The man is disabled, the woman is sick. Exhausted, haggard, hungry and intimidated by the welfare worker’s questions, they lower their eyes. They sketch an embarrassed smile when she asks them where they live and what. The couple are filmed at the Waverly Welfare Center in Manhattan in 1973. Frederick Wiseman faces the facts. He lets his camera roll, neither comments nor adds music, the black and white images speak for themselves, denouncing administrative aberrations (an official paper is always missing).
The queues never end, there are many who have nothing, waiting for a “cheque” to be able to eat, take care of themselves or find accommodation. There is an unemployed man, a young mother whose child has been taken away, an Indian who has fled what he calls a “concentration camp”, a blind man accompanied by a relative or a woman who cries out in a loud voice compensation for his mother. Social assistance staff get tired, annoyed or, on the contrary, show patience. “Here we don’t give alms, we demand proof,” an officer explained.
Sometimes at the end of their tether, the destitute attack the security guards and the police who are forced to push them back towards the exit. Trapped in a Kafkaesque healthcare system, users are sent from one service to another. “We are numbers for them,” laments a poor wretch. The measures of the “Welfare State” (Welfare State) are supposed to “correct” inequalities, but to be entitled to them is an obstacle course and precisely requires iron health.
Released in 1975, recently restored in 4K, Welfare, Frederick Wiseman’s forty-sixth film, illustrates it in a still striking way for nearly three hours. Julie Deliquet, director of the Gérard-Philipe theater in Saint-Denis will open the 77th Avignon festival on July 5, with an adaptation of the film which comes out restored the same day.
A law graduate, a vigilante at heart, the filmmaker dwells on the faces of the unfortunate of all origins and backgrounds, testifies to a society in crisis without judging it, observes the ubiquitous human comedy in the smallest details. Surprisingly, it happens that the situation lends to laughter like this scene where a white homeless person repeats to a black police officer that he is racist. For Frederick Wiseman, who considers himself a “form author” more than a documentary filmmaker, reality is stronger than fiction, words – social assistance has its own vocabulary – translate the evils. The “little” stories told from 150 hours of rushes are all great tragedies. The director asks: what becomes of man the moment he depends on an institution? The answer is sad. Frederick Wiseman had already pointed out the living conditions in mental asylums in Titicut Follies (1967). His films are still today strong testimonies that resonate in the news.
