UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

DOGME 95:

THE NEW ‘OLD’ MOVEMENT IN CINÉMA VÉRITÉ

A RESEARCH ESSAY IN

EUST 6901 PREPARED

FOR ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR JUDITH KEENE

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

BY

ANTHONY J. COX

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

JUNE 13, 2010

WORD COUNT: 6,601

Table Of Contents

Introduction 3

Cinéma Vérité the Truthful Cinema 5

Lars von Trier 8

Thomas Vinterberg 8

Dogme 95 9

The Dogme Manifesto 12

the VOW OF CHASTITY 17

Emphasizing Story and Performance 20

In Summary 22

Bibliography 25

Filmography 27

2

Introduction

Cinema should aim at capturing life as it is lived rather than as it

is re-enacted or re-invented...if cinema is to be a representation of

life itself, then the film-maker must submit to the “truth” within

the framework of his own approach. (Issari 1979:5)

Throughout 1970s-80s the cinema transformed into a hi-concept

product. Films became large than life with special effects being the major

drawcard for box office success, Hollywood megastars paired with celebrity

director’s took audiences on rides never before thought possible. The

current digital revolution in cinema has seemingly perfected the mastery of

the Hollywood spectacle, modern films are subjected to a hyperrealistic

representation of the world we live in with images that literally jump off

the screen in Avatar (James Cameron 2009), epic battles in worlds unlike

our own in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson 2001, 2002, 2003)

and a look at the future in The Matrix trilogy (Andy Wachowski, Lana

Wachowski 1999, 2003) all critically acclaimed and Academy Award winning

films. These are a few of the films that extend past the boundaries of our

known reality and redefined the experience of going to the cinema for

modern audiences.

It is amazing to think that somewhere in between the digital

dinosaurs of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg 1992) and the realistic

sinking the worlds largest ocean linear in Titanic (James Cameron 1996) a

film movement would emerge from Denmark almost forty years after the last

‘new wave’ and spark debate in film criticism, theory and production on a

global scale. No other film movement to date has been received with such

adoration and rejection as Dogme 95.

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‘Dogme 95 is a rescue action!’1 criticised as a gimmick by the

journalists who sat at the press conference, described as a form of self-

ionization for Lars von Trier (one of the co-creators) who subjects his

moviemaking abilities in being the worlds best, a provocative challenge to

the dominant cinematic conventions employed by Hollywood and demanded by

its consumers. In essence it is an attempt to purify the modern cinema of

its ‘cosmetics’.

Audiences now live in a cinematic era where anything the filmmaker

can imagine can be and is reproduce on the screen to the infinite degree.

The rate of measuring creative success is now in summed up with nine figure

sums and the words ‘weekend gross’. With so much creative freedom for a

filmmaker to represent reality as it could be rather than as it is, the

Dogme 95 filmmaker must be truly inspired by their surroundings of the

present time and the ideology of cinéma vérité.

Dogme 95 and its values are reminiscent of past film movements:

Italian Neo-Realism (1944-5), French New Wave (1958-9), Free Cinema

(1956-9) and Direct Cinema (1958-62). It gave a liberating approach to the

filmmaker allowing for improvisation while being constrictive in its

application. It was filmmaking that gave focus to story and performance

over the production aesthetic.

Despite the arguments about its contradicting production code known

as the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ (which must always be written in capitals), it was

the new ‘old’ movement in world cinema. It gave Denmark, the country of

origin, a national cinematic identity over night. To understand Dogme 95

one must first understand the principles it is built upon, the ‘truthful

cinema’.

4

1 Vinterberg, Thomas, and Lars von Trier. Dogme 95 Manifesto, 1995. Print.

Cinéma Vérité the Truthful Cinema

During the post-war period of the 1950s, filmmakers had very limited

resources available to them to produce films and certainly the films that

did emerge were in no way comparable with the ones being shipped from the

United States which featured the latest in technological scope and movie

stars. For European filmmakers, it was a simple matter of ‘making do with

what you have got’ and thus it became a signature item for post-war

European cinema that films were shot on location and avoided the use of

costly studios, elaborate sets and lighting.

During the 1940s news reporters and military photographers made use

of smaller, lightweight 16mm motion picture cameras. These 16mm cameras

needed only one operator, they were easy to transport and quick to set up,

making there use ideal to document the war and subsequent events. After the

war ended, these cameras were in abundance and cameramen were able to get

hold of them relatively cheaply, this meant that film crews could be

smaller and travel faster often filming handheld in areas that were before

off limits to the 35mm production cameras that required a lot of man power

to operate.

Due to limited budgets many of the cast employed were unknown

performers or simply people in the towns where filming took place. A

classic example of this is Lamberto Maggiorani who played Antonio Ricci in

Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 masterpiece Ladri di biciclette. Maggiorani was a

factory worker before De Sica cast him as the lead, he knew nothing of

performing and had no intention of becoming an actor which made him an

ideal candidate according to De Sica.

Narratives of post-war European cinema focused on ‘real’ events of

the time, often gritty stories from the war were retold or they were films

about coping with life and the loss of loved ones. These narratives broke

5

away from the traditional structures used by Hollywood in its Golden Age

and presented life as it was and not as a Dorris Day musical.

Notable movements to emerge in this era of cinematic history included

Italian Neo-Realism with prominent figures Vittorio De Sica, Federico

Fellini, Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti. Direct Cinema from the

Americas with directors John Cassavetes and D.A. Pennebaker. Almost a

decade later Britain’s Free Cinema was to come to strength with directors

Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson. French New Wave came

about from the critics of French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma that

included Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Éric

Rohmer.

These movements had a commonality in their goals and methods, the aim

was to emphasize story and performance over production aesthetic. The films

that emerged explored narratives that reconstructed or critiqued issues of

the time, they focused on local production methods and critical adoration

rather than box office success.

They are partly classified as falling under the French term cinéma

vérité, an attempt to portray the ‘truth’ in cinema. In cinéma vérité,

rather than creating stories and characters that are fictional and set in

foreign or bourgeois places, directors and screenwriters attempt to recall

stories for the screen that as an audience member you may relate to or

recognise fragments of from your own life and present the images in a very

honest and raw state. Films often began to examine society or individuals

within society and tried to avoid judgement and subjectivity to give an

objective approach as if the action on screen were happening in real time,

unfolding in front of a spectator. This is an important factor when

considering the first two films of Dogme 95 and in its relationship to

cinéme vérité. The manifesto that defines what is to be considered a Dogme

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95 film references and borrows different aspects from each of the movements

theories.

A cinéma-vérité film is a film that always minimises the limitations

that film imposes in transferring reality. It is a film that gets as

close as possible to the visual, aural and kinesthetic sense of

actual presence. And, it is a film that while compressing,

rearranging, and juxtaposing the bits and pieces of reality, adheres

to the truth of the story. (qtd. in Issari 10)

Truffaut’s iconic 1959 film Les quatre cents coups is often discussed

as being the film representing the pinnacle of French New Wave. It explores

the character Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud) and shows the journey of

Doinel’s life over the course of several weeks that takes him from

attending school in Paris to a juvenile detention centre in the

countryside.

The opening shots comprise of the Parisian city scape from the point

of view of a moving car, this instantly sets the tone of cinéma vérité: the

camera is not tied to a tripod or found within a studio, it is free to move

about within the city of Paris at its own will eventually choose Doinel as

its subject, but only for a little while. Handheld camera work, location

shooting, a linear story and inexperienced child actor, all these elements

engaged by Truffaut make it a classic in French New Wave. Even the last

shot does not attempt to define a closing statement instead it leaves the

viewer with an open ending and forces them to make their own

interpretation.

Les quatre cents coups is important when understanding the Dogme 95

film, for the manifesto directly quotes from Truffaut’s 1954 essay titled

Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, written five years before Les

7

quatre cents coups was released. The essay addresses ‘certain tendencies’

in cinema and attempted to define what truthful cinema should be according

to Truffaut. If the Dogme 95 manifesto is to borrow from Truffaut’s

ideology, one can expect similarities in its goals and what it sets out to

achieve.

Lars von Trier

A film should be like a stone in your shoe. (Lars von Trier)

Lars von Trier is notably one of Denmark’s most famous film directors

to emerge in the last twenty years with a reputation for dealing with

controversial themes such as mental illness, rape, incest and religion. He

is a graduate of the National Film School of Denmark and notoriously known

as a director who is hard to work with. Both Björk (Dancer In The Dark

(2000)) and Nicole Kidman (Dogville (2003)) vowed to never work with him

again after completing both their respective films.

