THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929)

A.K.A.: Chelovek s kino-apparatom

Country: U.S.S.R.

Genre(s): Art Film / Documentary / Propaganda

Director: Dziga Vertov

Cast: Mikhail  Kaufman

Plot

There is no plot to speak of in this film.  It is primarily a collection of candid moments from the lives of everyday people in the Soviet Union of the period.

What I Liked

Having read that this film was mostly an aesthetic and political statement by its makers without a storyline of any kind, I have deliberately avoided watching this film for a while, figuring I would find it dated, pretentious, and boring.  However, while watching it, I was surprised how well this film kept my attention.  Thrilling, it wasn’t.  Yet two elements kept the film at the very least watchable and at times even interesting. 

First, the movie documents the typical minutiae of daily life nearly a century ago, capturing real people in private and everyday moments that would otherwise be ignored by most artists, storytellers, and filmmakers.  Thus it is a compelling and gorgeous historical document of the ways in which people from that time in place lived differently from today, and also the ways in which they were very much the same.  At the movie’s outset, the title cards express the filmmakers’ goal of establishing the cinema as a universal human language.  To do so, they showed the world how beautiful human beings, particularly the working class, were in both their day-to-day activities, their physical forms, and their industrial endeavors.  The filmmakers succeeded surprisingly well in their goal, considering that that beauty remains visible 87 years after it was first put to celluloid.

The second way in which the film remains interesting was through its technical achievements.  This film is as much a tribute to film and filmmakers as it is to mankind in general.  Thus director Dziga Vertov and his wife/editor Elizaveta Svilova assembled pretty much every special effect and technical approach in existence to that point in motion picture history: stop-motion photography, time lapse, double exposure, freeze frame, split screen, and so on.  It must have been pretty astonishing stuff for audiences of the day.  Even today, a first time viewer won’t know what to expect next from one moment to another, even if we are familiar with all of the techniques involved.  Svilova edited the film so that scenes that otherwise seem completely unrelated are juxtaposed against one another in ways that emphasize their hidden similarities.  That the cutting back and forth between these images happens at a frenetic pace helps keep the eye busy, preventing boredom, and really predicting (maybe even influencing?) the more recent filmmaking techniques of men like Guy Ritchie or Darren Aronofsky.

What I Disliked

Even after taking all of the above into consideration, “The Man with a Movie Camera” really was nothing more than a curiosity from a bygone era for me.  Nothing about the movie really moved me emotionally, nor did it provide any significant intellectual revelation.  It certainly didn’t approach anything resembling entertainment, either.  All in all, while I can respect what the filmmakers accomplished, it doesn’t mean I’ll be watching this movie a second time.

Most Memorable Scene

Because this film lacked any conventional scenes or plot structure, it is impossible to describe a scene that sticks out the most.

My Rating: 3 out of 5