Man With A Movie Camera (1929) DVD

Man With A Movie Camera

Not merely a cinematic portrait of a day in the life of a city, cinema pioneer Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is an experimental manifesto of vision. Controversial when it was created in 1929, the film still pulses with the unruly energy and innovation of Vertov's genius. Subverting and criticizing the conventions of capitalist fiction filmmaking that he so despised, Vertov and his revolutionary Kino-Eye crew (including his wife as editor and his brother as cameraman--both of whom appear in the film) created a plethora of filmic devises in order to comment on vision, life, Marxism, and modernity. Differing film speeds, superimposition, evocative and manipulative editing, and rhythmic graphic composition all blend seamlessly in a magic show of life above and below the city. Shooting shops, traffic, children, coal miners, workers, human bodies, and nature, Vertov creates visual rhymes and graphic portraits of the structure of life and the explosion of perception. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA took part in the city symphony genre that was popular at the time (BERLIN: SYMPHONIE OF A GREAT CITY is another example) but transcended it in its critical distance, sheer innovation, and sublimely fluid vision of man, machine, and society.

Director	Dziga Vertov
Studio	BFI VIDEO
Run time	DVD: 1 hr 10 mins
Certificate
Genres	Documentary
Language	Silent
Released	DVD: 10 Jul 2000 Production year: 1929
Format	DVD

Critics' reviews (2) of Man With A Movie Camera
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Dziga Vertov claimed that his purpose in making this remarkable panorama of Moscow life — the workers, shoppers, holidaymakers and machines that keep the city moving — was to film “life as it is.” To achieve this, Vertov displayed all the techniques of cinema at his disposal: split-screen, dissolves, slow-motion and freeze frames. Indeed, it's the camera that is the hero of this influential documentary. Born Denis Kaufman, Vertov took his name from the Ukrainian words meaning spinning, turning or, more appropriately, revolution. The film was shot (sometimes perilously) by his brother, Mikhail; a third brother, Boris Kaufman, became an Oscar-winning cinematographer.
- Radio Times
- Posted 29 Jan 2006
An analytical account of the State of the (Soviet) Union at a crucial transitional stage, this is one of the most... read more on Time Out
- Time Out
- Posted 04 Nov 2008
Most helpful member's review of Man With A Movie Camera
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23 out of 24 people found this review helpful

Man with an editing suite

This is a self confessed 'experiment in the language of film', as the opening credits/disclaimer/warning professes. It lacks plot, characters, and titles, and yet it manages to engage one's full attention for it's full hour, and beyond.

The camera work itself IS something to behold, but from the very start it is the editing that the filmmakers, and audience, seem to be interested in. The montage builds to frenetic pace at times, bringing you to the edge of your seat, in anticipation of what? You don't know. But something. And by God it delivers in spades.

The film is helped condsiderably by its score, (a keyboard affair that smacks of synthesyser), which is nothing like, luckily, the criminal redubbing of Metropolis in the late eighties.

Made in 1929, there are shots here that still surprise by their inventiveness, and images that still startle- a young woman, late twenties, shooting the effigy of an old hag bearing a swastika, seems to be an incredibly chilling anticipation of the coming decade.
- - Santa from Herts
  - Posted 10 Sep 2004 02:32
Most recent members' review of Man With A Movie Camera
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1 out of 1 person found this review helpful

Worth watching for film buffs

A very interesting and fascinating film. Shows quite an interesting side to early black and white filming.
- - sapper from Sutton
  - Posted 24 Aug 2007 23:15