Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/1/2015)

George Leonard was a Lance Bombardier with the Oxfordshire Yeomanry when he entered the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. As he reveals to, his unit was prompted to investigate after a foul odour reached the picturesque nearby town, which appeared to have been untouched by the conflict. What Leonard witnessed remains vivid in his memory and he has to pause while giving his testimony to camera in order to compose himself and wipe away a tear. Seven decades have passed since he saw hundreds of naked, emaciated corpses piled high or tossed carelessly into trenches. But, while shocking images of the camps have become familiar, it has taken this long for the systematic record of Nazi atrocities commissioned by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force to see the light of day.

As David Dimbleby recalls, his reporter father Richard was present when the horrors of Bergen-Belsen were exposed and his graphic report for the BBC was initially withheld until its content could be verified. But, as Royal Artillery major Leonard Berney remembers, Army cameramen Mike Lewis and William Lawrie wasted no time in capturing the hideous scene before them. Their footage reached SHAEF and Sidney Bernstein, the chief of the Psychological Warfare Film Section, was ordered to compile a systematic record of a genocide that immediately appeared unprecedented in recent human history.

Having supervised production for the Ministry of Information, Bernstein quickly assembled an editorial team that included Steward McAllister, Peter Tanner and John Krish and set assistant Richard Crossman the task of scripting a commentary with the aid of Australian journalist Colin Willis. It soon transpired that US Army cameramen like Arthur Mainzer were shooting equally disturbing footage, as were such Red Army operatives as Aleksander Vorontzov. Realising that he needed someone with the cinematic sophistication to co-ordinate the project, Bernstein contacted Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had collaborated on the French-language MOI shorts, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (both 1944).

Although the pair were partners in the newly formed Transatlantic Pictures company, Hitchcock was unable to make the dangerous crossing to Britain, as he was deeply involved in his latest feature, Notorious (1946). However, he was well aware that fellow film-makers like Paul Rotha had criticised him for remaining in Hollywood for the duration of the war and he clearly felt that Bernstein's invitation was a chance to silence his critics, while also salving his own conscience. While still in the States, Hitch seems to have instructed the army camera crews to avoid potential accusations of fakery by employing long takes that placed victims and perpetrators in the same frame or sequence. He also suggested that dignitaries and ordinary residents from the communities closest to the concentration and extermination camps were coerced to witness the deeds sanctioned by their leaders, as German audiences would be more persuaded to accept the truth of the situation if they could see compatriots witnessing it at first hand.

Tanner and Krish recall the influence that Hitchcock's ideas had on the project. But much of the Crossman script had been completed by the time he arrived in London in late June. Moreover, three of the proposed six reels had already been approved. Nevertheless, Hitchcock forced himself to spend hours each day viewing rushes from the camps in a small Soho screening room and helping select the most impactful imagery. Yet SHAEF was growing impatient with Bernstein, who has struggling to persuade the Red Army to share footage with its allies. As a consequence, the Austrian-born Hollywood director Billy Wilder was asked to produce a 20-minute short entitled Death Mills, which took scenes from the Bernstein archive and arranged them in trenchant segments that were accompanied by a pugnacious commentary that left the audience in little doubt who was to blame for this crime against humanity.

Yet, as Hitchcock returned to California and Bernstein continued to await Soviet co-operation, political strategists were becoming concerned that a film that presented the Final Solution in such uncompromising detail might be bad for German morale, just as the West would require the soon-to-be divided state to act as a bulwark against the advancing Communists. Thus, five days before SHAEF was dissolved on 14 July, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was cancelled and the materials were filed away after a single screening of the unfinished picture on 1 September.

Labelled F3080, this trove of damning evidence remained in the Imperial War Museum vaults between 1952 and 1984, when PBS broadcast the five reels of edited footage under the title Memory of the Camps. Hitchcock was credited as `treatment adviser', while Trevor Howard read the commentary, which concluded with the lines: `Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God's grace, we who live will learn.'

Despite Bernstein's determination that his film would prevent the repeat of such barbarism, recent events around the world suggest that few lessons have been learned from the Holocaust. But no one viewing this powerful document can be left unmoved by the incontrovertible evidence and by the courage of such survivors as Mania Salinger, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Eva Mozes Kor, Tomy Shacham, Vera Kriegel, Menachem Rosensaft (who was born in the displaced persons camp at Belsen) and Branko Lustig, who lived through Auschwitz to produce Steven Spielberg's lauded adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List (1993).

Among the other speakers are Toby Haggith and Kay Gladstone of the Imperial War Museum, Raye Farr of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, medal-bedecked Soviet soldier Matvey Gershman and Benjamin Ferencz, who liberated camps as part of General Patton's Third Army before prosecuting war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. His recollection of peering into Hell at Dachau leaves a deep impression and it is to be hoped this fine film and the finally completed German Concentration Camps Factual Survey will be widely seen after the latter premieres at the London Film Festival.

Much has been made of Hitchcock's part in the proceedings. But the driving force was clearly Bernstein, the future founder of Granada Television who gives his side of the story in an archived interview. Given the distinctive treatment that Singer approved as executive producer of The Act of Killing (2012), Joshua Oppenheimer's unsettling record of slaughter in 1960s Indonesia, it comes as something of a relief that he has adopted a more conventional approach in this challenging inquisition into documentary objectivity, the responsibilities of actuality film-makers and the extent to which moving images can and cannot alter history. Helena Bonham Carter provides the sober narration, while Jasper Britton reads the extracts drawn from primary sources. But, perhaps most significantly, editors Arik Leibovitch and Stephen Miller cut judiciously between Richard Blanshard's talking head contributions and the restored monochrome imagery, which has lost none of its shaming potency over time.

A very different side of the Germanic soul is on view in Johannes Holzhausen's The Great Museum. Last year saw a boom in museum movies. In addition to guided tours of the Hermitage, the Vatican Museums and the National Gallery, there have also been further entries in Phil Grabsky's excellent Exhibition on Screen series. But the best has been saved until last. Having already taken a key supporting role in Jem Cohen's delightful drama, Museum Hours (2013), the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is the focus of Holzhausen's deceptively astute survey, which offers a witty insider's insight into the running of a noble institution during the redecoration of the famous Kunstkammer cabinet of curiosities. Housing over 2000 items collected by a variety of emperors and archdukes, these 20 rooms form a small part of a vast complex that was opened in 1891 to display the taste of the Hapsburg dynasty. But, while Holzhausen worked as an art historian before becoming a film-maker, this is anything but a dry infomercial. Indeed, this look behind the scenes is full of droll observations and sly deflations that give this impeccable exercise in direct cinema a knowing personal touch.

An opening crane shot reveals the full extent of the beautiful white stone edifice before Holzhausen takes us inside its meticulously maintained galleries, as the morning clean gets underway. However, as the inner thigh of Antonio Canova's `Theseus' is flicked discreetly with a duster, a builder takes a pickaxe to the parquet floor in one of the Kunstkammer chambers and it becomes immediately clear that this is going to be a respectful, if occasionally wry account of the daily workings of a treasure house that is not only a symbol of former national glory and a renowned centre of artistic scholarship, but also a tourist attraction that has to pay its own way in an age of recession and reduced subsidies.

Central to the redevelopment are Sabine Haag, the new General Director (who had previously been Head of the Kunstkammer, and of the Secular and Sacred Treasury) and Chief Financial Officer, Paul Frey. Yet, while acknowledging their importance, Holzhausen is not above debunking them as they go about their duties. Thus, Haag is first seen in a flurry of self-importance as she explains the proposed changes during a walk-and-talk through the Kunstkammer building site with British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, while Frey is shown belittling a female colleague in a distastefully passive-aggressive manner during a meeting about budgets and the font to be used on the new day pass offer poster.

However, unlike such masters of the so-called `fly on the wall' technique as Frederick Wiseman and Nicolas Philibert, Holzhausen never lingers for long and shots follow of a polar bear rug being cleaned, the Imperial Crown being examined, a numismatist gliding through a maze of subterranean corridors on a push scooter to pick up a photocopy and an array of paintings being respectively stored and restored by various gumbies and experts. Paulus Reiner, the Director of the Kunstkammer, inspects a pair of duelling toads, while arms specialist Christian Beaufort-Spontin leaves cheese and nuts on his window ledge to feed the birds. Elsewhere, Helene Hanzer carefully removes the head from a colourful statue and places it on a pillow (where its previously surprised expression appears to be replaced by one of contentment), while a couple bicker about the reconfiguration of a priceless Benvenuto Cellini salt cellar.

Monica Kurzel-Runtscheiner is more gracious, as she accepts Count Czernin's bequest of his father's Imperial Chamberlain uniform. However, Holzhausen amusingly cross-cuts between a shot of it being packed away in tissue paper with a close-up of the polar bear rug, as it descends in a lift on a large wheeled table to the cavernous storage area beneath the museum. As if to reinforce the fact that more items are hidden away than displayed, a sequence follows a female curator, as she empties some carefully wrapped artefacts from a large cardboard box and places them inside a mobile shelving unit.

