Amazon.co.uk: Man With A Movie Camera [1929]: Dziga Vertov: Video

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Man With A Movie Camera [1929]
VHS ~ Dziga Vertov

(3 customer reviews)

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Product details

Directors: Dziga Vertov
Format: Black & White, PAL
Language English
Classification: Exempt
Studio: Bfi Video
VHS Release Date: 6 Jul 1998
Run Time: 137 minutes

Average Customer Review:

(3 customer reviews)

ASIN: B00004CWSL
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 17,662 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
"An experiment in the creative communication of visible events without the aid of inter-titles, a scenario or theatre "aiming at creating a truly international absolute language of cinema," is how the inter-titles describe what is about to be seen. Bold claims indeed, but in its awesome sophistication The Man with a Movie Camera does live up to them, making it one of the most contemporary of silent movies. The subject, the life of a city from dawn to dusk, was not original even for 1928, but its treatment was--the cameraman as voyeur, social commentator and prankster, exploiting every trick permissible with the technology of the day (slow motion, dissolves, split screens, freeze frames, stop motion animation, etc). A young woman stirs in her bed, apparently fighting a nightmare in which a cameraman is about to be crushed by an oncoming train. She wakes up, and the sequence is revealed to be a simple trick shot. As she blinks her weary eyes, the shutters of her window mimic her viewpoint, and the iris of the camera spins open. Self-reflexive wit like this abounds here--there's even a delicious counterpoint made between the splicing of film and the painting of a woman's nails.

The film was the brainchild of the Moscow-based film-maker Dziga Vertov (real name Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman), a furiously inventive poet of the cinema who made innumerable shorts about daily life (such as the much-quoted "Kino-Pravda"), and played at candid camerawork and cinema vérité long before they became the clichés of the television age. The editing has a fantastic abandon that makes most pop videos look sluggish. --David Thompson

Synopsis
A silent film showing the people of Moscow at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city moving. Film pioneer Dziga Vertov uses all the cinematic techniques available at the time - dissolves, split-screen, slow motion and freeze frames. Two versions of the film appear in this programme - the original silent version with a new musical score by the Alloy Orchestra and one with a commentary by leading Russian film historian, Yuri Tsivian.