He is a manic depressive, holds an array of phobias and when it comes

to his films is considered to be even more obsessive than Alfred Hitchcock

in his approach and methodologies, often seeing actors as merely the

vehicle for his creative genius rather than as artists themselves. It is

not unusual for him to hand the directing reigns to someone else and leave

set, he considers himself to be ‘the best film director in the world’2.

Thomas Vinterberg

8

2 Hernandez, Eugene. "Von Trier: 'I Am the Best Film Director in the World' - IndieWIRE." IndieWIRE. 18 May 2009. Web. 08 June 2010. <http://www.indiewire.com/article/von_trier_i_am_the_best_film_director_in_the_world/>.

Thomas Vinterberg, who is the other co-founder of the Dogme 95

movement, also graduated from the National Film School of Denmark (though

ten years after von Trier). He became another of Denmark’s iconic

filmmakers due to the success of Dogme 95’s first film, Festen (Thomas

Vinterberg 1998).

Unlike von Trier, Vinterberg had relatively little experience in

feature film production with the majority of his portfolio consisting of

short films which were well received having won the Jury and Producer’s

Awards at the International Student Film Festival in Munich and winning the

First Prize at the Tel Aviv Film Festival.

The formulation of Dogme 95 was consistent with von Trier’s

portfolio, for Vinterberg it proved a useful stepping stone towards

establishing himself as a feature director and showed he was not afraid to

tackle important social issues.

Dogme 95

In the early 1970s, not long after The Hays Code3 had been withdrawn,

a new generation of Hollywood directors began to emerge, pointing the

industry in a new direction of film. Upon its theatrical release in 1975

Jaws (Steven Spielberg) smashed box office records generating a positive

response among both critics and audiences. It remained unbeaten in its

position until Star Wars (George Lucas 1977) was released4. Jaws is

considered to be the inherent god mother of blockbuster film and began the

era of New Hollywood or the Movie Brats, who stirred cinema in the 1980s

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3 The Hays Code (also known as The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930) was a strict policy of censorship guidelines governed by The Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc. (MPPDA) that restricted content in films involving (and not limited to) nudity, violence, adultery and profanity. It was formed in the 1930s and was withdrawn in the 1960s with the current Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) film rating system taking its place.

4 Lewis and Smoodin, op. cit. p.64-65.

into something hi-concept and consumer driven. The stylistic structure Jaws

held over the cinema of the auteur kick started an era where American

cinema became driven by special effects and the continued success of

Spielberg’s vision under economic policy gave birth to a new mode of

heightened cinema.

Spielberg helped to shape movie going culture and ‘in doing so

presented a model of filmmaking for a generation of “summer films”.’ (Lewis

and Smoodin 2007:64-5) in essence: he created the summer blockbuster

tradition that still exists in the marketplace today.

By the early 1990s the worlds marketplace was saturated with

Hollywood spectacles competing against each other, directors like James

Cameron began to pioneer special effects with films such as The Terminator

(1991) and The Abyss (1989). The blockbuster director employed a similar

narrative framework to that of the heros journey5. The narrative structure

of the heros journey is summed up by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero

with a Thousand Faces (1968) as being:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of

supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a

decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious

adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. (Campbell

1968:30)

By providing a plot structure that is very basic and a proven method

in storytelling the blockbuster director and studios made sure their multi-

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5 ‘The hero’s journey’ is a basic structure employed for narrative storytelling, especially in screenplays and was first theorised by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). When deconstructed many Hollywood films, particularly those of commercial success as opposed to critical, can be seen to fit its methodology.

million dollar spectacles were easily accessible and digestible to a market

that was demographically diverse and varied.

Few directors were practicing art films at the time and if they were,

they were not successful in dollar terms. Von Trier and Vinterberg were

aware of what was happening in the industry abroad and locally. European

films, especially Danish, were getting less recognition in their homeland

let alone in other countries. Cinema screens would much rather show back to

back Hollywood epics than independent features shot by a Danish crew with

relatively unknown Danish actors.

Von Trier and Vinterberg understood the industrial climate and saw

the need to address the issue and Dogme 95 seemed to be the ‘rescue action’

with all the answers. In March 1995 von Trier and Vinterberg held a press

conference during the event Le cinéma vers son deuxiéme siécle, it was

celebrating the first one hundred years of film making and had a series of

seminars discussing cinema and where it was headed in its second century.

