From Primary to Post-Truth: The Quiet Death of Observational Documentary

What the loss of verité filmmaking reveals about the rise of performance, spin, and division.

Although it was made well before my time, Primary - the groundbreaking 1960 documentary that follows John F. Kennedy and rival Hubert Humphrey during the Wisconsin Democratic primary - was one of the films that first inspired me to tell real-life stories on camera.

Watching it now through a modern lens, it’s hard not to mourn what’s been lost: not just a style of filmmaking that’s now all but extinct, but also the tone of political and social discourse the film captures so effortlessly - a tone that feels just as distant.

There’s a sequence toward the start of Primary in which the camera follows Kennedy through an enthusiastic crowd as he makes his way to a stage on which he’ll speak. We’re taken deep into the moment: just inches behind him as he moves through the throng of people, seeing their faces in close-up, hearing their voices and excitement. As he reaches the stage, about to speak, a shot of Jackie Kennedy’s fingers - nervously fidgeting behind her back - feels like a private, privileged perspective.

Primary was observational filmmaking in its purest form. Unfiltered; played long without fast cuts; totally immersive. It was also quietly revolutionary.

The film didn’t just capture a political campaign; it helped change the very language of documentary. For the most part, it abandoned omniscient voiceover and the clunk of exposition (there are four or five small sections of commentary in the entire film but only used to help set the scene). Even more significant was its use of technological breakthroughs to place its trust in proximity.

Before Primary, cameras were mostly cumbersome and static, with sound recorded separately and synced to the pictures after filming. The arrival of new portable cameras and sync-sound was a seismic shift, and Primary was its debutante ball. Director Robert Drew and his team (a who’s who of future doc legends: D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles, Richard Leacock) created a style that let the world unfold in front of the lens - in fascinating, forensic detail, and without manipulation.

Untethered from tripods, heavy cables and studio rigs, the filmmakers take us to the heart of the action: moving toward a journalist as he takes a call at his desk; up close and personal with both Kennedy and Humphrey as they chat candidly to their teams; Jackie giggling with a friend as they await results in the otherwise tense quiet of their campaign offices; even the rhythmic noise of windscreen wipers on Humphrey’s car reminds us that we’re on the inside, with him as he looks out - not staring in from the outside.

The result wasn’t just a new visual style. It was a redefined relationship between the viewer and the subject. One built on access, trust, and presence.

Of course, Primary’s achievement was aided by the fact it was made in a more innocent time. Kennedy could walk the streets without a SWAT team, could sit in a room with aides, take private phone calls and chat to his wife knowing they were being observed - but without fearing entrapment. Yes, there’s a confidence to his presence (he’s still a politician in control) but one senses a man and political team who aren’t cynically suspicious of an angle or ‘attack’ from the filmmakers. Meanwhile, the documentary team observe without an agenda, keen to let the audience wallow in the intimacy and make up their own minds.

Thanks to our 24-hour news cycle, and a political and social landscape underpinned by hostility and division, that relationship has long since broken down, making any such access today unthinkable. Political campaigns are stage-managed to within an inch of their lives, every doorway guarded by a gatekeeper lest an off-the-cuff remark create a scandal and destroy a career. The modern politician performs with the authenticity and calculation of a brand manager who views the camera as a liability - not a quiet witness.

Toward the end of the film, the election outcome yet undecided, we’re with Kennedy and Humphrey as they briefly chat together behind the scenes in a television station. It would be wrong to suggest that this moment of civility between political enemies represents some ‘golden age’ - the 1960s were hardly devoid of political bile and vitriol - but it does feel like a moment that, in terms of access and tone, belongs to another era.

There’s a technological irony here: the very tools that liberated the Primary team have become everyone’s tools. Smartphones and social media mean there are more cameras and viewers than voters at a rally. The gap between public and private has gone, and there’s very little left that feels observational. Everything feels performative. Criticism can also be aimed at those who document events: eager to be seen and heard amid the noise and myriad versions of reality, many filmmakers have abandoned neutral curiosity as they search for headlines and scandal.

But the sense of loss that watching Primary evokes (be it a filmmaking approach or the diminishing decency of our social discourse) isn’t just about access, it’s about style.

Today’s documentary audience, raised on slick, adrenaline-fueled visuals, tightly drilled story arcs, autoplay thumbnail culture, and a TikTok pace that never lingers, is used to documentaries that tell rather than show. Viewers expect revelation on demand. What’s lost in that trade is the power of the unsaid.

Primary does the opposite, confidently playing the long game. When Humphrey chats to voters in the street and Kennedy greets lines of constituents in a town hall, the sequences sustain for minutes, not seconds. The drama of the election outcome isn’t drip-fed through hints, red herrings, twists or turns. Unlike today’s world of data-obsessed commissioners (desperate to prescribe and to stop the viewer switching channels or feeds), Primary asks the audience to watch and interpret. It’s public service in its truest sense, holding a subject to account by simply being present and recording events.

Admittedly, its success at doing so benefits from tragedy. Would the material seem so poignant and important if, three years later, Kennedy’s assassination hadn’t reshaped the world we live in, eroding the sense of renewed hope that he’d brought? Maybe not.

But this is why the disappearance of truly observational documentaries is such a profound loss. At their best, they capture and reflect the world we inhabit, casting a light on truth. In a time when truth is increasingly subjective and under threat, that kind of filmmaking feels essential.

(You can watch Primary here)