AVClub: Anyone seeking a comprehensive portrait of what civilization has been like this past half century should maybe just sit down and watch as many Frederick Wiseman movies as possible. For five decades, this living legend of documentary cinema has been dutifully filming the major and minor institutions of modern society, training his camera on such everyday settings as police stations, boxing gyms, department stores, college campuses, housing projects, and even strip clubs. People and places are the man’s life work. But where should the uninitiated start with a career this sprawling? If they live in the New York area, they can start at the very beginning: In honor of the filmmaker’s 50th anniversary of making movies, the Metrograph is presenting three of his earliest features—all shot on black-and-white celluloid—on new 35mm prints. They’re proof that Wiseman’s creative gestation period was a quick and fruitful one.