It was symbolic that the event was being held at the Odéon, one of France’s

six national theaters, for it was here in 1968 during the Paris student

riots that the theatre warmly opened its door to young performers and

artists who were trying to issue in a new era of performance art and

experimental works.

Dogme 95, by modern standards, was considered to be experimental, it

certainly did not fit a distributors mold as ‘marketable material’. The

press conference held by von Trier and Vinterberg was short, it started and

concluded with von Trier throwing at the small contingent of journalists

handfuls of red colored sheets of paper with ‘The Dogme 95 Manifesto’

written on one side and the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ on the other.

After recouping themselves the journalists asked a series of

questions and von Trier gave indecisive, short answers before leaving

abruptly. Although the Dogme 95 manifesto was launched in 1995 it was to be

11

some three years later before the first of the Dogme 95 films was to

actually be seen. This lag meant some saw Dogme 95 as a joke or publicity

stunt with no meat to the bones.

At the Cannes film festival in 1998 two films were selected to be

screened only days apart, they were known as Dogme #1 (Festen Thomas

Vinterberg 1998) and Dogme #2 (The Idiots Lars von Trier 1998). Von Trier

and Vinterberg, it had seemed, had lived up to their proposal from three

years earlier. The films sparked heightened discussion at the festival and

obviously drew attention, journalists and critics were interested

nonetheless to see what sort of films could come about by following the

ridiculous rules set forth the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’.

If the two films had not drawn enough discussion by simply being

selected for official competition, Festen won the Jury Prize causing a

frenzied rush for territory rights amongst distributors, it also meant that

Dogme 95 had been shoved onto the international stage. Although Idioterne

did not win any prizes it was certainly controversial regarding its subject

matter and the mere fact it was a Dogme 95 film and its brother had won a

prize meant that it became one of the hottest ‘must haves’ amongst

distributors as well.

Festen‘s award meant the judges at Cannes and industry professionals

were taking the Dogme 95 document seriously which in 1995, no one thought

was going to happen. Not only a critical success the films also proved a

small financial victory with Festen earning more than its expenses by the

time the gross was calculated and Idioterne matching its own. The rest of

the world now waited for Dogme #3 and to see what other directors would

pick up the manifesto.

The Dogme Manifesto

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It describes itself as a ‘rescue action’ with the expressed goal of

countering ‘certain tendencies’ in the cinema. In short, Dogme 95 was an

idea devised by von Trier and Vinterberg to reform filmmaking. At the time

of its announcement, they (von Trier and Vinterberg) saw cinema as being

‘cosmeticized to death’ by the use of computer generated images (CGI),

outspoken Hollywood celebrities who played fantasy characters with no

connection to the real world, narratives contained superficial action set

against lavish interiors on studio lots - even the gritty gangster drama of

Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarintino 1992) came with a style guide. They

wanted to bring cinema back to a truer state and felt it should question

and not make a mockery of life in the way the Hollywood exports do, much

like that expressed under the guise of cinéma vérité.

When examining the manifesto it becomes apparent it draws particular

parallels from other film movements with the most obvious being French New

Wave as verified by the opening statement that exclaims:

Dogme 95 has the express goal of countering ‘certain tendencies’ in

the cinema today. (Dogme 95, 1995)

This is a direct quote from Truffaut’s 1954 essay Une certaine

tendance du cinéma français. In his original essay, Truffaut slammed the

French cinema as being a ‘plagiarism of the American cinema’ (Truffaut

1954:1) and the fact Von Trier and Vinterberg chose to begin their

manifesto mirroring the words expressed by Truffaut tells us they believed

the problem to still exist in modern European cinema.

Whilst paying homage towards the ideology Truffaut put forward in

1954 and the theories championed by other notable contributors at the time,

the manifesto continues to state ‘in 1960...the goal was correct but the

means were not! The New Wave proved to be a ripple that washed ashore and

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turned to muck.’ (Dogme 95, 1995) The manifesto is making claims French New

Wave failed in realising its goal, so there sat two filmmakers who claimed

they had the means to do what the founders of French New Wave had not done.

A bold and big statement that instantly drew criticism on all fronts.

Not only is the manifesto riddled with direct quotes from earlier

movements but the very decade in which it came about also parallels the

1950s in another way: technological evolution.

