and has been its director for 25 years. In addition, Mann is founder and co-chair of the Bus Riders Union, which sued the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority for what it called “transit racism”, resulting in a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit, Labor Community Strategy Center et al. v. MTA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1976 Deauville American Film Festival</span> Film festival in France

The 2nd Deauville American Film Festival took place at Deauville, France from August 31 to September 5, 1976. This year, the festival auctioned film posters of the films screening at the festival, which continued over subsequent years.

<i>Introduction to the Enemy</i> 1974 American film

Introduction to the Enemy is a 1974 American documentary film about Vietnam, filmed and directed by Haskell Wexler. Shot in the spring of 1974 and released before the end of the year, the film examines the human costs of the Vietnam War. The camera follows American actress Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden, already known in their home country for antiwar activism, as they make inquiries regarding the war's effects and legacy among Vietnamese people from all walks of life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Newsreel</span> Formation, films and legacy of Newsreel

The Newsreel, most frequently called Newsreel, was an American filmmaking collective founded in New York City in late 1967. In keeping with the radical student/youth, antiwar and Black power movements of the time, the group explicitly described its purpose as using "films and other propaganda in aiding the revolutionary movement." The organization quickly established other chapters in San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, and soon claimed "150 full time activists in its 9 regional offices." Co-founder Robert Kramer called for "films that unnerve, that shake people's assumptions…[that] explode like grenades in people’s faces, or open minds like a good can opener." Their film's production logo was a flashing graphic of The Newsreel moving in and out violently in cadence with the staccato sounds of a machine gun. A contemporary issue of Film Quarterly described it as "the cinematic equivalent of Leroi Jones's line 'I want poems that can shoot bullets.'" The films produced by Newsreel soon became regular viewing at leftwing political gatherings during the late 1960s and early 1970s, seen in parks, church basements, on the walls of buildings, in union halls, even at Woodstock." This history has been largely ignored by film and academic historians causing the academic Nathan Rosenberger to remark: "it is curious that Newsreel only occasionally shows up in historical studies of the decade."

References

  1. ↑ "The Sixth Side of the Pentagon, Directed by Chris Marker & François Reichenbach". Icarus Films. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  2. ↑ "Amazon Instant Video: The Sixth Side of the Pentagon". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  3. ↑ SCREENSLATE (September 13, 2011). "Tuesday, September 13 >> Featured Screening: Attica at BAMcinématek". ScreenSlate. Archived from the original on 19 February 2014. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  4. ↑ Hess (1975)
  5. ↑ Hess(1975)
  6. ↑ Waugh (1976)
  7. ↑ Jackson (2004)
  8. ↑ Waugh (1976)
  9. ↑ Rosenthal (1978)
  10. ↑ "Interview with Haskell Wexler on 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'". YouTube .
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.