Man with a Movie Camera
Oh wow. I have been meaning to watch a Russian silent for awhile and pretty much randomly ended up choosing this one. I don’t know very much about Vertov and I was intrigued by a film about film-making.
Now, “Man with a Movie Camera” is much less about film-making but much more a slice-of-life type film in the veins of “Berlin, Sinfonie eider Großstadt”, even though it partially depicts the filmmaking process. Unlike Ruttmann’s portrait of Berlin, there is no special interest of mine in the topic of “Man with a Movie Camera”. Instead, I am just amazed at how it’s made. Just as Wikipedia describes, Vertov uses an absolutely shocking amount of filming techniques, such as “double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations and a self-reflexive style”. How in the world is it possible that the 20s (and beginning of the 30s) were just so incredibly creative in terms of avant-garde? Literature, fashion, music, visual art, architecture, cinema – everything was so fruitful in between the wars. I bow my head in front of expressionism in cinema which is probably my favorite style of all times. I love the experimentally of the times and wonder when we will ever come to such a point of creative outburst again.
With a little over an hour, “Man with a Movie Camera” was really short and as such, a nice look into Russian silent films. Next thing I want to see is a Dovzhenko. On a side note, I think I definitely prefer Russian films that are not overtly political in any sense. “Man with a Movie Camera” only is in a very limited way (in the sense that I barely see it), and that was awesome. More than anything else, the film is a self-reflective on the interaction of movie makers with city life. I have no idea where they got all the money to make a film like this, but I certainly will not complain.