Cinéma vérité became a realistic notion in the 1950s because of the

invention of light weight and portable crystal synched 16mm cameras during

the war. A portable sound recorder that was crystal synched was also

invented which meant sound could be recorded on location and matched to the

vision. The laborious task of rerecording all sound in a studio after the

film had been shot was no longer necessary. A director could potentially

take a camera operator and a sound recordist or if he wished carry both the

camera and sound recorder himself and document the immediate surroundings

in the streets, the fields, from a moving car or even an airplane.

It was not to be until the early 1990s that a technological

advancement would occur that would again redefine practices in filmmaking.

Digital video cameras became available within the consumer marketplace,

these devices could now record synched image and sound onto a single tape

with the whole device fighting in the palm of a hand. Just as there was a

technological shift that freed filmmakers in the 1950s, the 1990s saw

filmmakers able to move around the streets and carry their equipment

without crews, without the expense of laboratories or a prior knowledge of

film practice or a formal education in cinematography. People could simply

pick up a camera and begin to make their own films and thus the manifesto

stated, ‘today a technological storm is raging...for the first time anyone

can make movies.’ (Dogme 95, 1995)

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To differentiate between the amateur and the professional filmmaker,

to be considered a true Dogme 95 film the filmmaker had to ‘solemnly swear’

to adhere to the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’, a series of points that defined the

production pathway for a films creation. The rules are both contradictory

to and make a mockery of the movements seemingly well thought out

principals. One in particular, the very last rule, reads:

The director must not be credited. (Dogme 95, 1995)

It is an ironic point as the movement has a close relation to French

New Wave and directors (such as Truffaut) saw themselves as the auteurs of

their films: the film was inexplicably and creatively owned by them. To not

credit the director means the film becomes the work of a faceless author,

the author becomes the viewer and not the director. It is a direct attempt

to bring Dogme 95 closer to a ‘truthful cinema’ where seemingly there is no

creator, no man behind the curtain, it is contained as being just the

viewer and the image.

The rules force the filmmaker to adopt a documentary style. The

camera to be handheld, no lights permitted expect practicals found on

location, all shooting must be on location and props can not be bought to

the location. Unlike the polished production aesthetic that Hollywood had

perfected, the Dogme 95 film attempted to break down the fourth wall and

envelope the viewer in a realistic, gritty ‘there and now’ environment. The

use of special effects, optical filters, post-production work was banned -

the idea was to strip the movie to its barest and reveal the very bones of

its construction through the performance and narrative. If one was weak,

the Dogme 95 director could not hide it with gimmicks.

This breaking down and literal dirtying of the image frees the

director greatly. Instead of worrying about the logistics of bigger crews,

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an expensive Director of Photography and stunts the filmmaker can now grab

a camera and make a recognised film. To be clear, ‘the Dogme 95 Manifesto

does not concern itself with the economical aspects of filmmaking. A

‘dogme’ film could be low-budget or it could have a 100 million dollar

budget as long as the filmmaker follows the VOW OF CHASTITY.’ (qtd. in

Simons 2007:21).

The manifesto was not aimed at the hobbyist, von Trier had written to

prominent figures such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg asking them

to both make Dogme 95 films. Dogme 95 was supposed to be about the

filmmaker having a purifying experience, going ‘cold turkey’ and shaking

free of the confines of industry practice, in doing this the notion of

emerging with ‘truthful cinema’ was supposedly imminent though it had an

adverse effect. By choosing an anti-aesthetic film style, it lent itself to

overdramatizing the image. The camera became a ‘genre’ which was a

contradiction to rule number eight ‘genre movies are not acceptable’ (Dogme

95 1995).

By wanting to avoid Americanization of cinema and the glossy camera

work, editing and special effects used by big budget studio productions,

the Dogme 95 films which emerged, due to the restrictions, are as every bit

manipulative as any other type of construction and all resemble an

aesthetic formula that makes them look contrived and stylized.

The idea that anyone could make a Dogme 95 film if you followed the

rules was soon picked up by amateur and independent filmmakers from around

the world. Instead of following the rules they simply imitated them.

By the year 1999 the Dogme 95 secretariat had shut down and gone

‘online’ as the list of submissions for certification went from only one

every other year to several a day. One point in the rules claims that the

finished film must be presented in Academy standard 35mm, another ironic

move as the rules of Dogme 95 seemingly pit digital video (although never

16

stated) as being the first choice to shoot on, the catch which many

amateurs misunderstood. The rules makes it ‘simple’ for low budget film

making, but this rule makes the process more complex in nature as a 35mm

print is an expensive item that only serious professionals would consider.

