Man with a Movie Camera

Overview

The film has an unabashedly avant-garde style, and emphasizes that film can go anywhere. For instance, the film uses such scenes as superimposing a shot of a cameraman setting up his camera atop a second, mountainous camera, superimposing a cameraman inside a beer glass, filming a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed, even filming a woman giving birth, and 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 (the film's co-author) 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 a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed and the shot of chess pieces being swept to the center of the board (a shot spliced in backwards so the pieces expand outward and stand in position). The film was criticized for both the stagings and the 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

Vertov — born David Abelevich Kaufman — was an early pioneer in documentary film-making during the late 1920s. He belonged to a movement of filmmakers known as the kinoks, or kino-oki (kino-eyes). Vertov, along with other kino artists declared it their mission to abolish all non-documentary styles of film-making. This radical approach to movie making led to a slight dismantling of film industry: the very field in which they were working. Most of Vertov's films were highly controversial, and the kinok movement was despised by many filmmakers of the time. Vertov's crowning achievement, Man with a Movie Camera, was his response to critics who rejected his previous film, A Sixth Part of the World. Critics had declared that Vertov's overuse of "intertitles" was inconsistent with the film-making style to which the 'kinoks' subscribed.

Working within that context, Vertov dealt with much fear in anticipation of the film's release. He requested a warning to be printed in the Soviet central Communist newspaper, 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. 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 COMMUNICATION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCENARIO
(a film without a scenario)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)

This manifesto echoes an earlier one that Vertov wrote in 1922, in which he disavowed popular films he felt were indebted to literature and theater.

Stylistic aspects

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.

Some have mistakenly stated that many visual ideas, such as the quick editing, the close-ups of machinery, the store window displays, even the shots of a typewriter keyboard are borrowed from Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), which predates Man with a Movie Camera by two years, but as Vertov wrote to the German press in 1929, these techniques and images had been developed and employed by him in his Kino-Pravda newsreels and documentaries for the last ten years, all of which predate Berlin. Vertov's pioneering cinematic concepts actually inspired other abstract films by Ruttmann and others, including writer, translator, filmmaker and critic Liu Na'ou (1905–1940) whose The Man Who Has a Camera (1933), pays explicit homage to Vertov's The Man With a Movie Camera.

On a technical note, Man with a Movie Camera's usage of double exposure and seemingly 'hidden' cameras made the movie come across as a very surreal montage rather than a linear motion picture. Many of the scenes in the film contain people, which change size or appear underneath other objects (double exposure). Because of these aspects, the movie is fast-moving. The sequences and close-ups capture emotional qualities, which could not be fully portrayed through the use of words. The film's lack of 'actors' and 'sets' makes for a unique view of the everyday world; one that, according to a title card, is directed toward the creation of a new cinematic language that is "[separated] from the language of theatre and literature."

Production

Man with a Movie Camera, depicting the daily life of a Soviet city, was actually filmed over a period of about 3 years. Four Soviet cities — Kharkiv, Kiev, Moscow and Odessa — were the shooting locations.

Initial

Man with a Movie Camera was not always a highly regarded work. Vertov's Soviet contemporaries criticized its focus on form over content, with Sergei Eisenstein even deriding the film as "pointless camera hooliganism". The work was largely dismissed in the West as well. Documentary filmmaker Paul Rotha said that in Britain, Vertov was "regarded really as rather a joke, you know. All this cutting, and one camera photographing another camera – it was all trickery, and we didn't take it seriously." The pace of the film's editing — more than four times faster than a typical 1929 feature, with approximately 1,775 separate shots — also perturbed some viewers, including The New York Times' reviewer Mordaunt Hall:

"The producer, Dziga Vertov, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention."

Because of doubts before screening, and great anticipation from Vertov's pre-screening statements, the film gained great interest before even being shown. Once the film was finally screened, the public either embraced or dismissed Vertov's stylistic choices.

Reevaluation

Man with a Movie Camera is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, having ranked eighth in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll of the world's best films. In 2009, Roger Ebert wrote, "It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift the cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing a rhythm and language on it, and transcending it."

Analysis

Man with a Movie Camera has been interpreted as an optimistic work. Jonathan Romney has called it "an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that the work "is visibly excited about the new medium’s possibility, dense with ideas, packed with energy: it echoes Un Chien Andalou, anticipates Vigo's À propos de Nice and the New Wave generally, and even Riefenstahl's Olympia."

Soundtracks

The film, originally released in 1929, was silent, and accompanied in theaters with live music. It has since been released a number of times with different soundtracks:

1983 – New composition was performed by Un Drame Musical Instantané, based on Vertov's writings among which his Ear Laboratory. Electronic sounds, ambiences, voices were mixed to the 15-piece orchestra. An LP had been issued in 1984 on GRRR Records.

1995 – New composition was performed by the Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge, Massachusetts, based on notes left by Vertov. It incorporates sound effects such as sirens, babies crying, crowd noise, etc. Readily available on several different DVD versions.

