Documentary Film Classics consists primarily of close readings of a number of major landmarks of documentary film: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1921), Luis Buñuel's Land without Bread (1932), Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955), Jean Rouch's and Edgar Morin's Chronicle of a Summer (1961), Richard Leacock's and Joyce Chopra's A Happy Mother's Day (1963), and D. A. Pennebaker's Don't Look Back (1967). These are films that are all but obligatory for any course surveying the documentary tradition, films I have been thinking about and teaching for many years, films I am continually rediscovering through my students' responses as well as my own.

The critical readings that comprise this book are meant to guide readers through the cinematic “texts” of these classic documentaries – sequence by sequence, sometimes shot by shot – in a way that leads to a fuller appreciation both of their historical significance and their aspirations and achievements as films. In the spirit of my earlier books, Hitchcock—The Murderous Gaze and The “I” of the Camera, these readings, individually and together, also sustain philosophical investigations of a number of interrelated issues and themes.

Despite the inclusion of accomplished documentary filmmakers in so many university film faculties, the field of film study has only recently begun to show significant interest in documentaries. Even now, there remains a striking dearth of serious critical studies of documentary films.