Man with the Movie Camera

This has to be one of the most unusual movies I have ever seen. Seemingly the only main individual character in this movie was the cameraman (if he could even be referred to as a character). Vertov seemed to merely use the cameraman to show people every single one of the different effects that he was capable of using in making movies. He was clearly very proud of himself. In my opinion, the working class and the city in which the majority of this movie was filmed were the two main characters of this movie. Vertov showed the types of jobs and leisure activities that people engaged in. He focused on the lives of ordinary people. City life was also dwelled upon in this whirlwind plotline and Vertov did a nice job of showing what cities were like in 1929 in regard to transportation and appearance. I thought of this movie as sort of a documentary of the proletariat. After all, they were the focus of the movie as a group and the setting largely took place where a large majority of them lived (in the city).

In the beginning of this movie Vertov had a disclaimer that warned people that this movie was experimental. However, I felt that he wasted the audience's time by showing them all of the innovations that he had discovered. Some of the effects that he used were pretty amazing for the time period (such as making the cameraman appear as a giant or in a mug of beer) but I feel that he should have used his knowledge in a more constructive fashion. He could have easily used many of his innovations in a creative storyline.

The main weakness of this film was that there was absolutely no story. Quite frankly, I felt that this movie was about forty minutes too long. Vertov could have easily crunched all of his effects into twenty minutes and spared his movie's audience the pain of watching effect after effect. However, there were some aspects of this movie that I did not completely loathe. At the end of the movie I enjoyed how Vertov displayed that he could make objects appear as though they could move on their own. If I was an individual living in the 1920's I would probably find that pretty amazing. However, I definitely enjoyed the montages of Eisenstein more than those of Vertov.

Vertov's montages were too extreme. He had them go extremely slow and deteriorate down to photos. I did not find this annoying but they almost lulled me to sleep. Howbeit, these were preferable to the "seizure inducing" montages that Vertov periodically decided to torture his audiences with. I especially remembered the montages with the eyes. For example, one montage cut back and forth at a blinding speed between a pair of eyes and blinds. I found these montages unpleasant to watch.

This movie seemed to have something for everyone. There were sports, topless women, mechanical displays of power, and Chinese magicians. Many of the parts in the movie that involved technology were propaganda. I felt that most of the scenes involving machinery "chugging away" were placed in the movie to symbolize the unstoppable advance of the proletariat. Vertov wished to show everything that the working class were capable of and how advanced they had managed to become.

I also noticed that people were always being active. They were rarely depicted relaxing. People in the movie were working, playing sports, or exercising. The values that were promoted in this movie were hard work, ingenuity, and brotherhood. People were almost always interacting with other people. Individualism was definitely not favored in this movie.