Movies - Man with the Movie Camera

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	Movies - Man with the Movie Camera

The Man with the Movie Camera, sometimes The Man with a Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, or Living Russia (Chelovek s kino-apparatom, in ) is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film by Russian director Dziga Vertov.

The film is a meta-reference: it follows a cameraman around various cities, intercutting his footage with footage of him filming and footage of a woman editing, and includes a number of cinematic techniques such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme closeups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, and a self-reflexive storyline (at one point it features a split screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles).

Overview

The film has an unabashedly art film bent and emphasizes that film can go anywhere, for instance superimposing a shot of a cameraman setting up his camera atop a second, mountainous camera; or superimposing a cameraman inside a beer glass; or filming a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed; or even filming a different woman giving birth, the baby being taken away to be bathed.

Vertov's message about the prevalence and unobtrusiveness of filming was not yet true – cameras might have been able to go anywhere, but not without being noticed; they were too large to be hidden easily, and too noisy to remain hidden anyway. To get footage using a hidden camera, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman had to distract the subject with something else even louder than the camera filming them.

The film also features a few obvious stagings such as the scene of the woman getting out of bed and getting dressed (cameras at the time were fairly bulky and loud, and not surreptitious) and the shot of the chess pieces being swept to the center of the board (a shot which was spliced in backwards, causing the pieces to expand outward and stand into position). The film was criticized for both the stagings and its stark experimentation, possibly as a result of its director's frequent assailing of fiction film as a new "opiate of the masses".

Vertov's Intentions

Dziga Vertov, or Denis Arkadevich Kaufman, was an early pioneer in documentary filmmaking during the late 1920’s. The Polish director belonged to a movement of filmmakers known as the kinocs, or kinokis. Vertov, along with other ‘kino’ artists declared it their mission to abolish all non-documentary styles of filmmaking. This radical approach to movie making led to a slight dismantling of film industry: the very field in which they were working. This being said, most of Vertov’s films were highly controversial, and the kinoc movement was despised by many filmmakers of the time. Vertov’s crowning achievement, Man with a Movie Camera was his response to the critics who rejected his previous film, One-Sixth Part of the World. Critics declared that Vertov’s overuse of “intertitles” was inconsistent with the code of filmmaking that the ‘kinos’ subscribed to.

Working within that context, Vertov dealt with much fear in anticipation of the film’s release. He requested a warning to be printed in Soviet/Russian Communist newsprint,Pravda, which spoke directly of the film’s experimental, controversial nature. Vertov was worried that the film would be either destroyed or ignored by the public eye. Upon the official release of Man with a Movie Camera, Vertov issued a statement at the beginning of the film, which read:

“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.”

Stylistic Aspects

Because of the doubts before screening, and the great anticipation, which came from Vertov’s pre-screening statements, the film had gained a colossal interest before it was even shown. Once the film was finally screened, the public either embraced or dismissed Vertov’s stylistic choices. Working within a Marxist ideology, Vertov strove to create a futuristic city that would serve as a commentary on existing ideals in the Soviet world. This artificial city’s purpose was to awaken the Soviet citizen through truth and to ultimately bring about understanding and action. The kino’s aesthetic shined through in his portrayal of electrification, industrialization, and the achievements of workers through hard labour. This could also be viewed as early modernism in film.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Man with the Movie Camera ]

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