The Fiction in Fact

John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath film just like Steinbeck’s novel was perceived by many of the public as truth. The film was shot using similar techniques to those that a documentary uses. However, just because the novel and the movie are somewhat truthful does not mean they are objective truth. Documentaries, movies, novels, photos, and essays are all subjective in some way or another. Documentaries are usually presented as objective truth, however this is not true. Documentarians, just like feature film directors can use many film techniques to slant the view of the film. John R. Smith writes in Making the cut: documentary work in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath about an author named Robert Cole who examined these types of techniques. “Coles sees the documentarian as a kind of storyteller who constructs a narrative in which questions of organization become the guiding principle.”(Smith) Directors, cinematographers, and editors decide what is in every frame. Some characters are in the shot, others are not. Who sands next to who and why? What shot precedes, and follows each other shot? Is the shot a wide one or a close up? A close up has much different feelings then a wide shot. Is there music playing in the background? What kind of music is it? What actor was chosen to play the role? In many ways, a movie can be even more subjective than novels. Smith goes on to write about how Ford, Steinbeck, and other artists of the time use techniques in their field to shape their piece of work. The first example he talks about is Dorothea Lange, and her photos called An American Exodus. Although these pictures were taken at the time, and of real people, Lange was making decisions when taking the photographs. She may have omitted people or objects that distort the truth. "Dorothea Lange has, in a sense, removed that woman from the very world she is meant, as a Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer, to document. The tent is gone, and the land on which it is pitched, and the utensils"(Smith) Smith later writes how Ford makes similar choices in his feature film on the Grapes of Wrath. An example can be seen during the movie when Ma Joad is looking through her photographs before she leaves for the road. We see what photographs see is looking at, but when we read the book, we do not know what the photographs are. Ford is selecting the photos we see on screen. All artist including Ford, Steinbeck, and Lange have to make decisions when creating there work, and us, the viewers must be conscience of this. They are making statements when they make these decisions, and we need to consider them before we accept everything as objective truth.