Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
December 1, 2022 2:33 PM - Subscribe
A man travels around a city with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life in 1920s Moscow, Kharkiv, Kyiv and Odesa with dazzling invention.
98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
#9 on BFI's 2022 list of "Greatest Films Ever Made".
"We see the making of a film and at the same time the film that is being made. The interweaving of the two is constant and, in its playfulness, disarming, stimulating, often baffling." -- Erik Barnouw, Documentary: a History of the Non-Fiction Film
"It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift the cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing a rhythm and language on it, and transcending it." -- Roger Ebert.
"Vertov's exhilarating and often hilarious exploration of the relations between cinema, actuality and history opened up all the issues Godard, the avant-gardes, and political film-makers have been wrestling with ever since." -- Time Out Film Guide
Available in the U.S. on Vudu and Kanopy, also for pay from various sources. JustWatch listing. It's also available on DVD with countless possible soundtracks.
98% on Rotten Tomatoes.
#9 on BFI's 2022 list of "Greatest Films Ever Made".
"We see the making of a film and at the same time the film that is being made. The interweaving of the two is constant and, in its playfulness, disarming, stimulating, often baffling." -- Erik Barnouw, Documentary: a History of the Non-Fiction Film
"It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift the cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing a rhythm and language on it, and transcending it." -- Roger Ebert.
"Vertov's exhilarating and often hilarious exploration of the relations between cinema, actuality and history opened up all the issues Godard, the avant-gardes, and political film-makers have been wrestling with ever since." -- Time Out Film Guide
Available in the U.S. on Vudu and Kanopy, also for pay from various sources. JustWatch listing. It's also available on DVD with countless possible soundtracks.
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Mikhail Kaufman lowers two legs on his tripod and gets a Dutch angle on a train? That's nice enough, I guess, but it is so much more when Yelizaveta Svilova lays the mirrored image over it, putting two trains on a collision course.
Mikhail Kaufman sets up a camera on a hill, and also films a camera in closeup? Nice enough, but Yelizaveta Svilova puts the hill on the camera, so the cameraman climbs a giant camera.
Mikhail Kaufman shoots a series of images of theater seats? Yelizaveta Svilova again: stop motion lowers the seats, making us imagine an audience taking their seats.
That said, the woman in the car who tires of being filmed, and makes "cranking a camera" motions at the cameraman? Sure, I'll credit that to Kaufman for capturing it--and the passenger for doing it (and Svilova for including it).
posted by johnofjack at 2:40 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]