The Man with a Movie Camera is anepitome of groundbreaking Russian political cinema, circa 1920, because of how it manifests film as a political and/or ideological medium. Dziga Vertov utilized it to advance certain principles in cinema. He remarked,
“The film drama is the Opium of the people…down with Bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!”
This statement gives people a holistic glimpse of Vertov’s ideologies in the film, all of which areshown through the Kino- eye or the cinema eye.
Reality captured: Kino-Pravda
The Russian film world during Vertov’s time was heavily into fiction. His antidote, in response to the film‘s condition as a “dying organism“, was “reality.” This notion won Lenin’s support, who declared that since people were drawn to theatres by nonsense films, then must be a counter for this through films that deal with world realities. This paved the way for the authorized launching of Kino-Pravda, or film-truth, headed by Vertov.
In the film, Vertov manifest this notion of making film straight from, or by capturing “life caught unaware” through the camera. This means that the film will have to be made without any acting and manipulated apparatus apart from the camera. It rejects staged cinema with its cast, plots, and set designs. It is a cinema of fact, one that captures the real, un-manipulated world. In this sense, the documentary is superior to fiction, because film should depict the world, life, as they are without the aid of theatrical apparatus.
Various shots exemplify this principle. The camera depicts daily life and routines in Moscow. All the shots were directed to random people— some of which were aware they were being filmed while some remained unsuspicious. The point is these people were not cast for the film, they did not follow some script and just went about with their activities. The reality shots included cycles and images of industrial Russia and technology, the factories and laborers, the production processes of the film, landscapes, sports events, musical performances and other leisure activities. People marry and divorce; a funeral and a birth take place. All these are captured as soon as the camera’s eye opens in the beginning until it closes at the film’s end.
Reality as seen through the cinema eye: Kino-eye
The film truth is aided by another of Vertov’s key propositions on the capacity of the film and the camera. The following text provide Vertov’s early outline of the film:
“I am the kino-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world only as I can see it.Now and forever I free myself from human immobility. I am in constant motion. I draw near, then away from objects. I crawl under. I crawl on top. I move apace with a galloping horse. I plunge full speed into the crowd (…) manoeuvring in the chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combinations.Freed from the rule of sixteen to seventeen frames per second, free of the limits of time and space. I put together any given points in the universe,no matter where I have recorded them. My path leads to the creation of fresh perception of the world. I decipher in new ways a world unknown to you.”
This is in line with his project of exhausting reality through the camera’s cinema eye, which essentially extends the limitations of humans’ commonplace ways of seeing. Such a project enables an experience of reality-transcendence while shooting reality at the same time. The camera’s eye travels, simultaneously and freely, even to the point of invincibility, where the human eye may not have the liberty of doing so and thus, showing the viewers a more conscious, detailed and transcendental view. Also, this may be linked to Vertov’s ideals of how cinema should be— transcending and realist at the same time, in motion, and revealing of new sights and, the term used as a construct, worlds in contrast to the traditional fiction-heavy narratives of his time.
In the first few moments of the film, we see an empty theatre in different angles and points of view. One is through curtains, which was voyeur-like; another is a wide shot from the entrance door and is thus a very inclusive view— in it is the screen, the empty chairs, the floor. Through this, one gets the feeling that the camera has a control of what it can capture, as the audiences see through the camera’s eye while watching. To further this, the camera zooms in to rather minute details such as when seats of chairs are slowly moving down— suggestive of the fact that these are about to be used by yet-to-arrive audiences. By shooting and choosing such scenes, Vertov shows how utilizing film, cameras in specific, can come with great control on perspective; and control, too, by showing the minute things that take place, which the human eye may usually neglect or may not normally have access to.
This consciousness is prevalent throughout the film. There are scenes where one sees the cameraman, a film character, pointing his device from different vantage points— from the top of a building, a moving car, on top of a bigger camera in the opening scene, through a window. Along with these are sudden scenes of immense intensity and activity, many of which take place behind closed doors and walls— people signing contracts for divorce, a lady in slumber, a woman beautified inside a parlor. Apart from reflexive scenes that show the man with the movie camera are close ups of the camera itself, examples of which are the scenes where viewers are shown a zoomed in perspective of the camera’s eye as it blinks. Apart from the man holding it, all these make the camera an important character in the film, because of the control, even power in a political sense, it enables the director and the viewer to have by using it and seeing what it shoots, respectively.
(stills that depict the Kino-eye)
Montage: Elevation of Labor, Productionism, Socialism and Marxism
The use of montage in Man with the Movie Camera was a juxtaposition of shots that shows the difference between still photography and cinema, and to achieve an organic whole. But perhaps more importantly is the exemplification of processes, and this is where the elevation of production processes and labor surfaces.
The film shows shots of the very ways it was created— a cameraman in the midst of shooting scenes, the editor handling rolls of film, and the projectionist. This is in line with the Productionist doctrine where the work, the process of production, is of aesthetic value, and not the end-product. Apart from processes of filmmaking, labor is elevated by filming scenes that were paralleled to the working class. The camera zooms in to several activities of workers such as those that take place in factories and street-selling. It also compares elite women riding carriages to commonly dressed and worked up faces of other women who just walk in the streets, some even barefoot.
Vertov’s ideological milieu in the film is early Soviet communism and Marxism. These are fleshed out by providing positive shots of Russian economy and industry— happy workers and the strength of industry in Russia, the importance of factories and machines as fundamental to an ideal society. One sees that the machine is in harmony with its workers, as in the notion proposed in an ideal communist setting. Productive recreation and leisure is juxtaposed to self-serving shots of the elite who are more concerned with vanity in beauty parlors and vices. The working class, the labor and production processes of immense activity and relevance, are given their rightful and essential places in the daily life/routine of Moscow from sunrise to sundown.
(1st pair: the production process) (2nd pair: productive labor) (3rd pair worker juxtaposed with the bourgeoisie) (last still: worker in harmony with the machine)
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Sources and Helpful Links
Notes on Ideological Undertones and Vertov's Theories in the Film
Movie Stills
Film Career and Biography of Dziga Vertov
Kino-Pravda
Insightful Film Review
Another Insightful Review and Assessment
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