Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

 Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera"

In the 1920s, Soviet filmmakers were revolutionizing filmmaking with montage theory. Through the editing of images, they could create abstract ideas and tell coherent narratives. However, most Soviet filmmakers, like Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, created fictional narratives to represent a certain ideology, namely the propagation of Communist theory. However, one filmmaker declared it his mission to abolish all non-documentary-style films. This filmmaker, Dziga Vertov, was controversial and despised by his peers. His crowing achievement, however, would go on to surpass his peer's work in retrospective acclaim. This film, "Man with a Movie Camera," took the ideas of Soviet montage and applied them to objective docu-style filmmaking. With the film, Vertov examines the very nature of film itself and the relationship between the filmmaking and their audience.

All of the images you see in "Man with a Movie Camera" were captured from real people in real circumstances. Vertov and his brother, Mikhail (who plays the titular 'man' in the film), travel through the streets of Moscow, Kyiv, and Odesa filming the modern life of the Soviet people. What is interesting, however, are the scenes of 'the man' filming these images, along with his trusty camera. Throughout the film, Vertov continues to let the audience be aware of the camera. He even makes the audience aware of itself. He does this in the opening scenes of the film. The film opens on a movie theater. Lights turn on, chairs come down, and theater goers take their seats to watch a film. What film are they watching? This one. They are watching the very film you are watching. It is certainly interesting and unique for an audience be aware of their own position in relation to the film. Vertov lets the audience know that their relationship to the film is a primary thematic point of the work.

After the audience settles into their seats, the film begins (for us as well). We see shots of a city at different vantage points. More specifically, we see a city at sleep. People are sleeping in their homes or on the street, businesses are closed, and the streets are empty. Right off the bat, Vertov demonstrates class disparity by juxtaposing the images of the people sleeping comfortably in their home versus having to sleep on park benches. Right away, we see the Soviet montage method in full effect, only using images of real circumstances. Vertov set out to prove that a story could be told using real events and only using a montage of those images.

After juxtaposing the image of a woman getting ready in the morning with the image of the man setting up his camera, we see the man go out to capture the city. We are then shown the man capturing images with his camera and how he accomplishes his impressive shots. Firstly, we see the man dig a hole under a railroad track. We then see the camera's shot of the train passing over it. Vertov is demonstrating to us that the images we see in the film are images that have been rendered by the filmmaker. Despite having an objective quality in the images, the perspective of 'the man' is the perspective that the film holds. Vertov wants the viewer to know that this is an important point of the film. He continues with this thematic logic by juxtaposing a woman opening and closing her eyes while looking out her window, accompanied by the camera shutter opening and closing. The combination of images, done in its very Soviet montage way, tells us that the camera itself has a perspective. As Vertov goes around the city and films the public life happening, he also shows us 'the man' filming the very shots we are watching. The shots we see are a symphony of a city and a people. The film begins to feel like jazz and the combination of images creates certain emotions in the viewer. We see people going to work and a city awakening, all through an assortment of quickly editing shots. These shots tell a story. More specifically, these shots tell 'the man with the movie camera's' story. Vertov is letting you know that despite the objectiveness of the image, the 'man with the movie camera' is able to impress a subjective viewpoint of his own. We are watching a subjective interpretation of objective events. He demonstrates this by 'breaking the fourth wall' and showing us how he's doing it. By filming these images in a particular way and editing them in a particular way, 'the man with the movie camera' is able to demonstrate a viewpoint of real life, simply through montage and camerawork. 

Through this symphony of images, we see a metropolis of industry with people hard at work. We see people at their job, especially factory workers, miners, and laborers. The camera makes a point to focus on the machines these people are working alongside. Because of the industrial boom at the turn of the century, people working alongside this industrial technology was the new normal. However, because Vertov edits together these people working with the images of machines turning, rotating, and combusting, he presents these people as being gears in the machines of industry. We then see a shot of laborers pulling wagons of dirt and rocks. The shot shows these men from a low angle, making them larger than life in the image as they move foreground and disappear over the top of the camera. The shot and angle make these men appear larger than life (and thereby incredibly valued). We then immediately see an overhead shot of the man with the camera laying on his stomach capturing the very image we just witnessed. The second shot of the man filming these men completely undermines the shot of the men themselves. The first image gave us an impression about these men while the second one demonstrates the previous images was just that, an impression. The second shot pulls the rug out from under us and lets us know that the impression we had of those men, being larger than life and heavily valued, was simply a manipulation of perspective. Vertov is demonstrating to us that the images we're seeing are manipulated and rendered with a certain intention, despite being objective events happening. Vertov continues to show us the labor of the people, which then gives way to shots of the bustling city, full of shops, traffic, public services, buses, etc. The thematic arrangement of the images from laborers to busy city streets creates the notion that the hard work of the people and industrial improvement gave way to a burgeoning utopia. Vertov even caps off this notion by showing us the images of a mighy fountain. This fountain suggests the city is mighty and spewing plenty of necessary abundance. 

