Sherman's March
Encyclopedia
Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986
documentary film
written and directed by Ross McElwee
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
.
's march through Georgia
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
") during the American Civil War
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
piece.
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
."
Principal photography
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
According to Paul Attanasio
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986
documentary film
written and directed by Ross McElwee
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
.
's march through Georgia
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
") during the American Civil War
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
piece.
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
."
Principal photography
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
According to Paul Attanasio
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986
documentary film
written and directed by Ross McElwee
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
.
's march through Georgia
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
") during the American Civil War
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
piece.
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
."
Principal photography
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
According to Paul Attanasio
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
1986 in film
-Events:*April 12 - Actor Morgan Mason marries The Go-Go's Belinda Carlisle.*April 26 - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger marries television journalist Maria Shriver.*May - Actress Heather Locklear marries Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee....
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
written and directed by Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, and Harvard professor, known for his autobiographical films about his family and personal life, usually interwoven with an episodic journey of some sort. Many cultural aspects of his southern upbringing are present in his...
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Background
McElwee initially planned to make a film about the effects of General William Tecumseh ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
's march through Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...
") during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
piece.
Production
According to McElwee, "Backyard [his previous film] was a sketch for Sherman's March, an experiment in how I could approach the bigger film"; Backyard is also "cruder" because, according to McElwee, "I was just learning to shoot as a one person crew. I was just getting over that odd sense of camera shyness in reverse. It takes awhile to summon the gumption to shoot people you know well, to be able to face them and talk to them as you're filming. Also, I was using a NagraNagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
Nagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
Epiphany (feeling)
An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...
."
Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
Reception
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
Jim McBride
Jim McBride is an American television and film director, film producer and screenwriter.-Filmography:* David Holzman's Diary * My Girlfriend's Wedding...
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson is an American actor and screenwriter.He is the oldest son of Minor Lee and Louise Carson; his brothers include David Lee Carson, born 1943, and Carl Fletcher Carson, born 1945...
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary is a 1967 American film, directed by Jim McBride, which spoofs the art of documentary-making.It tells the story of a young man making a documentary of his life, who discovers something important about himself while making the movie....
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
The distributor of First Run FeaturesFirst Run FeaturesFirst Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City. First Run was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers in order to advance the distribution of independent film...
saw Sherman's March at the IFP (the Independent Feature Project) in New York and immediately said he'd take it. I wanted to shop around a bit, because it's a very small company and I wanted to see what else was available. I got turned down by every other middle range distributor. I didn't even bother to go to the studios or the major distribution outlets. First Run Features was the only company willing to take a chance on it and, in fact, it did terrifically well. According to their statistics, until Strangers in Good Company came along it was their top grossing film. It's supposed to be the tenth highest grossing feature documentary of all time. Isn't that incredible? I could never have imagined it being that kind of a film.
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly is a film journal published by University of California Press, in Berkeley, California, United States. It was first published in 1945 as Hollywood Quarterly, was renamed The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television in 1951, and received its current title in 1958...
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
We get to know McElwee's (or McElwee's filmic personaPersonaA persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
's) hopes, concerns, nightmares; and we are behind the camera with McElwee as he uses the film-making process to forge new relationships and to revise previously important relationships. As is true in many literary first-person narrativeFirst-person narrativeFirst-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
s, McElwee's approach in Sherman's March is simultaneously very revealing and somewhat mysterious: the candidness of the scenes is frequently startling, but the more the film — and McElwee-as-narrator — reveals, the more we realize that there are many aspects of the relationships he is recording that we are not privy to. We cannot help but wonder about the narrator as we experience things with him.
According to Paul Attanasio
Paul Attanasio
Paul Albert Attanasio is an American screenwriter and producer of film and television, who is currently an executive producer on the television series House.-Life and career:...
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
Epic (genre)
An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry. However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, and video games where the story is centered on heroic characters, and the action takes place on a grand scale, just as in epic poetry...
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
External links
- Sherman’s March from the Sundance InstituteSundance InstituteSundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
- Clips at Ross McElwee's website
Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986
1986 in film
-Events:*April 12 - Actor Morgan Mason marries The Go-Go's Belinda Carlisle.*April 26 - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger marries television journalist Maria Shriver.*May - Actress Heather Locklear marries Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee....
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
written and directed by Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, and Harvard professor, known for his autobiographical films about his family and personal life, usually interwoven with an episodic journey of some sort. Many cultural aspects of his southern upbringing are present in his...
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Background
McElwee initially planned to make a film about the effects of General William Tecumseh ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
's march through Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...
") during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
piece.
Production
According to McElwee, "Backyard [his previous film] was a sketch for Sherman's March, an experiment in how I could approach the bigger film"; Backyard is also "cruder" because, according to McElwee, "I was just learning to shoot as a one person crew. I was just getting over that odd sense of camera shyness in reverse. It takes awhile to summon the gumption to shoot people you know well, to be able to face them and talk to them as you're filming. Also, I was using a NagraNagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
Nagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
Epiphany (feeling)
An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...
."
Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
Reception
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
Jim McBride
Jim McBride is an American television and film director, film producer and screenwriter.-Filmography:* David Holzman's Diary * My Girlfriend's Wedding...
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson is an American actor and screenwriter.He is the oldest son of Minor Lee and Louise Carson; his brothers include David Lee Carson, born 1943, and Carl Fletcher Carson, born 1945...
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary is a 1967 American film, directed by Jim McBride, which spoofs the art of documentary-making.It tells the story of a young man making a documentary of his life, who discovers something important about himself while making the movie....
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
The distributor of First Run FeaturesFirst Run FeaturesFirst Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City. First Run was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers in order to advance the distribution of independent film...
saw Sherman's March at the IFP (the Independent Feature Project) in New York and immediately said he'd take it. I wanted to shop around a bit, because it's a very small company and I wanted to see what else was available. I got turned down by every other middle range distributor. I didn't even bother to go to the studios or the major distribution outlets. First Run Features was the only company willing to take a chance on it and, in fact, it did terrifically well. According to their statistics, until Strangers in Good Company came along it was their top grossing film. It's supposed to be the tenth highest grossing feature documentary of all time. Isn't that incredible? I could never have imagined it being that kind of a film.
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly is a film journal published by University of California Press, in Berkeley, California, United States. It was first published in 1945 as Hollywood Quarterly, was renamed The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television in 1951, and received its current title in 1958...
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
We get to know McElwee's (or McElwee's filmic personaPersonaA persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
's) hopes, concerns, nightmares; and we are behind the camera with McElwee as he uses the film-making process to forge new relationships and to revise previously important relationships. As is true in many literary first-person narrativeFirst-person narrativeFirst-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
s, McElwee's approach in Sherman's March is simultaneously very revealing and somewhat mysterious: the candidness of the scenes is frequently startling, but the more the film — and McElwee-as-narrator — reveals, the more we realize that there are many aspects of the relationships he is recording that we are not privy to. We cannot help but wonder about the narrator as we experience things with him.
According to Paul Attanasio
Paul Attanasio
Paul Albert Attanasio is an American screenwriter and producer of film and television, who is currently an executive producer on the television series House.-Life and career:...
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
Epic (genre)
An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry. However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, and video games where the story is centered on heroic characters, and the action takes place on a grand scale, just as in epic poetry...
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
External links
- Sherman’s March from the Sundance InstituteSundance InstituteSundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
- Clips at Ross McElwee's website
Sherman's March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romantic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation is a 1986
1986 in film
-Events:*April 12 - Actor Morgan Mason marries The Go-Go's Belinda Carlisle.*April 26 - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger marries television journalist Maria Shriver.*May - Actress Heather Locklear marries Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee....
documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
written and directed by Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee
Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, and Harvard professor, known for his autobiographical films about his family and personal life, usually interwoven with an episodic journey of some sort. Many cultural aspects of his southern upbringing are present in his...
. It was awarded the Grand Jury prize at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. and in 2000, was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Background
McElwee initially planned to make a film about the effects of General William Tecumseh ShermanWilliam Tecumseh Sherman
William Tecumseh Sherman was an American soldier, businessman, educator and author. He served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War , for which he received recognition for his outstanding command of military strategy as well as criticism for the harshness of the "scorched...
's march through Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
and the Carolinas (the Georgia portion of which is commonly called the "March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea
Sherman's March to the Sea is the name commonly given to the Savannah Campaign conducted around Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864 by Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman of the Union Army in the American Civil War...
") during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. A traumatic breakup McElwee experienced prior to filming made it difficult for him to separate personal from professional concerns, shifting the focus of the film to create a more personal story about the women in his life, love, romance, and religion. Other themes include the spectre of nuclear holocaust in the context of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and the legacy and complexity of General Sherman's own life.
Structurally, the film follows a repetitive narrative pattern. McElwee becomes enamored with various women, eventually developing feelings for each of his subjects, only to have his romantic hopes dashed. The film is often considered a cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
piece.
Production
According to McElwee, "Backyard [his previous film] was a sketch for Sherman's March, an experiment in how I could approach the bigger film"; Backyard is also "cruder" because, according to McElwee, "I was just learning to shoot as a one person crew. I was just getting over that odd sense of camera shyness in reverse. It takes awhile to summon the gumption to shoot people you know well, to be able to face them and talk to them as you're filming. Also, I was using a NagraNagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
4, a very large tape recorder: it weighs 20 pounds and I carried it slung over my shoulder. For Sherman's March I used a miniature Nagra
Nagra
Nagra is the trademark referring to any of the series of mostly battery-operated portable professional audio recorders produced by Kudelski SA, based in Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland....
SN, a very highly developed piece of recording equipment that could fit on my belt. This technological improvement made shooting much easier.
Initially, McElwee thought the film would be a "synthesis of Backyard and Space Coast," but the day after filming the Scottish games, his sister "said—somewhat seriously, somewhat joking—'You should use the camera as a way to meet women.' She's sincerely upset about my having ended my relationship with my girlfriend, and she's looking for ways to get me back on my feet. ...[A]t the point when she gave me her advice about how to use the camera, I experienced a minor epiphany
Epiphany (feeling)
An epiphany is the sudden realization or comprehension of the essence or meaning of something...