As work continues stripping wallpaper in the Kunstkammer, Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Elisabeth Wolfik start contemplating the new layout and consult old almanacs before resorting to a computer programme that allows them to move paintings around in cyber space. Meanwhile, Haag and Frey attend a meeting to discuss the fact that the museum has to compete for funding with supposedly more tourist-friendly attractions. Yet, down in the restoration area, we witness work it is hard to put a price on, as Ina Slama and Gerlinde Grube show Professor Arnout Balis x-ray evidence of images below the surface of a modello sketch by Peter Paul Rubens.

The sense of camaraderie between equals is noticeably absent as Ferino-Pagden and Wolfik brusquely order the gallery technicians around, as they try to decide upon the new layout by viewing the paintings in situ. Furthermore, invigilator Tatjana Hatzl complains in a meeting with Frey about improving the visitor service term that she has been at the Kunsthistorisches for 11 years and has never been introduced to anyone above her station, even at the staff Christmas party. This gentle dig at the pomposity of the hierarchy is pointedly juxtaposed with a search for moths in the carriage store and the examination under a microscope of an insect that has been found beneath a canvas undergoing a thorough cleaning.

Another judicious edit makes it seem as though these activities are being watched by the Empress Maria Theresa from a portrait in which she is surrounded by her four sons. This painting has been entrusted to the museum for restoration by the office of the federal president and a telling exchange follows between Wolfgang Prohaska, Andreas Zimmermann and Eva Götz about the Hapsburg legacy and whether they are serving the dynasty, the state, the public or the artists whose works they have the privilege of handling. The fact that President Heinz Fischer then sweeps past an honour guard to view the work in progress in the Kunstkammer with Karl von Hapsburg is all the more mischievously felicitous. As flash bulbs pop around them, Haag shows them the state crown and the cover of the Coronation Gospels. But the ever-alert Holzhausen picks up the fact that the Hapsburg is still addressed as `Your Majesty' and that he can't resist pointing to an old map and remarking how much bigger the country was when the imperial family ruled over it.

The past meets the present again, as the metal the cover of the Coronation Gospels is scanned with a 3-D imager prior to the launch of a limited edition of 333 facsimiles (at almost €30,000 a pop). A curator explains how it is possible to detect which part of the animal was used to make the velum pages of the original and this attention to detail recurs as Nils Unger swears in frustration as he tries to repair the clockwork mechanism inside a magnificent sailing ship automaton made by Hans Schlottheim in 1585 and a silent colleague uses a toothbrush to clean the private parts of a cherub clutching a bunch of grapes. Indeed, the passion shown by the curators and conservators is echoed by Ferino-Pagden when she tuts dismissively at Frey when he has to admit that she will have to wait for the opening of a new gallery because the budget has been transferred to another project.

Further evidence of the strain being placed on the museum purse strings is presented when Kurzel-Runtscheiner attends an auction of court livery and is given such strict bidding limits that she comes home empty handed. Yet the powers that be clearly recognise the commercial need to stress the link to the monarchy and several old lags roll their eyes as Creative Director Stefan Zeisler explains why the word `imperial' has been added to the official title of the Treasury. Holzhausen impishly catches him repeating the mantra `stylish and timeless', as he submits the logo artwork for staff approval and it is somewhat sad to note that this occasion is better attended than Beaufort-Spontin's leaving do, at which Haag makes a fuss of a letter from an absent government minister and offers an awkward embrace to a poor fellow who is too overcome with the emotion of leaving his life's work behind to respond.

As his ID badge is cut in half and placed in a file that is buried in another warren of shelves, Franz Kirchweger agonises over the placement of items in a three-tiered display case and Ruth Strondl outlines the roles everyone is to play during the grand re-opening of the Kunstkammer. Naturally, Haag finds herself front and centre as the distinguished guests arrive. But Hatzl also draws attention to herself by accidentally setting off an alarm by touching one of the exhibits. A towering top shot looks down on the tables arranged around an elegant staircase landing. But Holzhausen slips away from these proceedings to track a camera along a row of stored items that have survived in various states of repair from classical antiquity. These heads are contrasted with the thousand miniatures of Renaissance worthies that were collected by Archduke Ferdinand II. But the closing shot takes the viewer into the heart of Pieter Bruegel the Elder's `The Tower of Babel' (1563) before it's removed from the wall by two members of the anonymous installation staff.

