Favorite Documentaries from 1930-70s

Non-music.

I love looking at them comparatively, just look I can't wait to see what they say about this decade 30 years from now (if I'm still here).. Doesn't matter the country, either - I love to get as many different ones as possible.

-Place De la Republique
-Chronicles of a Summer
-Seven-Up
-Salesman
-Le Joli Mai

 

Titicut Follies

 

"An American Family" followed the various members of the Loud family with video cameras trying to unobtrusively record as much of their day to day activities in 1971 Santa Barbara, CA as they could. The 12 episodes were shown starting in January 1973, and were edited down from about 300 hours of raw footage taken May to December 1971. The documentary gives a nice glimpse into the styles, attitudes and general feel of that time, at least in comparatively affluent Santa Barbara.

 

I forgot to mention that -- great one, thanks! I liked Wiseman's "High School", too, which was made after that one.

 

I found this site - An American Family - -- some episodes are 9 mins, some are longer.. Thanks! It sounds like something I'd love.

 

Grey Gardens
F for Fake
The War Game
Culloden
The Sorrow and the Pity
Triumph of the Will

Shame the parameters of the thread can’t be extended to include Man With a Movie Camera (1929) and Shoah (1985), arguably the two greatest documentaries of all time.

 

Victory At Sea!

 

SALESMAN is the first one that came to mind when I saw the thread title, before I'd even seen your post. Amazing film. I thought I saw somewhere a while back that Criterion had announced a Blu-ray upgrade to the older DVD, but can't find any mention of it now.

 

How is this available these days? Great to have those excerpts but I wonder where you get the whole thing?

This is off-topic but I think Albert Brooks film “real life” is one of the funniest movies ever made.

 

I have the U.K. MoC DVD, which has an identical transfer to the Criterion, but with different extras. Long OOP these days.

Someone should put this film out on BD. I’d upgrade, though I wonder how many others would do the same. This film is well regarded, but it doesn’t have quite the same cult appeal as Grey Gardens.

 

This was likely what I was thinking of. Not an actual announcement, but theatrical screenings like this are usually a reliable barometer of a forthcoming Criterion release.

Looks like we’ll be getting a Salesman blu this year... • r/criterion

 

A Hard Day's Night

 

Scared Straight
https://www.amazon.com/Scared-Strai...d=1539694385&sr=8-16&keywords=scared+straight

 

The World At War.
Best doc about WWII ever.

 

Yeah me too. As far as I can tell, the whole thing is not available anywhere. I got a DVD produced by PBS that only contains highlights of the full presentation that was shown in the weeks starting in January 1973. Maybe someday the whole series as seen back in the day will be resurrected and shown as well as a DVD of it.

 

There's a search filter I do that helps... I go to google.com, type in what I want.. Let's say it's Albert Brooks. I would type in "Albert Brooks -youtube" (to avoid them searches, since the chances are you already checked) and then I'd click on VIDEOS up top to further filter it.. I have found a LOT of things I had been searching for that I couldn't find previously this way.

 

There have been unofficial versions of the complete series in circulation from time to time. Don’t see any showing up in a cursory search but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there.

 

Excellent advice.

 

Is this available on DVD or streaming?

 

This ABC Special report has been impossible to forget over the decades

 

This old docu about life in Louisiana's Creole/Cajun country called "Dry Wood." Very interesting glimpse of life in a much poorer & simpler time.
The website www.folkstreams.net has the entire documentary, as well as others of rural life all over America. Another interesting one, I can't recall the name, shows the rural cajun Mardi Gras festival. Interesting.

 

Don't you mean "First US Visit"?

 

Saw this at the theatre after Siskel and Ebert gave it glowing reviews. It has a lot of heart.

 

If you like this one, you need to get the very excellent Criterion set 'Les Blank - Always for Pleasure'. It contains 'Dry Wood' and a lot of other tremendous Les Blank documentaries.

 

The Chair was a good one