Some may wonder why the 1967 film David Holzman’s Diary was canonized into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Criterion also saw fit to include it in its collection; albeit, only on laserdisc. Anybody who was confused as to why Citizen Kane is ubiquitously considered a great film will surely be downright bewildered as to why this one is regarded almost as highly.
This is a rather dull film. It is sloppily filmed and has long takes in lieu of judicious edits. It largely captures very mundane moments, such as a sped-up series of images of everything the title character watched during hours of television viewing one night, though one might be amused by the nearly subliminal glimpses of Batman and Star Trek.
It is also an uncomfortable viewing experience, such as when we watch through the lens as the cameraman stalks a woman on the subway one night. It’s just a person at random whom he decides to follow on a whim, but it still recalled for me the horrible serial killer mockumentary Man Bites Dog, and I never wanted anything to remind me of that film.
The title character isn’t a serial killer, and this isn’t a horror film, though it is a very early example of a mockumentary. Alas, our hero is a creep who is oblivious to the feelings of others. He even explains to a friend his aware that what he is doing is voyeurism.
Supposedly, his goal is to learn truths about himself by filming his mundane life, citing Godard’s maxim that “film is truth 24 times a second.” A friend, in perhaps the film’s best moment, calls bullshit on the entire exercise, saying, “You’re not going to understand it any better by freezing it on celluloid and looking at it over and over again. You have to try to understand it the first time.”
But that doesn’t stop David from doing things like running off his fashion model girlfriend, as she’s uncomfortable with the camera. Although he agreed to stop filming while she’s around, he expresses his unhappiness to the camera when he’s alone. It is no surprise he thoroughly betrays her trust when he later films her sleeping in the buff, prompting her to storm out of his life. He even films her agent days later when he comes to get her things from his apartment.
She’s not the only person he’s weirding out. Actually, he’s creeping everybody out, as evidenced by the side-eye and outright glares he gets from total strangers as he films on sidewalks of New York’s upper west side with his camera, his Nagra reel-to-reel strapped to his body and a monstrous lavalier mic hanging around his neck. At one point, he gets a fish-eye lens and walks around on the street while holding the camera over his head, pointing downward as we see the top of his head and the startled reactions of those he passes.
Modern viewers will likely be thinking of today’s culture of social media, selfies and influencers. One might also be reminded of reality shows. There are a shocking number of elements of contemporary society this little no-budget film unfortunately foresaw. I think it is bizarre how decades before such things as Tik Tok, somebody could so thoroughly capture how repellent an obsession with oneself can be, and yet we reward people for it today.
As I mentioned earlier, this is not a real documentary, though it feels uncomfortably close to being one. The performances may not seem particularly good, but I think it is a testament to the actors in this that they seem to be the actual people they’re portraying. If it was easy to act like a real people in a film, then we wouldn’t have so many lousy found footage films (and also why the few exemplary ones of that genre are true diamonds in the rough). What is surprising is L.M. Kit Carson, the star of the film, went on to write many screenplays, including that of the remake of Godard’s Breathless, art-house fave Paris, Texas and…The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2?!
By the end of David Holzman’s Diary, even our central character is sick of himself and this attempt to document his side life. He even rages, “Why am I sitting here talking to two machines? Why do you make me do things?” As somebody who writes about movies like this for a blog I doubt anybody reads, I’m wondering why I have yet to go off like this towards my blu-ray player and this laptop I’m writing this on.
Dir: Jim McBride
Starring L.M. Kit Carson, Eileen Dietz
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray (though I first watched it on that Criterion Collection laserdisc roughly three decades ago)