Missile and Welfare: The Spectrum of Cinematic Tone

Over his six-plus decades of filmmaking, Frederick Wiseman has become synonymous with a particular documentary subject: bureaucracy, especially the United States’ notoriously peevish and fickle ones. Though we noted this trend in our coverage of the previous films in the “Frederick Wiseman: Eight Systems” series at Austin Film Society, we’ve not yet considered how Wiseman develops his work thematically through formal devices such as sequence composition, juxtaposition, and sound editing. Rather than choose just one of these modes, Wiseman builds tone and mood through all three, enhancing and focusing his examinations of American institutions. In this third installment of our four-part series on restorations of Wiseman’s older works, we find how Wiseman establishes and maintains tone with his editing and directorial tools to make for truly meaningful, memorable, and consistently engaging films that incisively reflect on American government bureaucracies in Missile (1989) and Welfare (1975).

But first, let’s start with some important historical context to help show how each film still makes its impact even more than 30 years after its original release. Missile takes us to Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and we follow the 4315th Training Squadron of the Strategic Air Command as they work through a rigorous program preparing them to handle the U.S.’s nuclear weapons system. The film was shot sometime between 1986 and 1987, as the Cold War continued to simmer with not all that much chilliness, the conflict extending to the premiere of Missile a couple of years later. The threat of nuclear war looming over the film’s production becomes apparent virtually from the jump, as an early sequence features a lengthy classroom discussion on the morality of atomic warfare and the increasingly unpredictable nature of military combat, giving Missile an intense urgency not dulled by our knowing the stalemate would formally end with the fall of the Soviet Union shortly thereafter in 1991. This urgency is compounded by a heaviness from the toll of endless 20th-century war, with President Truman’s atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II and the disaster of the Vietnam War resonating in particular.

Welfare, for its part, still feels immediate and pressing more than 50 years after it was produced, focusing on a U.S. welfare office in New York City and following its employees and a great variety of applicants seeking aid for necessities, especially food and housing. The condition of welfare and financial assistance in the U.S. was precarious in the mid-1970s; Congress had passed legislation that consolidated much of the oversight of these programs under the Social Security Administration. While this provided for more funding from the federal government, it also brought more direct oversight by the SSA, which  led to more stringent measures in determining the eligibility of individuals and families to receive welfare. This also did not reduce contributions from individual states into relief funds, meaning that local financial assistance offices were now more rigorously regulated by the federal government while maintaining their investment of already-strained resources into funding welfare.

Keeping these historical events in mind, Missile and Welfare explore themes of human survival, from the level of the individual to the scope of an entire country, and the responsibilities of U.S. federal systems to help provide for physical safety and peace of mind. However, the two films explore these shared topics in very different ways, most visible when examining how each develops its unique tone and mood. In Missile, which was filmed in Santa Barbara County, California, Wiseman brilliantly chooses color cinematography to depict the sunniness and warmth of the setting, bringing a visual and tonal lightness not found in Welfare. The latter captures its wintry New York scene in stark black-and-white, mirroring the reality of those seeking financial assistance who are met by an institution with extremely limited resources and even more severe policy stipulations. 

Continuing this trend, Missile seeks to balance the hefty concept of nuclear war with plenty of moments of levity. The film features a pronounced thread of humor among the students and faculty who at times recognize and satirize the seriousness of their work and duties. This extends to a shooting range sequence, where the trainees and their supervising officers joke around about their shot spreads in target practice, a welcome break of dark humor after several grim seminars and discussions about the morality and ethics of warfare. Later scenes in the film portray the lives of the military personnel and their families on the base, including a cookout laced with more humor and a baseball game, bringing in the importance of the cinematography to showcase the natural beauty of southern California.

Welfare, on the other hand, dwells on the gravity of its subject matter by leaving out any potential moments for laughter or levity. Wiseman understands the importance of representing everyone in the welfare office with dignity by not shying away from the reality of the lives of both those seeking and administering aid. Many of the conversations between the applicants and office staff resolve without much conclusion or satisfaction, as the employees either direct them to another welfare office or related institution (often one the applicant has already visited and been directed away from) or simply tell them that they cannot help with their emergency situations. One sequence in particular shows a young Black woman visibly struggling to cope with refusal after refusal from a welfare officer, and the camera rarely cuts away from her as she tries to process what is very clearly a lot of emotion. Wiseman is empathetic to the frustration many of those shown in the film experience, whether they are turning someone away or being turned away, while still skewering the futility of federal welfare programs of the time to provide aid when it is most needed.

As far as Wiseman’s editing goes, Missile’s average shot length seems to pale in comparison to that in Welfare; Wiseman employs coverage from several angles in many of the former’s sequences, while in the latter he tends to linger on his subjects and avoid cuts whenever possible. There is even a noticeable rhythm Wiseman finds at times in Missile, particularly in the shooting range sequence. He uses the different rates of gunfire from the cadets to make for a drum-like tempo that still feels fitting within the larger structure of the film. Such a sequence would stick out in Welfare, as Wiseman hovers on entire conversations that showcase the incredible arcs these exchanges take from somewhat hopeful to dour. A sequence toward the middle of the film follows an exchange between a grizzled white war veteran and a Black security officer, featuring almost no cuts and even rarely moving the camera as they trade barbs and argue over racial tensions, though there are very subtle moments of quiet where Wiseman finds profound pain in both men.

Through illustrating how Wiseman approaches cinematography, balance, and sequence composition through his editing, we can see that he had very different goals with tone and mood in Missile and Welfare. In the former, Wiseman aims to show the vibrancy of life even in those with control of vast nuclear weapons systems to make a case for life’s preservation, at a time when it seemed most threatened by total annihilation. With Welfare, he clearly sought to focus on the struggle or survival for many that fall outside or between the cracks of American bureaucracies, prioritizing empathy with those seeking aid and, in turn, fury toward what little those institutions often provide to those they’re supposed to serve. Although he finds similar themes involving human survival and social responsibility in each, he analyzes them from somewhat opposing perspectives. In Missile, the tension of Cold War fears is alleviated with many sequences of humor and levity, that in tandem with the lush color cinematography and spry editing choices make for a bright yet still nuanced tone. Welfare matches the gravity of its events with much longer shots and no breaks in the darker mood in stark black-and-white, finding its own tonal complexity in anger and pain evoked by a faulty system of financial assistance.

Both films are consistently engaging, thought provoking, and expertly paced despite their tonal and formal differences, and we recommend Missile and Welfare not only to fans of Wiseman’s work but to anyone interested in the art of documentary filmmaking. His exploration of deep themes with sensitivity and humanity continue to prove truly moving and fascinating.We look forward to sharing our thoughts in the last installment of our coverage of the “Frederick Wiseman: Eight Systems” series at Austin Film Society, where we will be looking at Wiseman’s sharply sardonic glimpse of the famous ski resort in Aspen and survey of the advertising industry in Model.

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