Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
One day in a Soviet city, from waking to nightfall, captured by a cameraman who runs, climbs and lies under trams to get the shot. No actors, no titles, no story — just split screens, freeze frames, stop motion and dizzying cutting that shows you the machinery of filmmaking while it films.
A ninety-year-old film about how films are made that still looks a decade ahead of whatever you watched last night.
Background
Vertov shot the film with his brother Mikhail Kaufman as cameraman and his wife Elizaveta Svilova as editor, in Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov and Odessa, and stitched the results into a single imaginary day. The opening title announces a film with no intertitles, no story and no actors, and it keeps that promise. Svilova appears on screen at her editing table, cutting the same footage we are watching.
What to watch for
It rewards a second viewing. Split screens, double exposures, stop-motion and freeze frames all draw attention to the process of making a film, and the cutting is faster than almost anything from the period, with well over a thousand shots in about an hour. The film has been scored many times since; the version with a modern score from the Cinematic Orchestra is popular, but a silent viewing lets you follow the rhythm of the editing on its own terms. In 2014 a Sight and Sound poll of critics ranked it the greatest documentary ever made.
