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Man with a Movie Camera

774 votes

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1929-05-12

Runtime: 68 mins

Director: Dziga Vertov

Writer: Dziga Vertov

Spoken language: No Language

Genres: Documentary

Original title: Man with a Movie Camera

Production Companies: VUFKU

Production Countries: Soviet Union

Cast

The Cameraman

Mikhail Kaufman

Reviews

Geronimo1967

Could this be the original observational documentary? We begin as the audience flood into a cinema and settle down in front of the big screen. The cameraman then takes us on a tour of his city with no apparent rhyme nor reason to the imagery we see. There's a bit of the old Imperial opulence reflected in the architecture to contrast with the street beggars (whom the Soviet Union aways denied existed). A very near miss whilst trying to get some POV footage of a train. Then what feels rather pruriently like a look at a woman's morning levée all intercut cleverly using the camera shutter to deliver this in chapters as their city awakens and the trams start to run, the bustle sets in and the industry comes alive. The photography frequently captures the intricacy of different manufacturing processes - both with and without human input, the latter sometimes being quite labour intensive. People mill about like ants racing to and fro and the cameraman himself appears in shot now and again to add additional context to this remarkably captivating look at a day in the life of an huge variety of people and activities - including a wedding and funeral. What's quite astonishing is the quality of the film. It's almost pristine, almost a century after it was made, and there are even some very basic visual effects merging the images and creatively capturing the lives of the community. It's barely an hour long, but effectively combines pictures of the serious and professional as well as the mischievous and playful and it's well worth a gander.

2024-07-13

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