."
Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
last about five months, and, according to McElwee, "I'd guess the total amount of footage I actually shot was about 25 hours."
Reception
Vincent CanbyVincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
, in an "NYT Critics' Pick" review of the documentary, called McElwee a "film maker-anthropologist with a rare appreciation for the eccentric details of our edgy civilization"; the film "which was made in 1981, is a timely memoir of the 80's. It's also a very cheerful recollection of the kind of self-searching, home-movie documentaries that Jim McBride
Jim McBride
Jim McBride is an American television and film director, film producer and screenwriter.-Filmography:* David Holzman's Diary * My Girlfriend's Wedding...
, the director, and L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson
L. M. Kit Carson is an American actor and screenwriter.He is the oldest son of Minor Lee and Louise Carson; his brothers include David Lee Carson, born 1943, and Carl Fletcher Carson, born 1945...
, the writer and actor, satirized so brilliantly in their fiction film, David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary
David Holzman's Diary is a 1967 American film, directed by Jim McBride, which spoofs the art of documentary-making.It tells the story of a young man making a documentary of his life, who discovers something important about himself while making the movie....
.
In an interview with Paula Hunt for MovieMaker Magazine in 1994, discussing the distribution of the film, Ross McElwee stated:
The distributor of First Run FeaturesFirst Run FeaturesFirst Run Features is an independent film distribution company based in New York City. First Run was founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers in order to advance the distribution of independent film...
saw Sherman's March at the IFP (the Independent Feature Project) in New York and immediately said he'd take it. I wanted to shop around a bit, because it's a very small company and I wanted to see what else was available. I got turned down by every other middle range distributor. I didn't even bother to go to the studios or the major distribution outlets. First Run Features was the only company willing to take a chance on it and, in fact, it did terrifically well. According to their statistics, until Strangers in Good Company came along it was their top grossing film. It's supposed to be the tenth highest grossing feature documentary of all time. Isn't that incredible? I could never have imagined it being that kind of a film.
As prelude to a summer 1988 Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly
Film Quarterly is a film journal published by University of California Press, in Berkeley, California, United States. It was first published in 1945 as Hollywood Quarterly, was renamed The Quarterly of Film Radio and Television in 1951, and received its current title in 1958...
interview with McElwee, Scott MacDonald wrote:
We get to know McElwee's (or McElwee's filmic personaPersonaA persona, in the word's everyday usage, is a social role or a character played by an actor. The word is derived from Latin, where it originally referred to a theatrical mask. The Latin word probably derived from the Etruscan word "phersu", with the same meaning, and that from the Greek πρόσωπον...
's) hopes, concerns, nightmares; and we are behind the camera with McElwee as he uses the film-making process to forge new relationships and to revise previously important relationships. As is true in many literary first-person narrativeFirst-person narrativeFirst-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
s, McElwee's approach in Sherman's March is simultaneously very revealing and somewhat mysterious: the candidness of the scenes is frequently startling, but the more the film — and McElwee-as-narrator — reveals, the more we realize that there are many aspects of the relationships he is recording that we are not privy to. We cannot help but wonder about the narrator as we experience things with him.
According to Paul Attanasio
Paul Attanasio
Paul Albert Attanasio is an American screenwriter and producer of film and television, who is currently an executive producer on the television series House.-Life and career:...
, "[t]he richness of Sherman's March comes from the way McElwee, in his roundabout way, completes the portrait of Sherman he originally set out to achieve"; but "[t]he chief problem is that, at 2½ hours, it's about an hour too long. It's as if the very weakness, the retiring politeness, that has made McElwee such an interesting comic character has also made him a crummy editor of his own film — like the women who mostly reject him, you don't really want to spend your life with him. United by theme rather than story, "Sherman's March" doesn't progress, it only deepens. And at epic
Epic (genre)
An epic is traditionally a genre of poetry, known as epic poetry. However in modern terms, epic is often extended to other art forms, such as novels, plays, films, and video games where the story is centered on heroic characters, and the action takes place on a grand scale, just as in epic poetry...
length, the film's poor technical quality wears you out."
According to a 1998 review in The Austin Chronicle, "Ross McElwee is a modern master of cinema vérité — rough, real-life documentary filmmaking that seeks to expose a subject's soul through its very lack of polish. In McElwee's case, that subject is almost always himself. Insistently personal, always autobiographical, occasionally exploitative, watching McElwee is like watching someone's (well-financed) home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
s."
Sherman's March was awarded the Grand Jury prize in the field of documentary at the 1987 Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. In 2000, the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
, calling it a "hilarious, one-of-a-kind romantic exploration of the South."
In April 2004, Slant magazine, reviewing the film's newly released DVD, gave it (three stars out of five), saying it "looks and sounds like its [sic] from 1986, but no amount of dirt and noise (and there's some here and there) can diffuse any of the film's magic."
External links
- Sherman’s March from the Sundance InstituteSundance InstituteSundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford in 1981 that actively advances the work of filmmakers and storytellers worldwide...
- Clips at Ross McElwee's website