The documentary as true-life suspense mystery came to the fore, and might have been invented, by Errol Morris, when he released “The Thin Blue Line” in 1988.
It was the rare nonfiction film that had a demonstrable real-world impact.
Beyond that, the movie forged a uniquely gripping experience by presenting itself as a kind of documentary film noir.
You could say that Capote and Mailer, in “In Cold Blood” and “The Executioner’s Song,” got there first, but in the world of nonfiction film we hadn’t seen this sort of elevated tabloid page-turner before.
This was still an age when documentaries were viewed, by too many, as medicine, and Morris’s techniques were revolutionary, as well as controversial.
(His then-novel use of dramatic reenactments was thought to have contributed to the film’s failure to snag an Oscar nomination.)You could feel the influence of “The Thin Blue Line” on a
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