Synopsis
Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman takes us inside Northeast High School as a fly on the wall to observe the teachers and how they interact with the students.
High School
1968 Directed by Frederick Wiseman
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"Any questions?"
I guess I never realized how loaded of a...question... the above is. It's usually asked after some prescriptive lecture, and the "any" never actually means "any," because as High School illustrates, part of fitting in, conforming, and functioning in a conservative society is learning where the boundaries are. (ie Don't question too much!) Being an individual is great and all, but there are limits and a place and a time, etc, etc. By design or luck of circumstance, 1968 is just about the perfect time for this movie as the generation gap was probably about at its greatest and the Vietnam War looms like a black subtext to it all. Wiseman turns in a tight 75 minutes that…
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This was my first time seeing a prime era Wiseman, as opposed to his later, more sprawling documentaries, and the tighter thematic focus really sings out. Here, it's all about how even in The Freest Country On Earth we seem to be hopelessly obsessed with guiding children towards obeying authority, staying in line, and following the rules. The final scene, showing an assembly reading of a letter from a former student being written just before the writer goes to fight in Vietnam, capped off by the teacher or administrator doing the reading saying something like "whenever we get a letter like this, we feel we've done a good job," is one of the most chilling things I've ever seen in any documentary.
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Wife, during the girls' gym class scene, in which the camera focuses on and isolates individual body parts: "Oh, so this is the Crazy Horse guy."
Impossible not to read in the context of war. Obviously the on-going one in Vietnam (and that crushing final line!) but also World War II. The teachers and administrators (my grandparents age) having grown up in Depression and total war totally unable to comprehend the striving individualism of the kids (my parents' age). We'd all like to wear knee-length dresses to formal occasions, but we must make sacrifices for the good of the whole! I'm definitely going to have to watch the sequel, which was released the year I graduated high school.
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This is such an entertaining documentary. It’s so weird how much has changed, but also how much is just the same. There’s always going to be whiny kids arguing with teachers, kids who take nothing seriously, and angry parents causing problems for no reason. Obviously, there was much more racism and sexism in the past, but it was mind blowing just how sexist every person was and even just the structuring of the classes themselves. We’ve come a long way, but these issues clearly aren’t completely gone yet. This is such a fantastic documentary and I think no matter how old you are there’s a lot to relate too here so I would definitely recommend it.
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"The Spectator Club will discuss Martin Luther King's assassination today at 3:15 in Room 228."
All at once, a strange time capsule, a disheartening reminder of the failure of the American education system, a capturing of ugly passivism, and the source of our current woes. For every beacon of Hope offered by a young woman teaching Simon and Garfunkel's "The Dangling Conversation" as a poetry lesson, there is a tragic snuffing-out in a soccer coach informing a soldier-student that one of his best players was "shot to hell" in South Vietnam and so "won't be able to play soccer as well again." The inadequacy of words in the present, the bungling of sensibility, to fully capture the outrage of such a time. Wiseman sees it all, and it is ugly.
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A series of frustrating but mostly benign and funny confrontations between authority and individuality, old formal barriers being bumped but never quite broken by the kids, until that last scene which is like a gut-punch reversal that changes the tone of everything that comes before it.
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"I think that it's nice to be individualistic, but there are certain places to be individualistic."
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Frederick Wiseman’s acclaimed documentary High School saw him moving cameras into the classrooms at Northeast High School located at 1601 Cottman Ave, Philadelphia. It’s a fascinating encapsulation of what was happening culturally at the time. From the songs of Simon & Garfunkel analysed as poems to a gynaecologist spreading falsifications to gullible teenagers about what constitutes a healthy sex life. These moments develop to deliver a concerning and broad portrait of youths being ill-prepared for the world outside their educational bubble, and of a society in transition.
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Frederick Wiseman’s pioneering cinema vérité documentary is a survey of Philadelphia’s Northeast High School. It focuses on the school’s attempts to knock their students into shape, by seeking to mould them in preparation for a life of conformity. At the film’s end a teacher publicly celebrates a letter from a former student who describes how he is in Vietnam and about to risk sacrificing his life by going behind enemy lines and genuinely thanking the school for everything they’ve done for him. Hearing it be read out it’s hard not to think back to an earlier conversation we’ve witnessed where a teacher openly says to a youth “we’re out to establish that you can be a man, and you can…
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Wiseman unique and personal aesthetical strategies are already on full display in this very early effort, a comprehensive portrait of a high school in all its glory, mundanity and imperfections. The series of vignettes meant to encapsulate the experience as thoroughly as possible include moments both large and small, familiar to anyone who's ever stepped inside an American high school. As always, Wiseman's camera remains objective. That's not to say that the documentary doesn't make its politics known. Viewers will have to look carefully to tease out its implications. A fascinating human panorama.
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“It’s nice to be individualistic, but there's a time to be individualistic”
“I wasn’t trying to be individualistic.”High School represents a lot of things, a snapshot of youth culture in the 1960’s, as the war in Vietnam raged and trust in the government was at an all time low, an exercise in objective filmmaking (can film ever be objective?), and a passive analysis of authority. It’s fascinating, engaging, and infuriating in equal parts.
Frederick Wiseman’s specialty came in documenting everyday environments in the Cinéma vérité style pioneered by the French New Wave. No interviews, no narration, no title cards or explanations for what exactly is happening. The facts are laid bare at your feet and you must come to…
