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Study of movement still moves director Frederick Wiseman

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 22, 2012|By Wesley Morris

A scene from Crazy horse, a new documentary about Le Crazy Horse Saloon in… (Antoine Poupel )

Here are some things to be aware of regarding Frederick Wiseman’s new documentary, “Crazy Horse,’’ which opens in Boston on Friday. First, it has nothing to do with Neil Young. Second, its subject - Le Crazy Horse Saloon - is an all-female dance revue in Paris, and the dancers are often nude. Wiseman spent 10 weeks shooting in the club in 2009. He watched the dancers rehearse and the directors and craftspeople administrate.

The documentary, his 37th, is the latest in a phase of Wiseman’s movies - “Ballet’’ (1995), “La Danse’’ (2009), and “Boxing Gym’’ (2010) - interested in bodily expression and the halls, studios, stages, and training facilities in which that expression occurs. “Crazy Horse’’ also provided Wiseman with another professional excuse to spend time in Paris, a city he loves. But even at 82 he won’t rest. He’s just begun editing a film on the University of California, Berkeley.

Wiseman is a compact man with big blue eyes and a distinctive, hard-boiled voice. (He sounds like a detective or newsman in a black-and-white movie.) On a recent damp morning, Wiseman sat on a sofa in the editing suite of a Cambridge townhouse where he shares a homely office with his assistants. His movies are shot and edited digitally now, but he’s held onto his assortment of film editing bays. They’re important furniture: This is where the magic happened.

Wiseman discussed making “Crazy Horse,’’ his status as a venerated filmmaker, and how rehearsing a sexy dance can be sexy in a different way. What follows is an edited and condensed version of that conversation.

Q. Did you consider other nightclubs before choosing the Crazy Horse?

A. No. I came upon it by chance. I was in Paris anyway, because I had just finished “La Danse,’’ and I was having dinner with a French friend of mine and she said, “Have you ever thought about doing a French nightclub?’’ And I said I’d been looking. And she said we should go to some. So we went to the Moulin Rouge. It was these statuesque women with bananas on their heads, not doing anything particularly interesting. I fell asleep.

Then I went to the Crazy Horse. I thought the girls were quite attractive, and I discovered that this French choreographer, Philippe Decouflé, who had done the opening and closing ceremony for the [1992] French Olympics, was restaging a show at the Crazy. And it was the first restaging since the founder and owner of the Crazy Horse had died about 15 years before. When I went, it was mainly the old show. I think there was one new number that Decouflé had introduced. But I liked it. I met him, and I liked him. And I thought it would be interesting to follow the rehearsals for another kind of dance show.