Week 4

The Man With The Movie Camera

The Man With The Movie Camera, directed by Dziga Vertov, is all about breaking outside the bounds of what people think a movie should be. The movie was filmed in 1929 and at this time Hollywood was already known for having genre specific films that often told stories of fantasy, but Vertov and the film group he was apart of, The Kinok Group, very much opposed the portrayal of unrealistic or fantasy stories and believed that film should represent reality and the varying parts of modern life. They also felt as though Hollywood films were too formulaic and needed to have a much less linear progression through the story, which is easily seen in The Man With The Movie Camera by the distinct lack of plot. Vertov capitalizes on the lack of plot in The Man With The Movie Camera by having the film almost seemingly focused primarily on trying to achieve the perfect cinematic shot. The Man With The Movie Camera demonstrates the sophistication of cinematic shooting by using advanced cinematic techniques, such as jump cuts, fast and slow motion, freeze frames, close ups, stop motion animation, and a whole lot more. Also, along side trying to capture the perfect cinematic shot, it was often required to film from a very dangerous place to get the correct angle, such as shooting from under a moving train. Film without plot and only consisting of perplexing cinematic shots might seem very disjointed and not flowing at first, but Vertov creates a beautiful flow through out The Man With The Movie Camera by pairing the movement and emotions of the shots with the tempo and melody of the music playing in the background.