In the early 1960s, what might be called the classical period of cinèma-vèritè, there was something like agreement among filmmakers in America on what a documentary was and how one was to be made. This consensus was at one level an agreement on the need to break with a tradition of American documentary, strongly influenced by British and European models, which in the late 1930s commanded its consensus, including such filmmakers as Pare Lorentz and Willard Van Dyke.

The older kind of documentary composed its views of people lyrically or expressionistically and used them rhetorically in illustration of some social theme. The ambition of cinèma-vèritè, by contrast, was to capture the spontaneity of the human subject by recording people's behavior and interactions in their “natural” setting. The goal of filmmakers like Richard Leacock and D. A. Pennebaker was a film with no sign of direction or directedness to an audience, the screen transparently revealing human beings simply going about their lives. Increasingly flexible synch-sound technology was developed (often by the filmmakers themselves) along with increasingly effective strategies for filming people without making them appear manipulated or self-conscious.

What is projected on the screen in cinèma-vèritè claims to be a recording of something that really happened, and the method by which the film was made – which defines a role for the filmmaker in filming the scene as it unfolds – seems to ensure the authenticity of the scene.