Mistakenly dismissed in some quarters as an elaborate corporate video, this is a thoughtful and often irreverent glimpse at how an august institution seeks to keep itself relevant within the increasingly competitive leisure industry, while also striving to maintain its academic credentials. It may strike some as being less incident-packed than Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (which goes on general release next week), but Holzhausen has managed to convey the opulence of the setting and the import of the exhibits while also capturing something of the little human dramas that also occur in less rarefied workplaces. The scene of Beaufort-Spontin packing away his books is deeply moving, but there is something disapprovingly acerbic about the coverage of his curt farewell.

Indeed, Haag and Frey come in for a good deal of quiet reproach, as they survey their domain with a resistibly pseudo-regal haughtiness. But Holzhausen is also aware of the fine job they are doing in negotiating fraught circumstances and recognises that feting the great and the good is as vital to the Kunsthistorisches's survival as maintaining intellectual standards and finding new ways to popularise the galleries and make visitors spend in the gift shop. This is very much a singular vision, but Holzhausen is superbly served by camera operators Jörg Burger and Attila Boa; sound technicians Andreas Pils and Andreas Hamza, and editor Dieter Pichler, whose deft sense of the museum's majesty and absurdity help make this one of the best documentaries of 2014.

French director Julie Bertuccelli has served as an assistant to some highly impressive mentors. What she picked up from the likes of Otar Iosseliani, Krystof Kieslowski, Bertrand Tavernier and Rithy Panh (as well as her famous father, Jean-Louis) was readily evident in her first fictional features, Since Otar Left (2003) and The Tree (2010). But she began her solo career with the actualities La Fabrique des juges ou les règles du jeu (1997) and Un Monde en fusion (2001) and she returns to the realms of documentary with School of Babel, a charming, but always acute study of everyday life in a reception class for migrant teenagers in Paris's highly cosmopolitan 10th arrondissement. Comparisons will inevitably be made with Nicolas Philibert's Être et Avoir (2002), Laurent Cantet's The Class (2008) and Pascal Plisson's On the Way to School (2013). But this has most in common with Daniele Gaglianone's My Class (2013), which combined fact and fiction by having Valerio Mastandrea play a teacher running an Italian language class for `real' immigrants.

Brigitte Cervoni conducts her classes at La Grange aux Belles with a blend of fairness and firmness that ensures each student is given an equal opportunity to express themselves, regardless of their mastery of French. Clearly aware of each pupil's backstory (they range in age from 11-15), she encourages them with sympathetic warmth and admonishes them with clipped gravity when they fail to live up to her expectations. But Cervoni strives hardest to give the kids the impression that they will be rewarded in their new country if they work hard and obey the rules and, given the likelihood that they will have experienced some sort of racist taunting, they respond with trusting affection to this welcoming reassurance.

Bertuccelli makes herself scarce in the classroom, but her self-operated camera captures scenes from multiple angles and editor Josiane Zardoya deserves great credit for capturing the energy of the lessons, as well as the speed with which situations can escalate. An early sequence affords the students the opportunity to write the word `bonjour' in his or her native language. But a dispute arises when Egyptian-Libyan Maryam Aboagila takes exception to Mauritanian Ramatoulaye Ly averring that the phrase `Salam Aleykum' is used as a general greeting in Wolof, when she insists that it would not be used by non-Muslims. Cervoni referees the squabble with admirable calm, but it is noticeable that Rama is just as sorry to see Maryam leave halfway through the year as anyone else in the class.

The girls of African extraction are much more voluble than their peers and are quite prepared to defend their corner. But when Cervoni meets their parents or guardians to discuss their progress, Rama (who was mistreated by her father's kinfolk), Naminata Kaba Diakite from the Ivory Coast and Djenabou Conde from Guinea all have to be reminded that, unless they behave, they could easily be sent home to face the genital mutilation and enforced marriages they have been spared by seeking asylum. The exception is Kessa Keita, who has been raised in Britain and has the intelligence to realise how lucky she has been compared to classmates whose bolshiness invariably reflects their eagerness to test the boundaries of their new-found freedoms.

By contrast, Xin Li hardly says a word and has to be coaxed into making a contribution. Her mother (with whom she has only recently been reunited after a decade with her grandparents) explains that Chinese women are expected to be demure and that she works so many hours at her restaurant that Xin rarely has anyone to talk to. Her confidence is hardly helped by Chilean Felipe Arellano Santibanez claiming to have seen a television programme that exposed the fact that the Chinese are shape-shifting aliens. But, such is Cervoni's gentle nurturing that Xin eventually comes out of herself and starts to join in.

