A montage of Moscow life showing the inhabitants through the eye of a movie
camera. Its actors are the machines and people of the city photographed in all
sorts of situations with the camera following all of their movements. Although
produced by the Communists, it does not preach a message.
Vertov and his Contemporaries
The majority of the films produced in Russia following the Revolution were
blatant propaganda films that glorified the Communist rule with the removal of
the restrictions imposed by the Czarist authorities as few liberal young
filmmakers had the opportunity to follow their own ideals. Most of the future
filmmakers were very young in 1917 when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar. Dziga
Vertov was 21, Lev Kuleshov was 18, Vsevold I. Pudovkin was 24, Sergi Eisenstein
was 19, Boris Barnet was 15, and Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko was 23.
They more or less had a free hand in selecting their subjects. Vertov had his
montages. Barnet had his comedy ideas reflected in "The Girl With The Hatbox,"
and many churned out the glory of the revolution such as Eisenstein's
"Battleship Potemkin." They squabbled among one another on who was serving the
state and who wasn't, and as early as 1919 Vertov wrote his first manifest. In
1922 he wrote to a cinema publication condemning the play-film as an
entertainment form alien to the needs and wishes of the new Soviet audience. For
a few years a group of disgruntled filmmakers formed their own group called
Factory of the Eccentric Actor, or FEX, that defied critics and tradition. When
the Communist Party took complete control of the cinema and imposed rigid
restrictions at the end of the silent era, even the most ardent Communists were
silenced for one reason or another.
Breadth and Precision of the Camera's Recording Ability
"Man With a Movie Camera" was an effort to show the breadth and precision of
the camera's recording ability, and similar films were produced in a few other
European countries. The film is a succession of images supposedly showing the
audience what the camera eye is seeing. Vertov's brother, Mikhail Kaufman, is
the cameraman, and at times another movie camera follows "Man With a Movie
Camera" on the street and in other places. In one sequence some women in a cab
notice the cameraman smirk and gesture at the camera as they ride through the
streets of Moscow.
Vertov explained his actions with profound statements
such as, "Construction must be understood as the co-ordinating function of
Constructivism. If the tectonic unites the ideological and formal, and as a
result gives a unity of conception, and the factura is the condition of the
material, then the construction discovers the actual process of putting
together. Thus we have the third discipline, the discipline of the formation of
conception through the use of worked material. All hail to the Communist
expression of material building."
"Man with a Movie Camera" did not receive very favorable reviews, and one
contemporary review said, "Theorists mostly love their theories more than a
father loves an only child. ... Vertov also has waged fierce, vehement and
desperate battles with his materials and his instruments (reality and the film
camera) to give practical proofs of his ideas. In this he has failed. He had
already failed in the era of the silent film by showing hundreds of examples of
cunning artistry in turning:acrobatic masterpieces of poetic jigsaw, brilliantly
conjuring of filmic association - but never a rounded work, never a clear,
proceeding line. His great efforts of strength in relation to detail did not
leave him breadth for the whole. His arabesques totally covered the ground plan,
his fugues destroyed every melody."
Sergi Eisenstein, who was busy churning out films glorifying the Communist
rule, had this to say about Vertov and "Man With a Movie Camera" - "formalist
jackstraws and unmotivated camera mischief."
Denis Kaufman Becomes Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov, born Denis Arkadievitch Kaufman (1896-1954), was the son of
Jewish intellectuals who moved to Moscow to flee the invading German armies
during World War I. He trained as a musician and neurologist, and he had studied
at the Moscow Psycho-neurological Institute. He was also a poet, fiction writer
and journalist. He was conducting experiments in synthetic sound before the
outbreak of hostilities against the Czar. During the revolution he was in charge
of photographic work in a partisan army fighting the Czar, and in 1918 after the
Communist takeover, he was placed at the head of the Cinema Department of the
All-Russian Central Executive Committee. It was there that he met his future
wife and collaborator, Elizaveta Svilova (1900-1976), who began her film career
with Pathe Freres in Moscow. He abandoned the name of Denis Kaufman and adopted
Dziga Vertov which was derived from the verb which means to spin and Dziga is
the repetitive sound of a camera crank turning
(dziga, dziga, dziga ...
).
Dziga formed a propaganda unit, Kino-Eye, and he launched a massive campaign
of newsreel coverage. This massive propaganda campaign was an attempt to break
down the social barriers of the different Russian ethnic groups by blending
propaganda and art.
In 1919 Vertov, with Russian President Kalinin, toured the Civil war
battlefields with a propaganda train known as "The October Revolution" whose
purpose was to encourage the Communist soldiers to continue fighting the Czar's
armies. Vertov was the founder of Soviet documentary, and he was an enthusiastic
opponent of the theatre, staged events and fiction in film. Contradicting his
theories, he was said to have made many films commemorating Lenin's death.
Vertov loved machines and the tricks that the camera was able to do fascinated
him. "Man with a Movie Camera" is a result of his fascination. He filmed "Man
with a Movie Camera" using a candid camera, filming undercover or from a
distance, using split screens, dissolves, superimposition, slow motion, crude
animation and freeze frames. He seemed devoted to tram cars, shuttle looms,
traffic signals, and motor cars, and he traveled throughout the country side and
into factories. He was very active for a number of years producing Cine
Weekly (1918-1919), a series of 12 documentaries for the Anniversary of
the Revolution (1919), 23 episodes of "Cinema Truth" (1923), fifty-five editions
of "Goskino Kalendar" (1924), six episodes of "Camera Eye" (1926) and numerous
other films proclaiming the wonders of the masses. He was assisted by his wife
and his brother, Mikhail Kaufman (1897-1979).
Falling Out of Favor
By 1930 Constructivism, Leninism, and the Bolshevik idealism had been
replaced by the Stalin dictatorship and bureaucracy. By the mid-1930's Vertov
was no longer favored by the regime that he had promoted. "Three Songs of
Lenin," his tribute to Lenin, was delayed in its release, allegedly because it
neglected Stalin. In the age of perestroika Vertov was labeled as an exponent of
totalitarian cinema on a par with Leni Riefenstahl, as someone who did not stand
up sufficiently against the cruel and inhuman state. In the United States,
Vertov has never received the adulation given Sergi
Eisenstein who spouted
the Communist line until he lost favor
with Stalin and his cronies.
Sources:
A Biographical Dictionary of Film by David
Thomson
Kino-Eye, The Writings of Dziga Vertov by Kevin
O'Brien
Soviet Cinema by A. Arossev
KINO by
Jay Leyda
The Film Till Now byPaul Rotha
From Rare and Obscure
Films
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