Style
The situation of the Weatherman as fugitives wanted by the FBI necessitated an unconventional style in conducting their interviews. The footage was filmed in only three days, and Wexler shot the participants from behind or through a screen in order to conceal their individual identities. The film is unique in that the viewer is able to see the filmmakers but not the subjects themselves. The interactions between the Weathermen and filmmakers raise many questions about the role of documentary film and the contrived nature of its set-ups. This is apparent at several points in the film where the Weathermen express concern over the filmmakers catching their faces on camera, or complain about the artificiality of the overall conversation taking place. In fact, de Antonio describes going out and burning a pile of possible incriminating film negatives following the filming (Rosenthal, 1978). The collective nature of the group led the filmmakers to use group interviews, and allow individuals to talk at length about their thoughts on the American social and political climate, as well as their role in this situation and bringing about change. Unlike many documentaries that actively probe interviewees, the directors of Underground instead sit back and allow the Weathermen to speak. While they do interrupt at times, and do provoke the group with probing questions, there is a recognition of the unstable position of the people they are working with, which, in the end, results in their stepping back and letting the group express itself on its own terms. This film uses the voices of the Weathermen as narration, while employing mainly archival footage to create juxtapositions that illustrate the words. As in his other films, de Antonio purchased the rights to use images from a number of other prominent radical documentaries including Gray and Alk's The Murder of Fred Hampton, Chris Marker's film on the Armies of the Night Pentagon demonstrations, Cinda Firestone's Attica, Wexler-Fonda-Hayden's Introduction to the Enemy, and his own In the Year of the Pig (Waugh, 1976).
Read more about this topic: Underground (1976 Film)
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“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
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