1996 – Norwegian composer Geir Jenssen (aka Biosphere) was commissioned by the Tromsø International Film Festival to write a new soundtrack for the movie, using the director's written instructions for the original accompanying piano player. Jenssen wrote half of the soundtrack, turning the other half to Per Martinsen (aka Mental Overdrive). It was used for the Norwegian version Mannen med filmkameraet at the 1996 TIFF. Scored movie not available after the festival. The soundtrack was released in 2001 on Substrata 2.

1999 – In the Nursery version, made for the Bradford International Film Festival. Currently available on a few DVD versions, often paired with the Alloy Orchestra score as an alternate soundtrack.

2001 – Steve Jansen and Claudio Chianura recorded a live soundtrack for a showing of the film at the Palazzina Liberty, in Milan on 11 December 1999. This was subsequently released on CD as the album Kinoapparatom in 2001.

2002 – A version was released with a soundtrack composed by Jason Swinscoe and performed by the British jazz and electronic outfit The Cinematic Orchestra (see Man with a Movie Camera (The Cinematic Orchestra album)). Originally made for the Porto 2000 Film Festival. It was also released on DVD in limited numbers by Ninja Tune. This DVD edition is currently very much in demand and goes for prices higher than the other DVD versions.

2002 – A score for the film by Michael Nyman was premiered performed by the Michael Nyman Band on May 17, 2002 at London's Royal Festival Hall. A British Film Institute DVD of the film was released with Nyman's score. This score is readily available on several different DVD editions. It has not been issued on CD, but some of the score is reworked from material Nyman wrote for the Sega Saturn video game Enemy Zero, which had a limited CD release, and Nyman performs a brief excerpt, "Odessa Beach" on his album, The Piano Sings.

2003 June – American multi-theremin ensemble The Lothars performed a semi-improvised soundtrack accompanying a screening of the film at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts. They repeated their performance three years later, in December, 2006 at the Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, New York.

2006 Absolut Medien, Berlin released a DVD with the 3soundtracks from Michael Nyman, In the nursery, and a new soundtrack from Werner Cee

2007 November – France based group Art Zoyd presented a scenic version of the film with addition video by artist Cecile Babiole. A studio recording of the soundtrack was released on CD in 2012.

2008 – Norwegian electronic jazz trio Halt the Flux performed their interpretation of the soundtrack for Man with a Movie Camera in Bergen International Film Festival. The trio consists of Anders Wasserfall, Jørgen Vaage & Bjørnar Thyholdt.

2008 October – London based Cinematic Orchestra undertook a show featuring a screening of Vertov's film, which preceded the re-issue of the Man With A Movie Camera DVD, in November.

2008 November – American Tricks of the Light Orchestra accompanied a screening of the film on Sunday, November 30 at Brainwash Cafe in San Francisco.

2009 July; Mexican composer Alex Otaola performed live a new soundtrack for the film at Mexico's National Cinematheque. Aided by the 'Ensamble de Cámara/Acción' (Adrian Terrazas-bass clarinet, Daniel Zlotnik-clarinet/flute, María Emilia Martínez-flute, Luca Ortega-flute/piano, Carlos Maldonado-upright, Jose María Arreola-drums/percussion), which consists of members from The Mars Volta, Los Dorados, San Pascualito Rey, Klezmerson and LabA

2009 The American Voxare String Quartet performed music by Soviet Modernist composers to accompany a screening of the film.

2010 August – Irish instrumental post-rock band 3epkano accompanied a screening of the film with an original live soundtrack in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin

2010 July – Ukrainian guitarist and composer Vitaliy Tkachuk with his quartet performed his own soundtrack for the film at a first Ukrainian silent cinema festival "Mute Nights" in Odessa, the city where this movie was made.

2011: The French pianist Yann Le Long, the violoncellist Philippe Cusson and the percussionist Stéphane Grimalt performed for the first time the soundtrack written by Le Long for the film (20 May 2011) at the Centre Culturel du Vieux Couvent, Muzillac, France.

2014 March: Sarodist, beat maker, and multi-instrumentalist composer James Whetzel performed live a 51 piece new all-original soundtrack to Man With a Movie Camera at SIFF Cinema Uptown in Seattle, WA, USA. Soundtrack features sarod, electric sarod, analog synthesizers, accordion, mandolin, bass, guitar, dhol, dholak, darbouka, bendir, rumba box, electronic drums, and 41 other pieces of percussion. Whetzel successfully completed a Kickstarter project for the soundtrack in July.

2014 Spanish band Caspervek Trio premiered a new soundtrack for the film at La Galería Jazz Club, Vigo, with further performances in Gijón, Ourense and Sigulda (Latvia).

2014 September: Swedish indie rock band bob hund premiered a new soundtrack for the film at Cinemateket in Stockholm, with subsequent performances in Helsinki, Luleå, Gothenburg and Malmö.

2016 March: Man with a movie camera footage used in the new Oliver Heldens feat. RUMORS soundtrack called "Ghost". This is a 2016 EDM song, with a creative video edit on the bass of the music.