High School

The documentary takes place inside an American high school. The camera stands in the corridors, the classrooms, the administrators' offices and the gymnasium. There is no narrator and no interview. A teacher reads a poem, another talks about the sexes, a vice principal disciplines a student, and discipline is discussed at a parents' meeting. A girl is warned about the length of her prom dress. At the end a principal reads a letter from a former student in Vietnam; the boy has gone to the front and is thanking the school. Frederick Wiseman directs. It is an American production and the film is in black and white. It was shot at Northeast High School in Philadelphia. Wiseman's method is direct cinema; the narrative does not comment and the order is built in the cutting. For a long time the film could not be shown in the area where it was made; local screenings were restricted because of a disagreement with the school administration. The matter it treats is obedience; the narrative shows the school not as a place that gives knowledge but as an institution that orders behaviour. The sequence of the cut is its real instrument; each scene gives new meaning to the one before. The film was taken into the National Film Registry. Its limit is form; the narrative does not direct and offers no conclusion. Who it is for: viewers who like the history of documentary and criticism of institutions. Who it is not for: there is no comment, the structure is dry, and the subject limited to one school.