An Effectively Dramatic Record Of Truly Mundane Behavior !!!

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."-J Cocteau
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Louis Malle's Humain, trop humain (1973) is an extraordinary documentary in so many ways, a documentary focused on the actual mass production of automobiles, and their subsequent display for sale at an auto show.

This documentary is unique because of its lack of speech. The scenes in the auto plant, which consume most of the film, are devoid of any speech whatsoever, allowing the viewer to observe the silent workers doing their particular minor task in the long, assembly line process. There is speech heard by the viewer in the scenes at the auto show, but these aren't words spoken to the camera at all, but are words spoken between potential buyers, and between potential buyers and salesmen. Even in the auto shows scenes, the speech heard by the viewer seems to have been surreptitiously recorded through hidden microphones pre-positioned strategically inside of cars, and around the cars, to record naïve conversations au naturel. All the people at the auto show seem completely unaware that they are even on camera, suggesting even surreptitious pre-positioning of cameras before the auto show began. Overall, this film gives the viewer the experience of being a totally "invisible" bystander to all the human activity transpiring before him. As a doc fanatic, that is a very unique viewing experience for me.

The film is divided into three distinct segments: 1) We see chronologically arranged scenes of a complete auto being manufactured from the scene of a warehouse filled with giant rolls of sheet metal, all the way to the completed autos being driven out of the plant. 2) We see potential buyers, and salesmen at the auto show in various stages of the auto purchase process. The auto show scenes are particularly striking for me, coming after the auto manufacturing scenes, because the discussions and negotiations of the potential buyers reveal a total lack of understanding, and appreciation of the intricate and extended process of actually manufacturing the auto they are presently considering. The speech of the potential buyers, and the salesmen is all centered the issues of the features available on a certain auto, and the price of the various features, and the price of the auto as a whole. 3) The viewer returns to the auto manufacturing plant to again observe assembly line workers going about their silent tasks, but the scenes now are more selective, and not at all reflective of the whole manufacturing process, as was the case in segment 1. This third segment seems to be focused on selective assembly line tasks that are particularly dehumanizing, such as the repetitive placement of the same part on the same place on a chassis, or tasks that are particularly distasteful, such as a painter covered head to toe in a protective suit, and wearing a protective mouthpiece, all the while plying his task in a spray booth filled with a noxious fog of aerated paint. This third segment seems geared to display the dehumanizing, and distasteful existence of the common worker in a modern industrial setting in general, with the auto plant being a specific example.

Overall, this film is an incredibly detailed record of mundane human behavior, yet, in a way that I just can't explain, really portrays the drama of human existence quite effectively, and even quite poignantly.