Venezuelan cellist Miguel Angel Cegarra Monsalve also takes a little time to settle, while Mihajlo Sustran spends so many hours translating official documents for his Serbian Jewish parents that he is too tired to study. Luca Da Silva from Northern Ireland also has problems in class and it is only when his mother comes to see Cervoni that it is revealed that he suffers from a mild form of autism and is finding it tough to acclimatise to Paris with his older brothers, who often have to care for him while she is working. Her pride in his achievements, however, is matched by Romanian Andromeda Havrincea's father, who is confident that she can achieve great things. But Cervoni urges every student to play to their strengths, whether she is prompting Ukrainian Oksana Denys into showing off her powerful singing voice or praising the quieter members of the class for the cherished items they have brought from home.

Occupying the remaining desks are Daniel Alin Szasz (Romania), Alassane Couattara (Mali), Andréa Drazic (Croatia), Youssef Ezzangaoui (Morocco), Abir Gares (Tunisia), Marko Jovanovic (Serbia), Daniil Kliashkou (Belarus), Eduardo Ribeiro Lobato (Brazil), Nethmal and Thathsarani Mampitiya Arachchige (Sri Lanka), Yong Xia (China), and Agnieszka Zych (Poland). But, while Bertuccelli may not dwell on these children individually, she consistently picks them out during lessons to show how they integrate within the group. She also subtly records the passage of time through a series of fixed-camera top shots of the playground. Yet it still comes as something of a surprise when exam time comes around and the doors of the hall are closed to ensure everyone concentrates.

Some do better than others Rama is among those to be held back for another year, as her grasp of French will restrict her progress in other subjects. Angry tears trickle down her nose as she tries to hide her face. But she knows Cervoni has her best interests at heart and there is every chance that her distress has been partially inspired by the fact that her beloved teacher is leaving at the end of term to become an inspector. The last day sequence, in which Cervoni is presented with flowers and other tokens of esteem, is deeply touching and it says much for the excellence of her teaching that the kids bid each other farewell for the summer with a genuine sense of attachment that was earlier evident during the shooting of a short that is entered in the Ciné-Clap Festival in Chartres, where it wins a prize.

Bertuccelli could be accused of ducking the issue of race relations, as no mention is made about how the children are fitting in outside the classroom. But this is a minor quibble, especially as it is made abundantly clear how readily these disparate souls bond through their shared status as outsiders. It would be fascinating to see what happens in the future, but one suspects this is a one-off rather than the first in a series like Michael Apted's landmark `Up' octology.

The technical challenges that Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez set themselves mean that there is little opportunity for fabrication in Manakamana, an observational documentary that is made up of 11 vignettes, each of which lasts approximately 11 minutes, which is the time it takes for a 400ft magazine of 16mm film to pass through a fixed camera and for the cable car from the base station at Cheres in Nepal to reach the temple to the Hindu goddess Bhagwati, which sits atop a mountain, some 3425 feet above. Produced by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel for Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Laboratory, this is as much a work of avant-garde formalism as it is an anthropological or sociological study. Indeed, like Castaing-Taylor and Paravel's Leviathan, the content is largely left to chance. But, given the rigidity of both the structure and the methodology, it seems rather surprising that this supposedly unmediated record of reality is the product of an 18-month post-production process. Can fades to black at the end of each run really be that complicated to achieve?

As there are no captions or voiceovers, the viewer is left to glean snippets of information from the conversations that take place during the shuttles. In all, six upward trips and five down are presented in full. The service was launched in 1998 and it is possible to see through the windows the path up the hillside that pilgrims had used since the 17th century. Each car is capable of carrying six people and affords breathtaking views of the Trisuli and Marsyangdi valleys and the Annapurna and Manaslu-Himachali mountain ranges. But Spray and Velez deny the audience the chance to see the temple or the devotions that take place there. However, judging by the fate of a rooster and four goats (albeit presumed in the latter case), it is safe to say that sacrifices of some sort are not unusual.

The first pair to ride the car are Chabbi Lal and Anish Gandharba, an old man in a dhaki topi hat and a small boy sporting a peaked cap, who sit politely and look nervously around them as they go. They are followed by Bindu Gayek, a middle-aged woman carrying a basket of flowers that are clearly intended as an offering to the goddess. She is succeeded by Narayan and Gopika Gayek, a couple of around the same age who are carrying the aforementioned rooster. Next to make the ascent are Khim Kumari Gayek, Chet Kumari Gayek and Hom Kumari Gayek, a trio of elderly women in traditional Nepalese dress who seem to share the same husband. But the most animated trip sees three heavy metal musicians Simen Pariyar, Anil Paija and Saroj Gandharba being joined a tabby kitten, which one of the youths jokes might be for the chop when they reach journey's end. Sadly, this almost certainly seems to be the fate awaiting the five goats that follow them in a pen gondola.

