Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film, Man with a Movie Camera, unobtrusively and surprisingly entertainingly captured the everyday actions of Russian civilians and Soviet life in general. Despite an entire hour of pure observance of life’s banalities, Vertov manages to captivate audiences, dominantly through his pioneering cinematography and cinema’s ability to invent new moments.
Vertov’s film, which was a masterful contribution to the Kinoks movement, was extremely experimental for its time as it renounced narrative drive and rhetorical devices such as pathos to affect its audiences. I found it artistically, beautifully edited, masterfully composed in its montage-ing, collage-ing and splicing of life, supporting its seamless transition from society’s work time to ‘play’ time.
The opening image, after the cinema scene, of the ‘mini’ cameraman on top of the camera simply symbolised the film’s mode of address, exploring the ontology of the cinematic space and its ability to create new realms of existence.
What I enjoyed most about the film was my eye’s ambitious curiosity to observe life from 82 years ago unfold, perceiving how urban life has progressed, and in some senses, how it hasn’t changed at all. The everyday is made intriguing through Vertov’s employment of double exposure, split screens, the speeding up, slowing down, reversal and stopping of time through fast motion, slow motion and freeze frames, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, flirting with the unconscious.
The machinery of modern life has occupied jobs filled by people, such as the woman folding cardboard to make boxes, allegorically demonstrating the organic body turned ‘machinic’, set amongst electronics, machinery and technological advancements. This narrative of organic meets electronic can be easily recognized through Vertov’s reconfigured space in which the organic human eye is replaced by the inorganic, that of the camera.
On a more technical analytical note, I found Vertov’s cinematography (and some content such as the glimpse of a woman giving birth) rather progressive for the late ‘20s. Regarding this point, Vertov actually requested a disclaimer before the film's release concerning its controversial and experimental nature so as not to be disregarded or loathed by audiences. The warning stated:
"The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT
(a film without script)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera#Vertov.27s_intentions)
Despite its experimental, arguably mundane structure, I truly enjoyed Vertov’s dream-like landscape of Russia, and the neurology of modernity portrayed, even with its anti-narrative drive. I have attached two of my favourite images, which can be seen below. The superimposed eye inside the camera's eye simplistically embodying Vertov's term 'kinoks' (camera-man) whilst the image of the camerman looming over the city symbolises the idea of the 'hyper-human', the "perfect electric man" weaving a poetic thread of the common citizen amongst modern machinery.
Vertov’s film, which was a masterful contribution to the Kinoks movement, was extremely experimental for its time as it renounced narrative drive and rhetorical devices such as pathos to affect its audiences. I found it artistically, beautifully edited, masterfully composed in its montage-ing, collage-ing and splicing of life, supporting its seamless transition from society’s work time to ‘play’ time.
The opening image, after the cinema scene, of the ‘mini’ cameraman on top of the camera simply symbolised the film’s mode of address, exploring the ontology of the cinematic space and its ability to create new realms of existence.
What I enjoyed most about the film was my eye’s ambitious curiosity to observe life from 82 years ago unfold, perceiving how urban life has progressed, and in some senses, how it hasn’t changed at all. The everyday is made intriguing through Vertov’s employment of double exposure, split screens, the speeding up, slowing down, reversal and stopping of time through fast motion, slow motion and freeze frames, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, flirting with the unconscious.
The machinery of modern life has occupied jobs filled by people, such as the woman folding cardboard to make boxes, allegorically demonstrating the organic body turned ‘machinic’, set amongst electronics, machinery and technological advancements. This narrative of organic meets electronic can be easily recognized through Vertov’s reconfigured space in which the organic human eye is replaced by the inorganic, that of the camera.
On a more technical analytical note, I found Vertov’s cinematography (and some content such as the glimpse of a woman giving birth) rather progressive for the late ‘20s. Regarding this point, Vertov actually requested a disclaimer before the film's release concerning its controversial and experimental nature so as not to be disregarded or loathed by audiences. The warning stated:
"The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT
(a film without script)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_a_Movie_Camera#Vertov.27s_intentions)
Despite its experimental, arguably mundane structure, I truly enjoyed Vertov’s dream-like landscape of Russia, and the neurology of modernity portrayed, even with its anti-narrative drive. I have attached two of my favourite images, which can be seen below. The superimposed eye inside the camera's eye simplistically embodying Vertov's term 'kinoks' (camera-man) whilst the image of the camerman looming over the city symbolises the idea of the 'hyper-human', the "perfect electric man" weaving a poetic thread of the common citizen amongst modern machinery.
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| The Giant Capture |
I also find the notion of urban advancement in the last hundred or so years fascinating - it seems as though everything has changed, and yet not much has changed at the same time. Vertov's content is complemented by his film making techniques, which I was captivated by largely because of the fact that they did seem awfully progressive when considering the era. Although this may be due to my ignorance of films produced during the same time.
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