Man with a Movie Camera

For other uses, see Man with a Movie Camera (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Man with a Camera.

Man with a Movie Camera
Still from Man with a Movie Camera
Directed byDziga Vertov
Written byDziga Vertov
CinematographyMikhail Kaufman
Edited byDziga Vertov
Yelizaveta Svilova
Production
companies
Release date
  • 7 January 1929 (1929-01-07)
Running time
68 minutes
CountrySoviet Union
LanguagesSilent film
No intertitles

Man with a Movie Camera[1] (Russian: Человек с киноаппаратом, romanized: Chelovek s kinoapparatom) is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova. Kaufman also appears as the eponymous Man of the film.

Vertov's feature film, produced by the film studio All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU), presents urban life in Moscow, Kiev and Odessa during the late 1920s.[2] It has no actors.[3] From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have "characters", they are the cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film.

Man with a Movie Camera is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invented, employed or developed, such as multiple exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, match cuts, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, reversed footage, stop motion animations and self-reflexive visuals (at one point it features a split-screen tracking shot; the sides have opposite Dutch angles).

Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work's fast cutting, self-reflexivity, and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the 8th greatest film ever made,[4] the 9th greatest in the 2022 poll, and in 2014 it was named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine.[5] The National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre placed it in 2021 at number three of their list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema.[6]

In 2015, the film received a restoration using a 35mm print of the only known complete cut of the film. Restoration efforts were conducted by the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam, with additional digital work by Lobster Films. While the film is in the public domain, this restored version was licensed to Flicker Alley for release on Blu-ray.[7]

  1. ^ Also known as A Man with a Movie Camera, The Man with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The Man with the Kinocamera, or Living Russia. See IMDB's list of alternate titles for Man with a Movie Camera.
  2. ^ Mordaunt Hall (17 September 1929). "Floating Glimpses of Russia". The Screen. The New York Times (review). p. 32. Archived from the original on 3 December 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2022. (facsimile)
  3. ^ Michelson 1995, ch. "Dziga Vertov. On Kino-Pravda. 1924, and The Man with the Movie Camera. 1928".
  4. ^ "Sight & Sound Revises Best-Films-Ever Lists". studiodaily. 1 August 2012. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
  5. ^ "Silent film tops documentary poll". BBC News. August 2014. Retrieved 1 August 2014.
  6. ^ "ДОВЖЕНКО-ЦЕНТРТОП – 100Людина – з кіноапаратом" [Dovzhenko Centre – Top 100 – A Man with a Movie Camera] (in Ukrainian). National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre. 2021.
  7. ^ Lumbard, Neil (4 April 2020). "Dziga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera and Other Newly-Restored Works". Blu-ray.com. Retrieved 9 February 2023.