Review #1,403: 'Man with a Movie Camera' (1929)

David Abelvich Kaufman was born on January 2nd, 1896 in Bialystok, Ukraine, and came of age during the Russian Revolution, joining the movement headed by Lenin and Trotsky that would eventually overthrow the Russian Republic. At some point during this time, Kaufman changed his name to Denis Arkadievich to avoid the persecution of Ukranian Jews. He studied music and medicine until he found his true calling in the arts, writing essays on Futurism and French avant-garde and developing a keen interest in cinema, something he viewed with both curiosity and frustration, calling out traditional, sentimental cinema as "leprous". Learning his trade developing newsreels for Cinema Week and changing his name once again to Dziga Vertov, the filmmaker set out to develop something nobody had ever seen before: a film without narrative, characters or dialogue.

Man with a Movie Camera, released in 1929, did away with traditional storytelling techniques to the point that no story would be told at all, at least not in the way that audiences were - and still are - accustomed to. Vertov would spend over 3 years on the film, shooting in Soviet cities Moscow, Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa to capture the hustle-and-bustle of everyday life, from faces on the street to the labourers keeping the cities in motion. But this is no ordinary documentary, and to call it a documentary at all is somewhat misleading. Vertov and his group, the kinoks, were rooted firmly in modernism and Marxist ideologies, and Man with a Movie Camera aimed to push the limits of what could be achieved with a camera and clever editing. What may sound like a dour experiment for the academics is actually incredibly entertaining, with Vertov having plenty of fun playing with his toys. After a short burst of intertitles, we see an audience arrive for a screening, their seats magically lowering themselves down before the film begins. Later, we see a woman editing a scene we've just watched.

It's a film being made before our very eyes, and Vertov even manages to make you feel part of the process. Not only do we have the pleasure of some dazzling, innovative camerawork, but we also get to see how such a shot was achieved. The only 'character' of the film is the man with a movie camera, played by Vertov's brother and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman. We see him scaling great heights and perched on the side of a moving car, or lounging in the shallow sea as he shoots a crowd gathered at the beach. The film would pioneer techniques still used to this day, including the likes of double exposure, slow-motion, extreme close-ups, jump cuts, and in one of the most delightful segments, stop-motion animation. With an average shot length of 2 seconds - the same as many blockbusters today - it thunders along like a well-oiled machine, backed by The Alloy Orchestra's rousing score. Everything is constantly in motion, from the trains, trams and factories, to the people going about their business. Vertov juxtaposes life and death, marriage and divorce, happiness and hardship, almost like it's happening simultaneously. It's a head-spinning experience that remains one of the most significant moments in cinema history, and to think it was done over 50 years before Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi attempted the same.


Directed by: Dziga Vertov
Starring: Mikhail Kaufman
Country: Soviet Union

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie