Although Jeffrey Geiger's book proceeds in chronological fashion, it is not a history of the American documentary. A relatively small but important number of films are discussed in survey fashion. A still smaller number like Nanook of the North and Fahrenheit 911 are treated as case studies. This approach allows Geiger to deal in some depth with the theoretical issues these films generate. A conscientious scholar, Geiger also uses this focus on relatively few examples to acknowledge critics and historians of the genre and of specific films. He rarely takes issue with contemporary scholarly studies and seems more comfortable in an inclusive approach, building up his authority by showing how carefully he has read the work of others.
This is all to the good, except that the text becomes rather cluttered with nods to Geiger's predecessors. They may feel gratified, but the allusions to scholarly discussions will be heavy going for undergraduates, making this text an unfortunate choice for readers not familiar with terms like “indexical properties” (8). Too much is made of the scholarship on documentary film and too little pertains to Geiger's own insights, which are scattered throughout eight chapters: “Novelties, Spectacles, and the Documentary Impulse,” “Virtual Travel and the Tourist Gaze,” “Serious Play: Documentary and the Early Avant-Garde,” “Activism and Advocacy: The Depression Era,” “Idea Weapons: Documentary Propaganda,” “Uncontrolled Situations: Direct Cinema,” “Relative Truths: Documentary and Postmodernity,” and “Media Wars: Documentary Dispersion.” Some of these chapter titles are clear enough; others mystify. Geiger does not help his cause by his first sentence in chapter 3: “As the previous chapter showed, cinema embodied …” (65). This long-winded sentence explains nothing about the avant-garde and defeats all but the most curious, who will want to read on to see what point the author is making. Not all chapters begin this way, but the overall structure of this book thwarts any sense of a driving argument.
Then there is the book's subtitle, which Geiger explains is meant to evoke both how films project a vision of America and how audiences project themselves into the “film text – both imaginatively and sensibly” (2). The first part is clearly accomplished, but if the author has accomplished the latter, I am at a loss to say how. The case studies of the films are usually a round-up of what other critics have said, plus historical background and Geiger's own insights. But if there is some audience vision of America that has arisen out of the viewing of these films, what that might be is not apparent.
Geiger's chapters explore various kinds of documentary and show how the form has developed and responded to cultural conditions and the aesthetics of its practitioners. But there is no through-line, so to speak, no effort to integrate what is said about Nanook of the North, for example, and Fahrenheit 911. What is quintessentially American about these films and what notion of the nation do they project? The author does not say. Each film seems imprisoned in its own time frame.
How valuable it would be for students of documentary if Geiger had chosen the issue of narrative and the feature film and demonstrated how Michael Moore and Robert Flaherty drew on conventions of popular entertainment to tell their stories. This is not the book he decided to write, of course, but some sort of linking language and focus would have made this a much more accessible text for students and a more provocative study for scholars well versed in the history of documentary film.
Perhaps the best use of American Documentary Film is as a reference book. Thus a scholar writing about or teaching the propaganda documentaries made during World War II will surely want to consult chapter 5, which includes not only a detailed and illuminating discussion of Memphis Belle but also of other films like Frank Capra's series Why We Fight, as well as the work of John Huston and John Ford. Similarly, the beginning of any course that deals with the origins of documentary film could do no better than to assign Geiger's first chapter, which explores the cultural climate in the 1890s that was ripe for the introduction of documentary film.
If not as a whole, then, but in pieces, American Documentary Film has a valuable contribution to make, and one that will repay close study for those focussing exclusively on one of the topics of Geiger's eclectic approach.
