THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA Movie Review

Chelovek s Kinoapparatom

Soviet filmmaker and theorist Dziga Vertov set out to create a new way of looking at the world through the use of experimental editing and innovative special effects. In his near-cubist 1929 film, The Man with a Movie Camera—a pulsating and rousing portrait of one day in the life of the Soviet Union—Vertov stretched the envelope to the near-breaking point. The man of the movie's title shows up in the darndest places, pointing his lens at myriad people and places that simultaneously recreate the life of a nation each day. The rhythm of the picture is critically important, so to reinforce the concept of his nation as a living thing with lifeblood pulsing to its corners, Vertov made extensive notes as to what kind of music and sound effects should accompany his silent film. (These even included the astoundingly avant-garde notion of having live radio broadcasts of big city noises piped into theatres at critical moments in the film.) In 1995, the brilliantly talented Alloy Orchestra of Cambridge, Massachusetts, created a complete score—city noises included—based on Vertov's original notes. The score is a part of a recent reissue of the film on video and laserdisc, which was mastered from a beautiful print preserved by the George Eastman House. Live concert performances of this event are must-sees, but the video version is the next best thing. It's staggering.

NEXT STOP … Earth, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, Koyaaniqatsi

1929 69m/B RU D: Dziga Vertov; W: Dziga Vertov; C: Mikhail Kaufman; M: Pierre Henry. VHS IHF, MRV, DVT