The International Language of a Man with a Movie Camera

Words do not seem sufficient to describe my experience watching Man with a Movie Camera.  Which, helpfully, seems to be the point of the movie.  It seems to be telling us what movies can do: that they can capture real life, which this does better than most, and what you can actually do with a camera, which appears to be everything that was possible in 1929 and even things that shouldn't have been possible yet.

The movie grabbed my attention immediately, but at first, I appreciated it in a detached sort of way.  I saw what it was doing and I thought it was clever.  Somewhere in the middle, I was hooked, transfixed, slightly emotional in a way I could not explain and still can't explain.  This is also the point of the movie.  Film can do this.

It was aided by a tremendous score in the version I watched by the Alloy Orchestra.  It is in fact so vital to the success of this movie that I am very curious what score played when audiences sat down to watch this in 1929.  It's propulsive and exciting and matches what director Dziga Vertov was trying to convey.

Stripped of the score, stripped of the camera techniques, and stripped of the message, A Man with a Movie Camera is at the very least worth watching for seeing everyday people in the Soviet Union.  From the homeless sleeping on benches to the working man to athletic and leisurely pursuits of the time, it truly tries to capture the working class. 

It also gives a very slight behind the curtain peak on how it was made, simply by filming the cinematographer setting up for shots and him actually filming shots.  You also see a little bit of the editing process, which must have been exhaustive and difficult.  Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova edited the film. 

If neither seeing how everyday people lived or a tiny peak at how films were made nearly 100 years ago doesn't appeal to you, then we are very different people.  The MLB Draft just happened as of me writing this, so forgive me when I say that this is what we call a very high floor when watching a movie.

A Man with a Movie Camera somehow makes me optimistic about humans, and I don't know why it does, it makes me marvel at the power of film, and it kind of makes me want to shoot a movie myself.  And it kinds of makes me believe I can against all objective evidence.

Vertov at the beginning of the movie, fearing it would get lost or ignored, tried to warn the audience what he was about to do.

"This new experimentation work is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature."

It was filmed in the Soviet Union, but it could have been filmed anywhere.  Honestly.  Nothing that happens in this movie, to my knowledge, wasn't also happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom, anywhere.  This film wouldn't really be meaningfully different if he decided to move to the US and film it in exactly the same way.

I now think I know why I was a little emotional, why it made me optimistic about humans.  Because, without my conscious knowledge, the film successfully conveyed that idea to me.  I understood what he was saying.  This is what film can do.  It makes you feel like, for at least the duration of a film, that there is hope we will overcome our differences and realize what makes us the same.