Making the first descent is a single middle-aged woman known only as Bakhraharu. After her come two younger women, Mithu Gayek and Isan Brant, who chatter away in American accents. But the possible mother-daughter pairing of Mily Lila Gayek and Bishnu Maya Gayek provide the most amusement, as they try to eat rapidly melting ice creams without getting sticky fingers. They are followed by traditional musicians `Kaale' Dharma Raj Gayek and `Kaale' Ram Bahadur Gayek, who use the ride to tune their stringed instruments and play the odd snatch of melody before the film ends with Narayan and Gopika Gayek returning to the village, with their foreheads anointed and a very dead bird that seems destined to make the journey from altar to dinner table.

It has to be said that some 11 minutes seem to last a lot longer than others, even though the sight of pods passing in the opposite direction to the ascending one look amusingly like something from a science-fiction film. As Velez and Spray are credited as camera operator and sound recordist respectively, it has to be presumed that they were present at all times and one is left to wonder how differently some of the passengers might have behaved if they had operated their equipment from a distance. The persons riding alone are unsurprisingly the most reticent and the viewer is left to speculate about the thoughts going through their heads as the sometimes creaky cable cars go back and forth. While the metalheads lark about, take selfies on their phones and complain about the lack of air-conditioning, the sarangi players provide a potted history of the mechanical marvel they are riding. Elsewhere, Narayan and Gopika discuss their ears popping and the fact that more local roofs are using tiles instead of thatch, while Khim, Chet and Hom natter about their obviously delicate domestic arrangements and their trust in the goddess to protect them as they pass over the hills, fields and houses below. But it says much that the highlights are provided by a couple of melting ice-cream cones.

The inclusion of the cornets feels suspiciously like a Flaherty-like suggestion by the film-makers rather than a fortuitous happenstance. Indeed, this is most likely the case, given that Velez and Spray (an ethnographer who has lived in Nepal since the 1990s) spent a lengthy period getting to know the locals and cast those they felt would be least intimidated by the presence of the crew. However, setting such quibbles aside, this is a fascinatingly immersive voyeuristic experiment that comments obliquely on such issues as tradition and progress, the spiritual and the secular, observation and communication, and the individual and the landscape. One fears an enterprising producer somewhere selling Channel 4 a lookalike reality series filmed at such locations as the London Eye, Ben Nevis, Blackpool Tower and Big Pit. But would anyone want to watch an airborne variation on Gogglebox?

Jesse Moss's The Overnighters is a Steinbeckian fable for our recessional times that not only reveals the sobering social impact of the economic crisis on the average American, but also exposes the hollowness of evangelical Christianity in provincial communities where things are currently too tough for such niceties as neighbourly charity, acceptance, forgiving and forgetting. Filmed alone by Moss over 18 months, this is one of the hardest-hitting documentaries of the year. But, as in the best Westerns, there are no clear-cut heroes and villains here. Indeed, rarely has French humanist Jean Renoir's maxim about everybody having their own reasons resounded more truly, as the residents of the burgeoning city of Williston struggle to apply the tenets of their professed faith to their daily lives, while their saintly preacher proves to be all-too-human.

The fracking boom has been changing the North Dakotan landscape since 2008. Indeed, only Texas now produces more oil than the Peace Garden State and the western burg of Williston has been one of the major beneficiaries. However, while the citizens are happy to profit from the windfall, they are less than enamoured of the influx of migrant workers seeking the decent wages that they have not been able to command since their own states were stricken by the credit crunch. Consequently, many have been forced to congregate at the Concordia Lutheran Church, where Pastor Jay Reinke allows labourers and hopefuls alike to sleep on his pews or in tents and RVs in the car park and grounds.

Among those to stake out their patch are Alan Mezo, an ex-convict from Spokane, Washington, who is trying to move on from 16 years behind bars and conquer his addictive personality by assisting Reinke with the Overnighters programme; Keegan Edwards, a family man from Antigo, Wisconsin, who is anxious at being away from his girlfriend Sabrina and their infant son, Darron; Keith Batten, an electrician from Tifton, Georgia, whose wife threatens to leave him for another man unless he comes home; Paul Engel, a New Yorker who despises the `greed is good' mentality of many of the new carpetbaggers; and Keith Graves, a truck driver from Los Angeles, who is also a long way from the family he adores.

Reinke is aware that members of the city council consider the interlopers to be scroungers and trouble makers and has a powerful enemy in David Rupkalvis, the Managing Editor of the Williston Herald, who is quite prepared to rabblerouse on behalf of his readers. Even some of Reinke's flock have their misgivings, while his long-suffering wife, Andrea, wishes he would devote less time to strangers and more to his children, Clara (20), Mary (18), Eric (15) and Ann (13)..