What happens next is something never seen before in cinema. The film begins to deconstruct itself right before our eyes. We see images from the film on a reel, the images full screen again, and then back to the reel. We then see a woman cutting that reel and arranging them in the exact way we see them on screen (images we will see in context later in the film). The film is showing us its insides and how it was made. Here, Vertov continues in his narrative quest to demonstrate the subjective perspective of these objective images. Vertov is showing us how he derives abstract meaning from their arrangement. Vertov arranges the images to demonstrate another thematic point next. He muses on life and death and beginnings and ends through shots of people signing marriage licenses, getting married, and birthing scenes along with images of people mourning at gravesites, people sick in the hospital, and burials. By juxtaposing these images, he uses the Soviet montage method to muse about life and death itself. With these objective images, Vertov can arrange them in a variety of ways to communicate greater subjective and abstract points. He furthers this notion by showing us shots of the 'man' taking waterfall shots juxtaposed with images of an assembly line. Vertov is illustrating that the images we see are an assembly. The images are manufactured en masse to form a larger concept. 

Vertov then moves to the themes of sport. We see scenes of people at play. We see men and women jumping pole vault, playing football, and other sporting activities. With this section, Vertov demonstrates how dazzling images (and thereby the media) can be. We becomes awed at the phsyicality of the action and the camerawork only adds to that. Between the people playing soccer and riding motorcycles, images of a merry-go-round are cut between them. This seems to imply that the images you're watching can also be carnivalesque, as a means to entice and excite you. This is just another facet of film that is being exploited by the 'man with the movie camera.'

The climax of the film is an explosion of images and ideas. Intoxicated by his own power over visual language, the 'man with the movie camera' begins to get far more creative and bold with his images. Firstly, to express this intoxication, we see the image of the camera as it overlooks the city. The image seems to imply a sort of overlooking omnipotence and points to the grandiosity and might of the camera. We then see an image of the man with the camera superimposed over the image of a glass of beer. The superimposed image of the man rises out of the beer with the camera, lending to the idea of the man (and the camera) being intoxicated. After this initial point, the images begin to become more playful and creative. We see a stop-motion shot of a crawdad dancing amongst his dead brethren. We see dizzying camera motions as the camera swings violently around a rowdy bar (further establishing the notion of the 'intoxicated' camera). We see reverse-time shots, as men put chess pieces back on a chess board. We even see the camera itself. Through stop-motion editing, the camera unpacks itself from its case and comes to life. It becomes to dance and move around before exiting the frame. With these series of images, Vertov is experimenting with filmmaking and pushing the boundaries of filmmaking techniques. He is commenting on how powerful and creative the visual image can be and how limitless it can go.

As the intoxication grows, the cameraman's boldness grows. The editing begins to become more and more rapid as we see cuts between the audience from the beginning of the film watching the very film we've been watching this whole time. We see more and more shots of the man filming pedestrian events while the viewers watch. We then see images of a ticking clock, implying that something 'in time' is coming. We then see images of powerful men: pictures of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. We also see pictures of state buildings, back to the ticking of clocks, back to images of the man filming, and back to the audience watching the film. The images of the powerful men are then juxtaposed with chess pieces on a chessboard. We then see an image of a government building being split in two and imploding, via spliced editing. All of this leads to the final image: the image of an eye superimposed on the camera's eye (as seen below). The mélange of these images suggests a greater abstract thematic concept. Vertov is demonstrating how powerful 'the man with the movie camera' actually is. Throughout the film, the man (and his editor) was able to take objective images and arrange them in subjective ways. The viewer sees the arrangement and frequency of the images and derives an emotional or subjective experience from them. When you see the juxtaposition of a woman shoveling mud with a woman being pampered in a beauty parlor, you instantly understand the inequality of class difference. Without the arrangement of the images, you would not have come to that conclusion. So, the 'man with the movie camera' is able to take objective reality and manipulate it to impress upon an audience ideas and viewpoints he wants to promote. By including notions of the state and governmental power in the final scene, Vertov is illustrating the inevitability (and current) misuse of images. Because everything you see on screen is exercising a specific viewpoint, there is undoubtedly the use of the moving image as propaganda. After all, the exhibition of film in the Soviet Union was nothing but propaganda. Vladimir Lenin once remarked that, "film for us is the most important of the arts." Because of this belief, he commissioned young film theorists like Sergei Eisenstein and Vlevolod Pudovkin to create works of Communist propaganda. These works further established a viewpoint of national ideology and implemented a viewpoint of the state amongst the people. What Vertov does boldy in the final moments of "Man with a Movie Camera" is to establish the 'man with the camera' as a propagator. Because the images you're seeing are a rendering of a subjective viewpoint, an audience cannot assert any objective rendering of it. Everything you're seeing on the screen has been designed to exercise a viewpoint, not to demonstrate any sort of objective reality. Thus, "Man with a Movie Camera" breaks the fourth wall and demonstrates to viewers the nature of its construction, as well as iterates the nature of the perspective that film comes from.

During its time, "Man with a Movie Camera" was both a critical and commercial failure. Because of the jazz-like symphony of images that didn't tell a narratively straightforward fictional 'story,' audiences did not like the film. Even the great Sergei Eisenstein called the work, "pointless camera hooliganism." Perhaps many people did not understand the intention of the piece. However, in the 90 years since the film was released, it has been hailed by film historians as an undeniable masterpiece and is often considered one of the greatest films ever made. The film ranked #9 in "Sight and Sound"'s 2022 list of the greatest film ever made. The film is remembered for its unique cinematic language of the senses, and its ability to suggest its emotion through the poetry of its images. As Roger Ebert put it, "It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift of cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing a rhythm and language on it, and transcending it."