Essay on ‘Man with a Movie Camera’

Essay on ‘Man with a Movie Camera’

Dziga Vertov made a 1929 film called ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ and the film revolves around the documentation of life in a Russian city whilst simultaneously telling a story about filmmaking. The film is an extremely remarkable mix of imagery and technique. It reels in the viewer in an attempt to see the sensations of the city through the eyes of the cameraman, experiencing the filmmaking process through the sharing of his own perception of the transpiring events.

In this essay I am going to be examining not only the narrative of the film but I will also be exploring the underlying themes, using my film response as a case study, as to how they relate to each other with regards to the specific themes Vertov was aiming to capture. I will also be citing quotes from academic sources, discussed by scholars.

At the start of the film there is an indication that the film was going to be like no other. Something extraordinary. The card titles are in Russian and at the bottom there is an English translation of the text which refer to the film as ‘…an experiment in cinematic communication of real events, without the help of intertitles, without the help of a story, without the help of theatre…’

From the outset of the film, it differentiates itself by focussing on capturing the true essence of film to documentary by recording human activities in the form of moving images. The Man with a Movie Camera is actually split into four sections and it is ‘book-ended’ by imagery relating to general film and filmmaking.

In terms of narrative, and looking at it purely from that perspective, the film is very different from the norm and is a stark contrast to not only movies of it’s time but films in general. This is due to the fact that there is no protagonist, no antagonist. The standard three-act structure is not used. There is no inciting action (Act1) it lacks a midpoint and confrontation (Act 2) and it doesn’t end in a resolution or climax (Act 3). Instead however, you can almost say that the city itself is the major character in the film. It shows the daily life, how it’s inhabitants interact with each other, the activities that occur on a daily basis, people having a good time with their friends in a display of leisure all captured through the eyes of the filmmaker. The movie for the most part, is more concerned with depicting reality as opposed to dramatised fictional spectacles or a re-creation of events from the past in what would be a historical period piece.

According to Ben Nicholson of the British Film Institute ‘When we think of impressive cinematic effects, we tend to think in terms of modern CGI blockbusters…However beneath that brainstorming spectacle lies a more subtle kind of effect – that which imperceptibly conveys time and mood.’ This is evidence that a lot of film journalists really cherish this film as not being the standard norm with regards to popular commercialised filmmaking and really credit it for being it’s own unique entity.

It was also quite mesmerising in a sense how the inhabitants completely ignore the existence of the camera, because in the moment that particular concept is foreign to them because they are just living in the moment, and the masterful piece of cinematography speaks for itself.

 According to an article by McGavin Israel ‘The camera is both the machine and body part. There is an abundant amount of scenes which involved challenging and risky shots…The film defied all aspects of what films where during that time, introducing numerous new methods of filming in the art form.’

Even in my film response I can draw similarities to how it relates to Man with a Movie Camera because in my film I wanted it to have an unconventional narrative with no real human characters being the focus of the film. It was just a collection of clips filmed around my local area displaying the scenery. I even added some animated elements to it, which featured animated animals in a live action environment. The 3D animated animals were taken from a feature on Google which allows you to put virtual animals in real world environments. I included this because I wanted to get creative and spring unexpected surprises to the audience. For the most part I filmed plants, staircases, me running, street sides, kids playing sports in a cage, and various other things.

I feel as though, the themes I chose relate to the themes explored by Vertov because there are parallels with regards to how we wanted to capture daily life, leisure and activities in an area, and how we both wanted to take an unconventional approach to filmmaking in terms of not confirming to the standards norms and taking pride in depicting our own unique styles.

To conclude, even though the film is clearly a product of it’s time it still holds up to the modern day in a remarkable way. A lot of filmmakers can really learn a lot from Dziga Vertov and how he is able to tell a story through unconventional methods. It is a revolutionary film that although is slightly under-appreciated has magnificent pacing and superb shots keeping the audience engaged from beginning to end. I did the best I could with my film response but I can say that Man with a Movie Camera is easily one of the best film/documentaries of it’s kind in history and is an absolute landmark in terms of montage filmmaking in it’s entirety.

Bibliography / Sources read and cited

Ben Nicholson – The British Film Institute

McGavin Israel — Article from medium.com

http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections/introduction-bfi-collections

https://collaborativedocumentary.wordpress.com/6-types-of-documentary/