Always ready with an apposite passage of Scripture to counteract the accusations and insults, Reinke runs the risk of seeming a little holier than thou. He certainly believes in the rectitude of his mission, but he is also aware of the rewards he will receive for doing the Lord's work and his casual remark about everyone hiding behind a façade comes back to haunt him when the mood in Williston turns more hostile in 2012, following the murder of a schoolteacher by two outlanders. Parishioner Shelly Shultz echoes the thoughts of many when she tells Moss that the Overnighters have rape and pillage in their hearts and she finds an unlikely ally when Reinke asks Engel to move out of his bedroom in the family home so that he can protect Graves, who has admitted to being a sex offender and has become the target of a virulent outing campaign by Rupkalvis and his dogged reporters..

Feeling betrayed, Engel supplies names to the Herald and Reinke is soon being pursued for quotes by journalist Hank Stephenson, who is determined to prove that Graves is a menace to the city. Disconcerted by the growing tension at the church, Edwards moves his family to the rural backwater of Wheelock, some 40 miles from Williston. However, he is badly injured in a truck crash and Reinke increasingly starts to feel like he is fighting a losing battle. He takes some solace from putting a lost soul named Todd back on the bus to Phoenix, Arizona. But he receives a blackmail threat soon afterwards and has to break the news to Andrea that he has had a homosexual relationship.

The speed with which Reinke's house of cards comes tumbling down is utterly dismaying. He feels compelled to move out, as the council closes down the Overnighters programme in 2013. Moreover, he was subsequently defrocked by the Missouri Synod and has since managed to find work selling welding equipment to fracking companies. Chillingly, the man he tried to help by offering him a cot in his basement, has had a $2 million bond placed on his head after he was accused of human trafficking.

But, while his sympathy certainly rests with Reinke, Moss avoids passing judgement and strives to remain in the background as a genuine human tragedy unfolds before him. He is more than aware of Reinke's hubristic tendencies and recognises why his congregation feels so strongly about his extending parish hospitality without listening to their concerns or seeking their consent. Yet it is difficult not to have pity for the majority of the Overnighters, who have trekked across the country in the hope of restoring a little of pride by being able to put food on the family table once again. Similarly, it is far from easy to condone the methods of the newspapermen, who are never called upon to justify their own agendas, while they consistently harass Reinke and his guests.

Yet it is impossible to reach definitive conclusions from the footage amassed by the doughty Moss (who was threatened with rifles and broomsticks during his sojourn) and edited in conjunction with his producer-wife, Amanda McBaine, and editor Jeff Gilbert. Every religion has more than its share of hypocrites and church-going folks have been shown to have feet of clay on the big screen since DW Griffith started making social melodramas in the late 1900s. But there is something pernicious about the alliance between the Second and the Fourth Estates in what amounts to the persecution of Jay Reinke. He may have made mistakes, but his heart appears to have usually been in the right place and it is a shame to see his compassionate enterprise used against him with such pitiless fervour. However, it should not be forgotten that one player in this sorry saga gets off scot-free and that is the fracking industry, which continues to make billions of dollars while failing to provide adequate accommodation for its workforce.

The estimable Geoffrey Cheshire has contributed an eloquent review of The Overnighters to the Roger Ebert website, which has continued to uphold the legacy of the former Chicago Sun-Times film critic since his death on 4 April 2013. The first reviewer to become a nationwide celebrity, the first to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Ebert did much to make the discussion of cinema accessible. Indeed, in partnership with Gene Siskel, he turned debating the hits and misses on the weekly release schedule into must-see television. Yet, while many colleagues, friends and film-makers line up to pay fulsome tribute in Steve James's documentary, Life Itself, there are those who reckon that Ebert had a detrimental impact on the art of criticism and it speaks volumes for his pugnacity and integrity that Ebert insisted on their dissenting voices being heard in this valedictory profile.

As James meets up with Ebert in late 2012, he is being admitted to hospital in Chicago for a hairline fracture of the hip. This is the latest in a series of medical misfortunes to have befallen Ebert since he was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroid and salivary glands in 2002. Such was its severity that this condition necessitated the removal of Ebert's lower jaw in 2006, which deprived him of the ability to speak, eat and drink. But, with the support of his devoted African-American wife, Chaz, Ebert not only continued to review films, but he also began to embrace new technology. Indeed, in addition to learning how to use of vocal synthesiser, he also started to familiarise himself with social networking and the blogosphere, where he expressed typically trenchant opinions on a range of topics away from his specialism.

