(Fwd) The Man With a Movie Camera

[Benjamin Sher]

Dear colleagues:

This review is cross-posted (from Cinema-L) with the permission of
Chris Dashiell. It is a brilliant review of an extraordinary movie
(which I am looking forward to seeing). It would seem to be ideal for
teaching purposes. It is available from Kino on Video. I just
contacted them. Professional etiquette does not allow me to quote
prices. I can only say that they are very reasonable.

From:             "Chris Dashiell" <cdash at azstarnet.com>
To:               "Benjamin Sher" <sher07 at bellsouth.net>
Date sent:        Mon, 9 Mar 1998 12:45:46 +0000
Subject:          Re: Vertov -- The Man with a Movie Camera
Priority:         normal


Yours,

Benjamin Sher


Benjamin -

    I am honored that you would ask to cross-post my article.
Thank you, and feel free to do so.
    THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA, with a score
by the Alloy Orchestra, is available from the Kino on Video
catalog, UPC# 7 38329 00972 4

   Kino on Video
   333 W. 39th St.
   Suite 503
   New York, NY 10018
   800-562-3330
   (Fax) 212-714-0871
    http://www.kino.com

Regards,

Dashiell


   Perhaps the least known great movie of all time is Dziga Vertov's
THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA. Made in 1929, at the
end of the silent era, it represents in a way the climax of a move-
ment, a jewel from a time of great excitement about the possibilities
of film - the bursting forth and flowering of Soviet cinema. Soon,
the youthful hopes and enthusiasms of this movement would be
dashed by a regime that was deeply suspicious of anything imagin-
ative or artistic. What seemed like an auspicious beginning was in
fact an ending.
   Vertov's real name was Denis Kaufman. The pseudonym means
"spinning top." His passion was the documentary, and he made
many short films in the early years after the revolution, notably
a series of newsreels on the civil war. In 1922 he created Kino-
Pravda, a magazine which advocated the use of cinema to document
real life as opposed to fictional narratives. He allied himself with
the poet Mayakovsky and the "futurists," and declared that the
"kino-glaz" (the eye of cinema) was ideal for the revealing the world
of ordinary people. His series of Kino-Pravda newsreels set out
to prove this, but at the same time his love of the forms of film-
making itself, the elements of montage and other techniques by
which the filmed image was manipulated, came to the fore and
blended with his documentarist ideas. His stylistic flourishes
became increasingly elaborate, which caused raised eyebrows
among many staid Soviet critics, but the subject matter of his
films stayed within the bounds of conventional propaganda. But
then came THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA.
   The premise is simple enough - a cameramen travels through
Moscow filming the people's activity in one day, from dawn
to dusk. But the style is so radical that it's startling. Vertov
used the occasion to demonstrate every resource at the director's
command - the picture becomes not only a record of a day in the
life of a city, but an essay on the art of filmmaking itself.
   It begins in a movie house, where the film THE MAN WITH
A MOVIE CAMERA is about to be shown. The seats begin
to set themselves up as the audience arrives - a humorous use
of stop-motion technique. The film is then shown, and it starts
with a series of quiet shots without movement: empty streets,
a woman lying on a bed, a window, a man sleeping on a park
bench, and so on. The shots are very meticulous and beautiful.
There is no message in the juxtaposition of shots other than a
formal one - Vertov has a fascination with the relationships of
different shapes to one another. Gradually the rhythm builds up
as the city awakes. The streets fill with people going to work,
streetcars, automobiles, horses. The movement of machines
and people accelerate to a dizzying pace. And through it all we
see, from time to time, the cameraman moving about and placing
his camera strategically to shoot the action.
   The recent Kino Video version of the film has a score by the
Alloy Orchestra (Terry Donahue, Caleb Sampson and Ken
Winokur) which is based on Vertov's own notes for a score.
The music is energetic, even manic at times, propelling the
movie along at breakneck speed. It definitely bears the imprint
of the sort of repetitive minimalism that is the rage in music
nowadays, but I've rarely heard a score put to better use. It
adds immeasurably to the power of the film.
   Besides the advanced use of montage, Vertov was in love
with the moving camera. (All the Soviet montagists had
studied Griffith, especially INTOLERANCE.) Here the
camera is placed in the streetcars and autos - the picture has
a constant feeling of rushing forward that is exhilirating. And
every trick in the book gets pulled out - split-screen, multiple
superimposition, different camera speeds, fast and slow motion,
dissolves, stop-action, animation, and more - as if the technique
of film in the silent era was exploding in one final show of fire-
works, a culmination of all that had been achieved before. The
amazing thing is that it's all so entertaining. There isn't a moment
in which the eye is not captivated by the pleasure of movement,
the virtuosity of the image's manipulation.
   The recurring theme of the cameraman becomes a bit of self-
reflexive insight and humor. We see this cameraman - but of
course some other cameraman is shooting him! The people in
the theater are watching the same film we're watching, and at
the same time we see them being filmed. Finally the camera
is pointed straight at us, and in the reflection of the lens we
see the other camera that is filming it. This motif becomes even
more explicit in the last third of the film, when we see the
film's editor at work splicing frames together. A face in the crowd
that we first see on the editor's table, a still image, later comes
to life in the crowd scene itself. I have seen nothing that more
beautifully illustrates the mystery and power of film - its
nature as a material object combined with its awe-inspiring
ability to recreate impressions of the living world.
   It would be futile to attempt to describe THE MAN WITH
A MOVIE CAMERA in full. You must, of course, see it to
appreciate it. Or perhaps the better term would be to let it
wash over you like a river. The wonderful marriage of music
and image in the Kino Video release will give you an idea of
the possibilities that were just coming to fruition when the
silent era ended. There was something gained when the spoken
word was introduced - but there was something lost too. The
idea of film as a visual, almost a plastic, artform, was coming
into its own just as the talkies were about to drag it back into
the category of theater again.
   THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA was condemned
by the Soviet government for "formalism." There was no
room for beauty or inventiveness in a totalitarian idea of
"realism." Vertov saw no contradiction between his brash
visual acrobatics and his commitment to the idea of the
socialist documentary. For him, the understanding of film
technique as a completely new way of communicating went
hand-in-hand with the ideas of science and the newsreel. The
authorities saw it differently. He, along with Eisenstein and
the other montagists, were forced to make the painful discovery
of their own naivete about the revolution. They thought exper-
imentation was good and would be encouraged. As it turned
out, the main criterion of socialist film was that it be as dull,
stupid and lifeless as possible. Vertov made some excellent
films in the 30s, all of which did better in other countries than
his own. He was constantly attacked for formalism, and it
appears that by the 40s his spirit had been broken, for he made
nothing of distinction then, until his death in 1954.
   Kino has recently released a series of Soviet silent films,
including rare titles by Kuleshov and Pudovkin. Vertov's THE
MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is the biggest jewel in
the bunch. Most modern films can't even hold a candle to it.
See it if you want to glimpse a land of promise, abandoned
for a time, still waiting for new explorers.

Dashiell

Benjamin Sher
Russian Literary Translator
Email: sher07 at bellsouth.net
http://personal.msy.bellsouth.net/msy/s/h/sher07/