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Silent 101Film 20 of 20
Man with a Movie Camera
Человек с киноаппаратом
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A day in a Soviet city that is really four cities, from waking to work to sport to the cinema, with no actors, no intertitles, and no story. The cameraman is in the film, lying under a train, riding in a motorcycle sidecar, climbing a smokestack, and so is the editor, Elizaveta Svilova, sorting the strips of film you are watching. Vertov throws in every device the camera can do, split screens, freeze frames, slow motion, superimposition, and the camera taking a bow on its own tripod. It is fast enough that you will not see all of it the first time, and it was built that way.
In two programmes
The camera is the subject. No story, no actors, no titles after the first card, and Kaufman carrying the machine into traffic, onto a chimney, under a train. Svilova at the cutting bench is the best joke in it: you watch the film get made while it is being shown. It closes the collection because it refuses the thing the others spent thirty years building.
Vertov's whole argument in one film, with the camera as the hero. Where Eisenstein wanted collision, Vertov wanted the machine to see.
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Further reading
- EssayMan With A Movie Camera (opens in a new tab)
- EssayMan with a Movie Camera (1929): The Visual Essay Mode — Academia.edu (opens in a new tab)
- EssayMAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA ANALYSIS — The Unaffiliated Critic (opens in a new tab)
- EssayA film about a film about itself — Roger Ebert Great Movies (opens in a new tab)
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