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

Review #1,186: 'Pandora's Box' (1929)

The journey taken by Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Pandora's Box to reach its status as a classic of Weimar German cinema is an interesting one. It received mild praise upon its release, but was shrouded in controversy due to its frank depiction of sexuality, even featuring one of cinema's first portrayals of a gay woman. The film was soon forgotten about, until it was re-discovered by a group of socialites and film enthusiasts in the 1950s - some close friends with star Louise Brooks - who heralded the film a masterpiece and set out to spread the word. Soon enough, Pabst's work was undergoing a revival, but this was overshadowed by the attention Brooks received. She was being talked about as an even more striking screen presence than the likes of Garbo and Dietrich, much to her amusement.

The truth is, Pandora's Box would perhaps only be an okay movie without Brooks in the title role. A known party girl, she started as a flapper dancer and bit-part actress before she was signed to Paramount by producer Walter Wanger, catching the eye of Charlie Chaplin in the process. As the film roles came in, she developed a hatred for the Hollywood scene, and fled to Europe after being denied a pay rise. She was unofficially blacklisted in her homeland, but it would be in Germany that she would make the two movies that would cement her as a goddess of the silent era, Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, both directed by the Austrian pioneer of the psycho-sexual melodrama, Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Both told a story of a care-free, and careless, woman brought down by a society that had different plans for her, and Brooks was the perfect face to channel such a dangerous force of nature.

Here she plays Lulu, a young dancer and aspiring performer engaging in an affair with the soon-to-be-married newspaper publisher Dr. Ludwig Schon (Fritz Kortner). On the night of her performance as a trapeze artist, Lulu refuses to go on stage while Schon's fiancee is in the crowd, and kicks up such a fuss that he ends up marrying her instead. Events eventually force her to go on the run with Schon's son (Francis Lederer), and she finds herself in the hands of increasingly unscrupulous men as her naivety and promiscuity invite trouble. At over 2 hours, it's too long, but the film always holds your interest because of Brooks. Her performance is incredibly modern and playful, and there's something almost dangerous about her. Like a beautiful woman who is obviously nothing but trouble, you cannot help but be drawn in by Brooks' seduction. Pabst tastefully weaves a story of drama, tragedy and sexuality with an intense eroticism, but it is the star, with her perfectly symmetrical face and iconic bob hairstyle, who leaves the great impression.


Directed by: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Starring: Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Francis Lederer, Carl Goetz
Country: Germany

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,020: 'Diary of a Lost Girl' (1929)

It isn't difficult to see why Georg Wilhelm Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl caused a bit of a headache for the censors back in 1929. Even for a movie made during the Weimar Republic era, a revolutionary time for cinema when directors were consistently pushing the boundaries with controversial tales of debauchery and Germany's seedy underbelly, the themes and social insight feel unnervingly modern. Teaming up once again with his muse Louise Brooks, the Kansas-born starlet plays Thymian, the naive daughter of a wealthy pharmacist who, in the opening scene, watches their maid leave the family home in shame when Thymian's father (Josef Rovensky) gets her pregnant.

Although it's clear to the audience, Thymian is puzzled as to why the girl has left. Her father's assistant, the creepy and much older Meinert (Fritz Rasp), invites her to the pharmacy that night on the promise to tell her everything, but instead takes advantage of the young girl and gets her pregnant. When the baby arrives, Thymian refuses to reveal who the father is but her family learn the truth from her diary, and insist that the two marry to avoid damage to the family's reputation. When she refuses, Thymian's baby is taken from her and she is packed off to a reformatory watched over by the intimidating director (Andrews Engelmann) and his tyrannical wife (Valeska Gert). After rebelling against the school, Thymian and a friend escape and join a brothel,

Like many films made during the Weimar era, Diary of a Lost Girl depicts the decay in almost every aspect of German society at the time. The lives of the rich are stripped bare, and their motivations are heavily questioned when the family send Thymian away not with her 'rehabilitation' in mind, but simply to save face. The reformatory itself is a cold and bleak place, where the director's wife bangs a rhythm for the inhabitants to rigidly eat their soup too. They are less concerned with helping the girls fit back into the society that has failed them, and more about satisfying their own sadistic desires. In one particularly effective close-up, the wife seems to be achieving some sort of sexual gratification from her monstrous behaviour.

The one place Thymian feels accepted on any sort of level is the brothel, a place where she can be herself without any kind of judgement or fear of social exile. While Thymian can at times be frustratingly naive and swoonish whenever she finds herself in the arms of a man, Louise Brooks delivers a tour de force performance that helps the audience maintain sympathy for her put-upon character, even when the film is at its most melodramatic. Even though the film is now 87 years old, Brooks's acting feels completely modern. Where most silent actors switch between rigid and operatic in their performances, Brooks is naturalistic and subtle, making it clear just why Pabst was so eager to work with her again after Pandora's Box, made the same year.


Directed by: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
Starring: Louise Brooks, André Roanne, Josef Rovenský, Fritz Rasp, Franziska Kinz
Country: Germany

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie