About Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
The story behind the film
Dziga Vertov was a Soviet documentary filmmaker and the leader of a group who called themselves the "kinoks" ("cine-eyes"). They believed cinema should stop imitating theatre and literature — no actors, no sets, no scripted stories — and instead capture "life caught unawares", using the camera's mechanical eye to show the world in ways the human eye couldn't. Man with a Movie Camera, made for the Ukrainian studio VUFKU and released in 1929, is their manifesto in film form.
It was a family project. Vertov directed; his brother Mikhail Kaufman was the cameraman, and appears on screen throughout as the "man with a movie camera"; and his wife, Yelizaveta Svilova, edited it — and is also shown at work, cutting and sorting strips of film. Critics had attacked Vertov's previous film for relying on title cards, so this one has none at all: an opening statement announces it as an experiment in cinematic communication "without the use of intertitles", "without the help of a scenario" and "without the help of a theatre".
Cast & crew
- Directed by Dziga Vertov
- Cinematography by Mikhail Kaufman (who also appears on screen)
- Edited by Yelizaveta Svilova
- No actors: the people on screen are the citizens of Moscow, Kyiv and Odesa going about their day
Why it's worth watching
The film follows a single, composite day in Soviet cities, from dawn to night: people waking, trams and trains starting up, factories, markets, sport, beaches, births, marriages, divorces, funerals — and, all the while, the cameraman climbing, crouching and riding to get his shots, and an audience in a cinema watching the film we're watching.
It's a dazzling catalogue of film techniques, many of which were rarely seen in 1929: double exposures, fast and slow motion, freeze frames, split screens, jump cuts, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, reversed footage and stop-motion animation (the camera walks onto the stage on its own tripod legs). The fast, rhythmic editing feels more like a music video than a 1920s documentary, which is one reason it has found new audiences with musicians who perform live scores for it.
Fun facts
- On release it was largely dismissed; critics found it too fast and too focused on form. Today it is regarded as one of the greatest documentaries ever made.
- In Sight and Sound's 2012 critics' poll it was voted the 8th greatest film of all time, and in 2014 the magazine's documentary poll named it the best documentary ever made.
- In 2021, Ukraine's Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre ranked it third among the 100 best Ukrainian films.
Public-domain status
Man with a Movie Camera was published in 1929 and is now in the US public domain. Many modern copies carry newly composed soundtracks with their own copyright; see "Rights & source" below for the copy and music we broadcast.