I’ve delayed posting about Man with a Movie Camera because my Vertov-related excitement has neither subsided, nor crystallised into any particular conception of Vertov’s work. With each new day comes a new perspective, an interesting insight such that I need a warehouse sized sheet (or blogspace as it were) to write what intrigued or bemused me about Vertov, about his theoretical presuppositions, about Man with a Movie Camera, about his other films (namely, Tri Pesni o Lenine), about the nature of avant-garde documentary films, about ideology, about the repercussions that emerge when a society becomes the catalyst for a documentary. The list can, and does, go on.
In the current edition of Sight & Sound magazine, which considers the importance of documentary films as cultural and historical artefacts, one writer suggests that ‘what distinguishes the documentary from all other forms of cinema is its claim to be more reflective of the truth’ (Sight & Sound, p. 22).* What intrigued me about Man with a Movie Camera, about Kino-eye and about Vertov’s other films, was his emphasis on presenting the building blocks of his films with an eye to ‘life as it is’, or, reflective of the truth.^ For Vertov, it was the purpose of film to create an intrinsic relationship between recorded ‘life facts’, or instances of life, and cinematic devices, or techniques such as jump cuts or montage, in order to capture something essential about the nature of life within a particular society. For Vertov, the ‘“film thing”… is the conclusive result of a complete observation [of life] refined and deepened by means of all available optical devices, enhanced by the camera and the result of an experiment in space and time’ (Petric, p. 37).** Furthermore, cinematic devices must refine the meaning of particular images and imbue them with ideological meaning (Petric, p. 30). While this may seem contradictory, Vertov wrote that his purpose was not concerned with the truthful recording of reality but rather recording life by reorganising the historical process with an interest in reality and the organization of that reality (Vertov in Petric, p. 30). Vertov’s conception of the purpose of documentary film can be noted in Man with a Movie Camera through his use of montage. Thus, for instance, criticism of various facets of society, such as religion or the bourgeoisie, is derived through montage. Given this Kino-eye conception of the function of film, how do we understand the self-reflexive function of the cameraman and editor? How do we understand that Vertov is at once, constructing an ideological document while through the cameraman, revealing the constructedness of the documentary film. Isn’t it, after all, the purpose of ideological texts to convey concepts about society as truths and not constructions? Does the fact that Vertov flaunts the documentarists ability to mould perception render Man with a Movie Camera a lesser ideological film? Critics of Man with a Movie Camera have insufficiently and unconvincingly attempted to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory positions. I, like them, cannot.
Vertov’s theoretical position on the nature of film, however, provided a language for documentary film. He discovered a visual language for the representation of space quite different from that of the studios of meretricious commercial cinema (Sight & Sound, p. 26-7). At the expense of narrative, Man with a Movie Camera explored and expanded the principles of montage, which still remain an essential resource to the language of documentary film (Sight & Sound, p. 26). If this is the language that Vertov sought to establish when he declared that ‘this experimental work is made with the intention of constructing a genuine and international and absolutely visual language of cinema’, then, he definitely succeeded.
* Sight & Sound, 17: 9 (September, 2007).
^ Concepts relating to Vertov’s theoretical statements were derived from:
Vertov, D., Kino-Eye, A. Michelson (ed.), Berkley: University of California Press & **Petric, V., ‘Dziga Vertov as Theorist’, Cinema Journal, 18: 1 (Autumn, 1978), 29-44.
In the current edition of Sight & Sound magazine, which considers the importance of documentary films as cultural and historical artefacts, one writer suggests that ‘what distinguishes the documentary from all other forms of cinema is its claim to be more reflective of the truth’ (Sight & Sound, p. 22).* What intrigued me about Man with a Movie Camera, about Kino-eye and about Vertov’s other films, was his emphasis on presenting the building blocks of his films with an eye to ‘life as it is’, or, reflective of the truth.^ For Vertov, it was the purpose of film to create an intrinsic relationship between recorded ‘life facts’, or instances of life, and cinematic devices, or techniques such as jump cuts or montage, in order to capture something essential about the nature of life within a particular society. For Vertov, the ‘“film thing”… is the conclusive result of a complete observation [of life] refined and deepened by means of all available optical devices, enhanced by the camera and the result of an experiment in space and time’ (Petric, p. 37).** Furthermore, cinematic devices must refine the meaning of particular images and imbue them with ideological meaning (Petric, p. 30). While this may seem contradictory, Vertov wrote that his purpose was not concerned with the truthful recording of reality but rather recording life by reorganising the historical process with an interest in reality and the organization of that reality (Vertov in Petric, p. 30). Vertov’s conception of the purpose of documentary film can be noted in Man with a Movie Camera through his use of montage. Thus, for instance, criticism of various facets of society, such as religion or the bourgeoisie, is derived through montage. Given this Kino-eye conception of the function of film, how do we understand the self-reflexive function of the cameraman and editor? How do we understand that Vertov is at once, constructing an ideological document while through the cameraman, revealing the constructedness of the documentary film. Isn’t it, after all, the purpose of ideological texts to convey concepts about society as truths and not constructions? Does the fact that Vertov flaunts the documentarists ability to mould perception render Man with a Movie Camera a lesser ideological film? Critics of Man with a Movie Camera have insufficiently and unconvincingly attempted to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory positions. I, like them, cannot.
Vertov’s theoretical position on the nature of film, however, provided a language for documentary film. He discovered a visual language for the representation of space quite different from that of the studios of meretricious commercial cinema (Sight & Sound, p. 26-7). At the expense of narrative, Man with a Movie Camera explored and expanded the principles of montage, which still remain an essential resource to the language of documentary film (Sight & Sound, p. 26). If this is the language that Vertov sought to establish when he declared that ‘this experimental work is made with the intention of constructing a genuine and international and absolutely visual language of cinema’, then, he definitely succeeded.
* Sight & Sound, 17: 9 (September, 2007).
^ Concepts relating to Vertov’s theoretical statements were derived from:
Vertov, D., Kino-Eye, A. Michelson (ed.), Berkley: University of California Press & **Petric, V., ‘Dziga Vertov as Theorist’, Cinema Journal, 18: 1 (Autumn, 1978), 29-44.
