A Man With A Movie Camera Analysis
Man with a Movie Camera , directed by Dziga Vertov in 1929, is a film with the essence of getting the perfect shot. It doesn't have a conventional plot, story line, or real actors. AMWAMC uses the tempo of the film itself to tell its story albeit if there is one. The narrative shows the progress of one day in the city of Moscow, Russia. The idea of the camera and what the camera can achieve is tested throughout the film. The camera is both machine and a body part. There abundant amount of scenes in which involved challenging and risky shots and techniques Vertov & brother used to get. The film defied all aspects of what films were during that time, introducing numerous new methods of filming in the art form .
Many films at that time were story based and had a conventional plot. Vertov felt film was stuck in this cycle of making something so formulaic that it was limiting the art form itself. Vertov filmed numerous of hours of film not intentionally thinking to use it for a project. He experimented with different type of cinematic shots which were his purely avant-garde. They went to pretty deep lengths to film some scenes from recording under a moving train and even over a water fall. The film displayed numerous techniques used today from double exposures to playing with fast and slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, close-ups, stop motion animation and even more.
Vertov was part of the Kinok group in Russia and they were completely against what mainstream film was at that time. They were against Hollywood and the fantasy world it created in their films. They believed that film had to show reality and not fantasy. Portraying a current and realistic world through film was their main goal. Which is why Vertov & the other camera man were seen in a few scenes throughout the film. The camera was not only a tool , but a part of the camera mans body. The industrial Russia was rising and that was constantly shown with people working in mines, telephone operators to cigarette packagers. The camera was the eye interacting with the civilians, the machine and human working as one.
Letting the viewer see that it was a film with in a film added a new layer to an already complex film. Self-awareness was an added element that was not relevant or used in too many silent films. Forty minutes into the film everything stops and cuts to Vertov’s wife, Svilova is shown editing and splicing the film together. A Man with a Movie Camera even starts with multiple openings , something never done before.
Vertov’s movie also uses countless cinematic metaphors in it. A Man with a Movie Camera visual metaphors are made by early film techniques use pacing and frame cuts to help the narrative.This was shown in the beginning of the, movie when a woman blinks her eyes, the film cuts to the blinds on the windows opening and closing syncing up with her. Another example is when a funeral is shown right before a mother birthing her baby and a divorce is shown right after a wedding.
The ambiguity of the film is pretty amazing in itself . If you are not able to make out the Russian signs you would be hard pressed to say where the if this film was ever shown to the America during the early Cold War era , it would definitely ease tensions of the two sides. It can be watched by any person in any country on the world. Humans are all the same, were all just living on this one planet.
The pace of the movie is carefully matched with the audio. Even though the melody stayed constant , it changed in each section. The industrial scenes had a stark mechanical feel, while as the film pace sped up the music also matched with a busy energetic flow. The music in A Man with a Movie Camera works great with the accompanying visuals . Strangely current music genres like post-R&B, with their slow rpm pace matches actually well with the film.
A Man with a Movie Camera is more of an experience to than just a regular movie. A casual movie goer could consider it dull or boring, but this film is visually impressive and still holds up to today. It holds many secrets on having and attaining visually appealing shots. Many classic films have taken cues from Vertov’s film from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Psycho to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and even more films were influenced by this film. In a way AMWAMC is the blueprint on how to get a terrific & interesting cinematic shot, what you have to go through to pace your film and how to have meaning without following conventional storytelling.