Cinema was only one of the young Roger Ebert's obsessions. But he always knew he wanted to be a journalist and wrote for publications at school and college, with his October 1961 notice of Federico Fellini's La dolce vita in The Daily Illini being one of his earliest critical efforts. He also wrote poignantly about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and was studying for his doctorate when his application to the Chicago Daily News was passed to editor Jim Hoge at the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966. When critic Eleanor Keane left the paper in April 1967, Ebert was appointed her successor and, as a result, he became the youngest daily newspaper critic in the United States.

Among the big names in American film reviewing at the time were Vincent Canby, Pauline Kael, John Simon and Andrew Sarris. But, while Ebert could never match the latter's theoretical originality, he knew his stuff and could turn an acerbic phrase to match the waspish Kael. Indeed, the doyenne of The New Yorker informed Ebert that he was producing the most intelligent popular criticism of the day and it was this fearless incisiveness that persuaded exploitation director Russ Meyer to hire Ebert to write the screenplay for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970).

He would reunite with Meyer for Up! (1975) and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens (1979), as well as the unmade Sex Pistols venture, Who Killed Bambi? (1978). But it's safe to say that Ebert was better at evaluating pictures than scripting them. Yet he became a national treasure in partnership with Gene Siskel, a rival critic on the Chicago Tribune with whom he did not always get on, let alone agree. Ebert wasn't a small-screen natural, as the clip of him introducing an Ingmar Bergman picture demonstrates. But his Sneak Previews show on the WTTW public broadcasting station proved popular enough for Thea Flaum to pair him with Siskel when the programme transferred to PBS in 1978 and they bickered with such irresistible erudition and flamboyance over the next 21 years that At the Movies developed the power to make or break any feature released in the United States.

But Film Comment editor Richard Corliss felt that their antics devalued the debate and lamented that their award of `two thumbs up' and the `dog of the week' epithet played into the hands of Hollywood studios that were more interested in free publicity than informed scrutiny. However, Ebert defended himself against all accusations of dumbing down and remained a vibrant voice on television after Siskel succumbed to brain cancer in 1999.

As Siskel's widow, Marlene Iglitzen, reveals, the initial antagonism eventually gave way to grudging respect and James includes instances of the duo kvetching between takes. The petulant Ebert invariably had the last word in any dispute and it seems clear that he rarely suffered fools gladly and entirely trusted his own critical faculties. This made him a great favourite with the directors he championed and Ava DuVernay, Ramin Bahrani, Werner Herzog, Gregory Nava, Errol Morris and Martin Scorsese all express their gratitude for his support. Scorsese tells a touching story about the time that Siskel and Ebert arranged a function in his honour when he was plumbing the personal and professional depths in the mid-1980s and his affection is as unforced as that of fellow critics Nancy de los Santos, Josh Golden, Howie Movshovitz, Jonathan Rosenbaum, and AO Scott, as well as such erstwhile colleagues and drinking buddies as Bruce Elliot, Rick Kogan, John McHugh, William Nack and Roger Simon.

James doesn't shy away from the battle with the bottle that led Ebert to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1979, as it was here that he met Chaz, who welcomed him into her extended family and gave him a security that he had previously been lacking. But the portrait becomes even more painfully honest when it shows Ebert receiving treatment on his face and hip. The sequence of his throat being drained is excruciating and his courage is humbling, especially when the doctors reveal that a new strain of cancer lies at the root of his hip problem. Although he struggles through physiotherapy sessions, Ebert seems resigned to his fate on receiving this news and Chaz's acceptance of the fact that her husband no longer fancies the fight is deeply moving.

Yet, while it ends with Ebert's demise and a memorial service at the Chicago Theatre, this is essentially a celebration of its subject's personality and prose. Actor Stephen Stanton reads the extracts taken from Ebert's 2011 memoir, Life Itself, while James intersperses the action with the email exchanges that were intended to be preliminary inquiries rather than the last word. The footage of Ebert at the Boulder Conference of World Affairs suggests that he was as comfortable here as he was schmoozing Robert De Niro at Cannes. But, at the risk of sounding snooty, it has to be conceded that while Ebert remained an exacting written reviewer, the knockabout nature of his contretemps with Siskel did much to lower the tone of American criticism and, in the process, paved the way for the massed ranks of fanboys and amateur experts who have all but driven the professional film critic into extinction. Consequently, there will never be another Roger Ebert and that can be welcome tidings only to the CEOs of the conglomerates who now control the Hollywood mainstream.