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85 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
and 5 more, June 14, 2000
Vertov's _Man with a Movie Camera_ is not only the hallmark of Russian Constructivist film but one of the greatest films ever made, no hyperbole intended. Vertov's main premise was to create a new city, an Utopian ideal, through montage and editing. The scenes in the film are taken from footage of the three Russian cities of Kiev, Moscow and Odessa. Unlike many of the other reviewers, I would have to suggest watching the film with the sound off (at least once.) The music, although originally composed by Vertov, has been adapted more recently by the Alloy Orchestra, and can have the tendency to be a distraction. Indeed, Vertov stated that film should be a medium that stands alone, not muddled by the addition of psychology, romance, or music. He placed tremendous value on the camera's ability to distill truth from visual "garbage," with what he termed "Kino-Eye" or "Truth-Eye." Additionally, I would recommend reading Vlada Petric's meticulous still-by-still dissection of the film---_Constructivism in Film : The Man With the Movie Camera : A Cinematic Analysis (Cambridge Studies in Film)_, as well as Andrei Bely's novel _Petersburg_, which Nabokov cited as one of the four most important literary works of the 20th century and deals in part with a similar urban improvement motif, and of course Vertov's own theoretical writings _Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov_.
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53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
SIMPLY CINEMA, April 17, 2000
I love silent movies. The grammar of the cinema has been invented during this period. It's amazing to discover that what seems to us truly original or personal in most of our today geniuses was already there in these black and white movies, even in a better way. I am conscious that it demands a peculiar effort to the 1999 movie fan, but the reward is great. THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is a 1929 russian movie directed by Dziga Vertov. A breath-taking musical score has been recorded for the reissue of this movie a few years ago. I still have this music in my head three days after having seen the picture ! You will also find in this DVD a really instructive commentary which is absolutely necessary if you want to appreciate all the subtleties of THE MAN OF THE MOVIE CAMERA. This motion picture is a kind of manifesto, without screenplay. It could have been a documentary but it's not. Certain moments are not so far from the surrealism one can find in the movies of Luis Bunuel shot at the same period. Other scenes of the movie are lessons of cinema that could have been given by, let's say, a Jean-Luc Godard. For instance, Vertov films a train coming with great speed towards the camera, then the man with the movie camera shooting the scene, then the audience watching the train coming on the screen. At this moment, one remembers that one of the first movies ever filmed was, in 1896, the entrance of a train in a french railway station. The audience screamed and left the room in a hurry, 35 years later no one moves. If you are curious about cinema, if you definitely consider it as an art, if you like to have images haunting your mind during days, then you really should consider THE MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA as A DVD for your library.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
an artistic slice of life, May 7, 2008
The Man With The Movie Camera is an excellent piece of work by Dziga Vertov who directs this film with lots of artistic quality. The idea is to essentially provide viewers with a slice of life as it existed at the time in The Soviet Union. The Man With The Movie Camera uses fantastic camera and cinematography techniques to make this movie stand out as a very good one.
This slice of life movie runs a full 68 minutes without any intertitles, plot, or actors. The people we see in the film are real, everyday people of different classes and backgrounds. I know; the former Soviet Union was to be a classless society; but it's abundantly clear in this movie that some people were so poor they had to sleep in the streets while others clearly enjoyed life at the beach or very modern clothing for their outings and social gatherings. In addition, we see the effects of Communism in the various social halls and a passenger freighter all named after Lenin. The newspaper is a union run newspaper; and except for the wealthy most people do wear essentially the same style of clothing.
The film brilliantly starts with a movie theater filling up with moviegoers and the projectionist and orchestra pit begin the performance; thus there is a movie within a movie. Very impressive! The footage also includes quite a bit of time filming the director as he goes all over a city, towns and beaches trying and succeeding at capturing this precious slice of life.
We see happy people, sad and depressed people, storekeepers, mail carriers. As the film goes along the day begins and we see the people of a city rise from their beds to start what becomes an incredibly busy day; and this is documented very well in this film.
Overall, I highly recommend this film for those of us interested in looking at the past and people who like sociology will also appreciate this movie. The musical score for this silent movie is also excellent. The only extra feature is a commentary; but I think the film stands quite well on its own.
Enjoy!
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