Research Article: American Documentary

American Documentary
in the 1950s

JACK C. ELLIS

American documentary can be thought of as a child of the Depression that came of age during World War II. The war years marked a high point of achievement in this mode: more filmmakers made more nonfiction films for larger audiences than ever before. Given this vastly increased activity, with films being used in all sorts of new ways, it was assumed by most that the trend would continue onward and upward. And indeed production of nonfiction, nontheatrical film-educational, promotional, and industrial did increase enormously in the postwar years. But there were severe cutbacks in key areas: in the amount of money available for the kinds of social documentary production that had existed earlier, in the number of documentary filmmakers employed, and in the quantity and quality of the documentaries produced.

Accompanying this contraction were losses in morale and leadership, and uncertainties about postwar purposes and subjects. Up to the...
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