It seemed as though the Dogme 95 concept had spiraled out of control

and became a marketing ploy by itself.

the VOW OF CHASTITY

The manifesto described the goal Dogme 95 had set itself, the ‘VOW OF

CHASTITY’ was the means to achieving that goal. They existed as a set of

rules to guide and assist the would be Dogme 95 filmmaker towards

discovering a ‘truthful cinema’.

When breaking down the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ it becomes apparent the

rules are to serve two purposes, one set of rules concerns itself with the

technicality of the films production and the other set concerns the film in

relation to genre. It becomes very apparent how relations to Neo-Realism

and French New Waves come about.

Rule 1 states that filming can only be done on location. Both Neo-

Realists and the French New Wave directors not only shot on location due to

budget restrictions but also thought it served the ideal better, a

contrived studio set only lent itself towards deception of the truth.

Rule 2 explains that all sound must be captured on location and never

recored or produce apart from the images including the use of score music.

Unfortunately, the Neo-Realists did not have the technical means to be able

to record sound directly on location and often scrapped it to free the

camera up, the Italians would re-record the sound later in studios though

by the time French New Wave had implemented itself the Nagra recording

system which was crystal synced with film cameras was available and

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filmmakers were able to record the sound of the performance as well the

image. Dogme 95 suggests that all sound is to be diegetic, sound whose

source is visible on the screen, constricting the audio to the natural

environment the performers and crew find themselves in.

Rule 3 explains that only movement attainable by holding the camera

by hand is allowed which mirrors that of both Neo-Realism and French New

Wave. Smaller cameras permit themselves to being hand held, which meant a

greater freedom of movement that resulted in shaky images and a documentary

like feel to the final image and subject.

Rule 4 states that color is the only acceptable finishing look and

not black and white. This could be a ‘tongue in cheek’ dig at the Golden

Age of Hollywood where the majority of films were black and white and their

most grandest of epics such as The Wizard Of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939) and

Gone With The Wind (Victor Flemming 1939) were produced in Technicolor.

These were polished films that appeared glossy and dreamlike, both the

French New Wave and Neo-Realists shot on black and white as at the time it

was technically impossible to get colour stock that was affordable.

Shooting in colour is in keeping with the modern times and black and white

could be considered as a ‘cosmetic’.

Rule 5 further elaborates no optical work or filters can be used on

the image, what you see is what you get. The French New Wave and Neo-

Realists had very limited access to special effects and relied on the

strength of their choice of location, performance and story to carry the

film. By banning all sorts of modern effects, von Trier and Vinterberg are

forcing the director into a post-war European setting where it was just the

camera and its lens.

Rule 9 is one of the more bizarre in which it states the finishing

film must be presented on Academy 35mm. Another ‘tongue in cheek’ comment,

certainly the Neo-Realists and French New Wave had no other real choice but

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to present their films on 35mm as that was the cinematic standard and most

affordable pathway in the 1950s and 1960s, but in an age of digital movie

making it seems like a slap in the face to all the independent directors

wanting to make their own Dogme 95 film, and thats exactly what it was, to

deter amateurs. Dogme 95 was considered to be an invitation to already

established and professional filmmakers to undergo a cleansing of cinema

and purify themselves in the process, by making this a requirement it meant

a certain caliber of filmmaker, one with prior knowledge of the film

medium, would engage with the process.

The rest of the rules, save number 10 are about genre. Rule 6 takes a

strong stance against simulated violence, something Hollywood in the 1980s

thrived on! If it is not real it can not be shot and no weapons or murders

were to take place.

Rule 7 makes sure that the film is to occur in the present time it is

made, one of the most striking points of Neo-Realism and French New Wave

was the movements came about after the war and looked at what had become of

their societies as a direct result of the war itself.

Rule 8 clearly makes a stance to say no genre films, that is no film

will be defined as an action piece, a musical or drama and so on. The films

of the Neo-Realists and French New Wave have formulated their own genre,

and so has Dogme 95. A genre is defined by a cohesive look amongst a group

of films, be that by style, narrative themes or subject matter. Eventually

as more Dogme 95 films were recognised the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ was

transferred from a practical guide to find the truth in cinema to a ‘look

book’. The Dogme 95 films shared a collective and stylistic branding giving

them their own genre.

