Cinematic

The biggest surprise of Sight and Sound’s 2012 poll, other than Vertigo dethroning Citizen Kane for the top slot, was the inclusion of Dziga Vertov’s 1929 movie Man with a Movie Camera, an experimental feature length film, at eighth place, ahead of The Passion of Joan of Arc and after The Searchers.  Some may cry blasphemy at the picture’s inclusion, but I found Man with a Movie Camera‘s high ranking to be completely deserved.  It’s an enthralling movie with a truly visionary standpoint.

Man with a Movie Camera opens up with a title telling the audience explicitly that it is an avant-garde film, meaning there will be no intertitles nor did Vertov use any actors or sets.  Vertov’s goal was to make a picture that speaks to all people (though there are subtitles translating various Russian texts), an original intention of film itself.  There is no direct story in Man with a Movie Camera, though the film often shows the images of the filmmakers as well as a recurring scene in a movie theater.  The center of the picture revolves around one day of a Soviet city, filmed in Odessa, Moscow, and Kiev.  Vertov filmed over three years of footage and his wife Elizaveta Svilova edited together about 1,775 separate shots.  Vertov commonly switches settings over and over.  He cuts from factories to dump yards to waterfalls to beaches.  Much like Baraka, Man with a Movie Camera is just a symphony to watch the transitions.

Of course, what’s so famous about Man with a Movie Camera is the number of movie techniques it employs.  There is stop motion, freeze frames, tracking shots, extreme close-ups, split screens, and Dutch angles.  Man with a Movie Camera wasn’t the origin of all these cinematic movements, but it certainly revolutionized it.  It’s hard not to see the influence of the film in multiple movies, from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese.

I’ll keep this review short, since I would not want to create many preconceived notions and would rather have you experience the film yourself.  It’s available on Netflix, accompanied by a score by Michael Nyman, and is only about an hour long, making it a short and easy watch.  It’s a miraculous film achievement, one that still seems completely fresh today.