The Man with a Movie Camera - Dziga Vertov

Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope…now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten.

~Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups, Dziga Vertov, 1926

Dziga Vertov was not only an important filmmaker in film history but was a revolutionary Filmmaker, he believed that Camera is the eye and truest form to capture the society by films are the Documentary films. Vertov started his career by editing a series of newsreels called Kino-Nedelya. The 23 newsreel he edited, he called them Kino-Pravda, ‘Pravda’ is not only the Russian word for the truth but also the title of the official party newspaper. This shows how much he cared for showing the truth Created from documentary footage, Vertov’s films represented an intricate blend of art and political and poetic rhetoric.

Then in 1919 Vertov and his future wife, film editor Elisaveta Svilova, along with other young filmmakers, created a group called Kinoks (‘kino-Oki’, meaning cinema-eyes). In 1922 they were joined by Vertov’s brother, Mikhail Kaufman,

Vertov was true 'Marxist' he considered Marxism the only objective and scientific tool of analysis. He considered his films as Documentaries, - the truth of society. But his documentaries in a way was his 'personal' truth. His first film as a director was The Anniversary of the Revolution (1919), followed by two shorts, Battle of Tsaritsyn (1920) and The Agit-Train Vsik (1921), as well as the thirteen-reel History of Civil War (1922). These films were in a way propaganda films.

Vertov's work was highly criticized because of his strange camera angles, fast cutting, montage editing, and experimentation like split-screen, multi-layered supers, and even animated inserts. By the mid-1920s, Vertov was acquiring the reputation of an eccentric, a dogmatist who rejected everything in cinema except for the Kinoks’ own work. He even assembled clips of the film without regard for formal continuity, time, or even logic itself to achieve a ‘poetic’ effect which would grab the viewers

Vertov's one of the greatest works "Man with a movie camera" was not supported by the central government as they were fed up with his experimentation. So he had to accept the invitation of the film studio VUFKU out in Ukraine. These compromises and changes to Kinok policy led to the collapse of the Kinoks group.

Man with a movie camera was a documentary showing a day in the city. He showed the city through the eye of a filmmaker, a cameraman carrying lightweight camera standing on top of a building, on the back of a truck showing a day in urban daily of proletariat society. He also showed the making of a film by showing clips of his wife editing the footage. But the reason this film is remarkable in film history is because of the eccentricity of Vertov. Here are a few styles Vertov used in this documentary which made this Documentary immortal.

• The Dissolve

• Slow Motion

• Stop Motion

• Split Screen

• Double Exposure

Even today these 5 styles are widely used in Cinema and have been the backbone of many different genres. Later on in 2012, nearly 83 years after the release of the film 'Man with a movie camera' is named as the 8th best film ever made.

But the eccentricity and experimentation of Vertov did not stop here, when sound came he was already prepared for the sound revolution as he had experimented with noise recording in his earlier films. In A Sixth of the World, he had even experimented with rhythmic substitutes for the human voice. By alternating the phrases with images, Vertov achieved the illusion of off-screen narration. His first real sound picture, Enthusiasm, Donbass Symphony (1931), was an instant success abroad. Charles Chaplin observed that he had never imagined that industrial sounds could be organized in such a beautiful way and called it the best film of the year.

Even getting success internationally he was not so much appreciated at home, Vertov’s next film, Three Songs of Lenin (1934), made to remember the tenth anniversary of Lenin’s death, had to wait six months for its official release. But the film turned out to be a popular success both at home and abroad. Again Vertov’s elaborate film structure, the expressive montage, and the groundbreaking sync sound shots of people talking, all seemed the essence of modernity. In spite of his international acclaim and acknowledged influence, by the end of the 1930s, Vertov was deprived of any serious independent work.

In 1950s filmmakers like Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, or in America, Stan Brakhage, used the concept of Vertov, 'the self-reflective' camera, where the viewer identified themselves with the filmmaking process. Vertov was one of the greatest of all the pioneer filmmakers who inspired the future generation of filmmakers to take risks and do something different. He was indeed the Man with a Movie Camera.