Rule 10 makes claim that the director must not be credited, perhaps

the most original of all the rules to come about in all the movements to

date. The idea the director must not be credited and relinquish themselves

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as an artist is not clearly defined by the manifesto or the ‘VOW OF

CHASTITY’. The ruling is there to imply that what you are seeing is a slice

of life and not a piece of art made through a contrivance or single entity.

The cinema screen acts as a direct window onto the world and does not

seemingly pass through that of a directors careful gaze and guidance. In

the 1970s and 1980s directors became as famous as the stars themselves, and

so to not credit the director put the emphasis back on the film and not the

filmmaker.

Emphasizing Story and Performance

On the tail end of Hollywoods success filmmakers began to notice the

trends in its production methods, notably the way studios employed their

crews and shooting phase. The ‘Hollywood’ way of producing films was and

remains to be very regimented and structured hierarchy. Crew sizes evolved

to hundreds of people assigned to single tasks, no longer would a director

go on set unless he were accompanied by his assistants, trailer, caterers

let alone the production crew! A Hollywood crew has been fittingly referred

to as a shark, a giant predator that once the mechanics start can not be

stopped and it will consume everything in its pathway.

This structure means that recorded actions and sentences for

performance sake must be repeated multiple times as different modes of

shooting coverage occurs to ensure there is enough overlapping footage to

make multiple edits of the same scene. This means the final piece or

performance would be a rehearsed dramatic prose rather than something that

captured ‘the moment’. Actors hold a fear that because of the amount of

times they have to repeat their words and actions their performance could

become stagnant and loose its life. Dogme 95, like that of French New Wave,

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was to breathe life back into performance cinema, to capture moments as

they happened.

The working mold of Hollywood began to infiltrate its way into the

molding of other countries who set up their productions to mirror that of

the elite. Everything was to be same, except for the budgets of course.

Although Breaking The Waves (Lars Von Trier 1996) appears modest next to

Independence Day (Roland Emmerich 1996) both feature a crew size of over

one hundred production personnel and employed a multitude of computer

generated effects. Independence Day sported a $75USD million budget and

Breaking The Waves was rumored to be made for around $1USD million.

One of Dogme 95’s most prolific aims was to reconstruct the methods

of the working production crew, by minimizing the scale it allowed the

director to get back to the essence of filmmaking and focusing only on

story and performance, rather than overseeing heads of departments. It

lends itself to shooting as the story unfolds and its method is open to

changes as they occur which gives a rawness and a reality in the films that

resemble every day life.

Both von Trier and Vinterberg searched for sincerity in their two

films. The technical restrictions of the ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ are enforced to

achieve a kind of authenticity or ‘realism’, cinéma vérité if you will. It

is drawing on the Bazinian ideal of cinematic representation in which

theorist Andre Bazin argued for films that depicted what he saw as

‘objective reality’.

Technical devices in main stream films are seen by Dogme 95 as

cosmetics that create illusions. Special effects, elaborate stunts, bigger

than life costumes and characters distance the audience in the real world

from that of a filmic world. Dogme 95 attempted to breakdown that barrier

by presenting a film that would invite audience members to identify with

21

the ‘real world’ settings found within it. The Dogme’s principles give the

films a self-awareness.

For example, in Festen the viewer could very well mistake Anthony Dod

Mantle’s footage as the recordings of a guest at the party who happened to

have a video camera. Instantly through the hand held footage, the intimate

close ups and pacing of the camera one can not help but feel a nostalgic

sense of participating in the dinner. The viewer is aware of the camera, it

and the operator are seen three times6 during the film which also helps in

suggesting the camera operator is a participant in the nights events. Yet

at the same time as being apparent it promotes a nostalgic atmosphere.

Vinterberg is crafty in establishing the dinner to be reminiscent of

the traditional family get together as he features everything from arrivals

to closed door arguments, gossip amongst guests and dinner party toasts. By

presenting these very clichéd mechanisms in a very classic narrative

structure he is evoking memories in his audience.

Without the distractions of a large working crew and sets Vinterberg

helped to lift the veil from the cinema screen in an intimate setting and

tap into the viewers self-conscious, perhaps the viewer has experienced a

similar family event where something was said or done and it too was

captured on film. By breaking away from the polished production aesthetic

and presenting a raw chain of events, when Christians revelation of the

incest and rape emerges it comes as a shock that affects the viewer on an

emotional level due to the involvement the audience member has invested.

