For more than three decades, filmmaker Frederick Wiseman has been taking his camera down the hallways and into the dark corners of mental institutions (Titicut Follies), slaughterhouses (Meat), and department stores (Store). His latest, La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet, turns a spotlight on the venerable French dance company. TONY spoke to the 79-year-old documentarian over the phone from his office in Connecticut.

What made you choose the Paris Opera Ballet as a subject?
I’ve always liked ballet, and I spend at least half of the year living in Paris. So I approached [artistic director] Brigitte Lefevre. Not only did she say okay, she essentially said that I could do whatever I want—shoot rehearsals, go to business meetings, have the run of the place—so long as none of the dancers objected. I spent 12 weeks wandering around. It’s a beautiful building, with all those old corridors and stairways.

Given that you’ve made films about the American Ballet Theatre (1995’s Ballet) and another French arts troupe (1996’s La Comédie-Française ou L’amour joué), I’m assuming there was a leap of faith that you’d find something new here?
You mean, was I worried that I’d be repeating myself? [Laughs] No, there are indeed differences between the ABT and the Paris Opera Ballet: The repertoire is different, the way the dancers train is different. You could say that La Comédie is similar in that what’s going on reflects a bigger social picture…though hopefully that’s true of most of my work.

What is it about institutions that you still find fascinating after all these years?
They let me indulge in looking at how people act, talk and behave. One of the things that led me to make documentaries is that there’s so much drama, comedy and sadness in real life that, if you hang around long enough, you can find material that matches anything in a great novel or play. You didn’t create the scene; you were just lucky enough to be there and recognize it for what it is.

Is that what you meant when you referred to your films as “reality fiction”?
Somebody interviewed me and, as a wisecrack, I called my films reality fiction. There may be validity to the statement—the events are unstaged, yet they are organized dramatically—but I said it completely flippantly. I’m not much on classifications or definitions: Cinema vérité is simply a pompous term and “observational cinema” sounds like a lab! I make movies. That term is good enough for me.

Unlike a lot of nonfiction movies, they don’t tell us what to think.
Good! That comes from my hatred of didacticism. So many documentaries turn into works of narcissism: They aren’t about the subjects, they’re about the filmmaker’s sensibilities. That type of filmmaking has a bad tendency to leave out anything resembling ambiguity, subtlety or complexity.

Which are three things that you tend to find in reality quite a bit.
You know, I’ve noticed that as well. [Laughs]

—David Fear

La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet is now playing at Film Forum. Find showtimes

More new Film reviews

Search more than 30,000 film reviews

See more in Film