David Holzman's Diary

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William L Shut up about filmmakers, David. We all know about Godard and Truffaut. As David Holzman, Carson puts the pathetic into sympathetic, a cinephile that wants to fill the hole in his life created by unfortunate circumstances and failure with artistic insight. However, in this tragicomic meta-documetary, he has a problem - he has only a surface-level understanding of the filmmakers that he idolizes, and his life isn't particularly interesting. So instead of revealing some insightful personal truth or universal understanding, he ends up with depression. One of the most polarizing attributes of David Holzman's Diary is its protrayal of the relationship between film and reality, posing as a convincingly real documentary before pulling the rug out from under the audience in the final seconds, revealing that every aspect of the film was orchestrated. Though may have found it disingenuous, it does create interesting conversations about the 'trustworthiness' of film. Every film ever created, even documentaries, was made with a perspective in mind and inherent biases, and dramas that probe the depths of the human condition were designed in a way to evoke particular reactions. Though the film itself is often rather dull despite its short runtime, you can't fault it for taking a stab at some thematic depth (and for a film that has left virtually no impression on popular culture, it's one that has been endlessly pulled apart by critics). (3/5) Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 07/10/21 Full Review s r 1001 movies to see before you die. An interesting reflection on life and artistry in NYC. It's not one I need to see again. It was on Tubi. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member Young film student David Holzman decides to film his entire life in order to capture the truth about it. It doesn't quite work out. A groundbreaking independent flick that's most likely the first fake documentary (not counting a film like "Nanook of the North", which is a documentary with highly constructed events depicted). It plays very well 50 years later when it's vision of the effect of a ubiquitous camera is now reality. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Audience Member Unsettling, bizzare, creepy as all hell - a sort of horror film in very early video blog form. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/30/23 Full Review Audience Member Like a shot in the arm, this pseudo-cinema-verite experimental film from director Jim McBride is exhilerating and refreshing about the possibilities of the form. The set-up is this: David Holzman is confused about his life's meaning and decides to record everything on film (not video, this is 1967) so he can rewatch it and work things out. However, his girlfriend Penny is not so keen on this process. Tackling all sorts of themes but primarily voyeurism (as you might suspect) and laced with a sly sense of humor, McBride and stand-in Kit Carson show us New York City life and some real characters. For me, having been born in NYC in 1967, there's an added relevance, but for all cinema devotees, it is great to see the various experiments with sound and vision (including a montage of every shot on a TV screen during one evening - with Star Trek prominent) and the various pokes in the eye that McBride offers up as he weaves together fiction and reality and experimentation (hello Kiarostami!). Rated 4.5/5 Stars •  Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member About what one would expect from an underground college film from the late 60s, awesome in theory & boring in execution. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/15/23 Full Review Read all reviews

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