In Summary

When the words Dogme 95 are typed into a search engine such as

YouTube.com, the results adhere to a long list of films that at first seem

22

6 Once in the rear view mirror of a car, once in the sunglasses worn by Helene, and once in the mirror in Mette’s and Michael’s bathroom.

to fit the manifestos principles, hand held, location shooting, diegetic

sound and so forth. Yet they are not stringent to Dogme 95’s ideals and

fail to live up to many of the manifestos forewords. In terms of

dramaturgy, they are all contrived, superficial action occurs and the

performance is not ‘real’ but farce. The ‘VOW OF CHASTITY’ has been torn

apart from the manifesto and used in isolation. It appears that what von

Trier and Vinterberg were trying to avoid, the cinematic aesthetic and

falseness in narrative, by breaking down the aesthetic into simpler terms

and making the mode of film production more accessible meant that

filmmakers with no previous experience or training believed that they too

could make a recognised film if they stuck to the rules but in doing so

failed to achieve in the movements values by only honoring the practical

side. The Dogme 95 manifesto was to go against the cosmetics of cinema but

in doing so created its own cosmetics.

It was a bold movement that forced the industry to reconsider what it

thought cinema to be. Somehow audiences and movie goers got lost along the

way with the invention of New-Hollywood and the blockbuster, becoming lazy

with consuming films that are easy to please and require little effort to

engage. As much as the writers for Cahiers du Cinéma and the idea of cinéma

vérité challenged filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s, Dogme 95 would stand

alone as an idea that would challenge filmmakers and distributors in the

1990s and force them to shift their thinking and start to discuss if an

‘art cinema’ truly did exist.

Von Trier and Vinterberg understood that film production was

expensive and could inhibit legitimate filmmakers in the world who did not

have access to proper financing and technical equipment or personnel to

create a recognised feature film. Within the hundreds of certified films

there are several dozen that are worthy of being recognised as notable and

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these films could potentially have never been made unless they fitted into

the Dogme 95 mould.

As an already established and decorated filmmaker, von Trier took a

step back in aesthetic and went down a notch to show others its okay to use

digital video, that using digital video does not undermine your ability as

a filmmaker, it is still a real film and it is the story and your execution

that matters not the mode of production that will define who you are as a

filmmaker.

Through out my research it has come to my attention that I believe

von Trier and Vinterberg did not want to achieve a collective goal towards

replicating cinéma vérité with Dogme 95 but instead wanted to take its

ideals of presenting a truthful cinema and focus on the point of

storytelling on the human condition and explore that in an era where it is

often overlooked.

Dogme 95 was the new ‘old’ movement in cinema, using the ideals of

the past it offered an alternative and promoted discussion prompting

reaction from the heads of studios and distributors to reevaluate their own

methods and question whether the right form of cinema was and is still

being produced.

‘The film-maker’s efforts go mainly into revealing what are to him

the most essential parts of existing reality, rather than creating a

new reality for the camera.’ (Issari 1979:14)

24

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Filmography

Breaking the Waves. Dir. Lars Von Trier. By Lars Von Trier, Robby Müller,

Per Streit, Anders Refn, and Joachim Holbek. Prod. Vibeke Windeløv, Peter

Aalbæk Jensen, Lars Jönsson, Karl Juliusson, Manon Rasmussen, Jennifer

Jorfald, and Sanne Gravfort. Perf. Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, Katrin

Cartlidge, Jean-Marc Barr, and Adrian Rawlins. October Films, 1996. DVD.

Festen. Dir. Thomas Vinterberg. Prod. Birgitte Hald and Morten Kaufmann.

Perf. Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Paprika Steen,

Trine Dyrholm, Helle Dolleris, Therese Glahn. Nimbus Film Productions,

1998. DVD.

Idioterne. Dir. Lars Von Trier. Prod. Svend Abrahamsen, Dag Alveberg, Peter

Aalbæk Jensen, Erik Schut, Marianne Slot, Peter Van Vogelpoel, and Vibeke

Windeløv. Perf. Bodil Jørgensen, Jens Albinus, Anne Louise Hassing, Troels

Lyby, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Louise Mieritz. Zentropa Entertainment, 1998. DVD.

27