film of life
Man with a Movie Camera is a highly experimental film by Russian director Dziga Vertov, which generally shows urban life forms in modern Soviet Union in a cameraman’ s perceptions.
Without any actors or sets, Vertov turned his camera to life reality itself. He captured objects in emotional qualities, inter-cut shots of people without awareness, and flashed quickly over structures. Camera quickly sliding over the surface of Soviet cities, I felt it could freeze any moment into film, expose any details onto the screen.
While watching this film, I felt myself like Vertov’s pair of eyes sensitive to any outside changes without any words. Along with his camera rolling, my eyes kept watching out. Underneath, there indeed was a conversation between Vertov and me. We kept arguing beyond the experiences of this film: the meaning each shot convey, the state of human being, the essence of life etc. And those motion pictures reflecting on Vertoc’s life philosophy gave me a general impression of what an industrial city is like and how its citizens lived there during 1920s.
Furthermore, instead of fully use of words, Vertov communicated his life philosophy with audiences by pure cinematic language. In my opinion, the most interesting thing is his visual ideas of time and space illustration. For instant, ordinary people could barely see if there is any combination between a scene of sleeping woman, a scene of cameraman, and a scene of running train. But Vertov successfully combined three scenes together with some sense of poetry. Such as, in the morning, the train was setting up from the station, but the sleeping woman felt too tired to get up for work. At the same time, the cameraman started to set up his camera. Then, the train kept running on its track, the woman still struggled to wake up. And the cameraman set his camera on the track and waited train’s coming. While the train looked like going crack up cameraman’s body, the woman was suddenly awake from nightmare. Seemingly, she saw the cameraman being cracked by train in her dream.
This is really a good example, which we could much learn about how Vertov used the changing space to illustrate time, and how he brought up the idea of making this surreal montage. I believe, learning how to illustrate time and space well is a most significant thing of making a film, specially on those films of universal themes.
On a more technical note, I felt Vertov much like to shoot objects from unusual angles and made them metaphors for other life forms in this movie. For example, a street in the morning, running machines, and quick walking people without expression, such images quickly sliding over the surface of modern Soviet life, were frequently seen in this film. After hiding himself behind the camera, Vertov traveled over time and space, located anywhere to capture what he believed is reality: the film playing on the screen is our real life. Actors playing inside the film are ourselves.
Without any actors or sets, Vertov turned his camera to life reality itself. He captured objects in emotional qualities, inter-cut shots of people without awareness, and flashed quickly over structures. Camera quickly sliding over the surface of Soviet cities, I felt it could freeze any moment into film, expose any details onto the screen.
While watching this film, I felt myself like Vertov’s pair of eyes sensitive to any outside changes without any words. Along with his camera rolling, my eyes kept watching out. Underneath, there indeed was a conversation between Vertov and me. We kept arguing beyond the experiences of this film: the meaning each shot convey, the state of human being, the essence of life etc. And those motion pictures reflecting on Vertoc’s life philosophy gave me a general impression of what an industrial city is like and how its citizens lived there during 1920s.
Furthermore, instead of fully use of words, Vertov communicated his life philosophy with audiences by pure cinematic language. In my opinion, the most interesting thing is his visual ideas of time and space illustration. For instant, ordinary people could barely see if there is any combination between a scene of sleeping woman, a scene of cameraman, and a scene of running train. But Vertov successfully combined three scenes together with some sense of poetry. Such as, in the morning, the train was setting up from the station, but the sleeping woman felt too tired to get up for work. At the same time, the cameraman started to set up his camera. Then, the train kept running on its track, the woman still struggled to wake up. And the cameraman set his camera on the track and waited train’s coming. While the train looked like going crack up cameraman’s body, the woman was suddenly awake from nightmare. Seemingly, she saw the cameraman being cracked by train in her dream.
This is really a good example, which we could much learn about how Vertov used the changing space to illustrate time, and how he brought up the idea of making this surreal montage. I believe, learning how to illustrate time and space well is a most significant thing of making a film, specially on those films of universal themes.
On a more technical note, I felt Vertov much like to shoot objects from unusual angles and made them metaphors for other life forms in this movie. For example, a street in the morning, running machines, and quick walking people without expression, such images quickly sliding over the surface of modern Soviet life, were frequently seen in this film. After hiding himself behind the camera, Vertov traveled over time and space, located anywhere to capture what he believed is reality: the film playing on the screen is our real life. Actors playing inside the film are ourselves.
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