The following exploration will focus directly on Vertov's work
Man
With a Movie Camera. This film chosen for discussion, best
exemplifies and integrates Vertov's love for technology and machinery
while displaying his true mastery at being able to create a harmony
between Soviet life through visual and aural metaphor. (Aural
metaphor further explored with his film Enthusiasm)
The period in which Vertov produced these two films was coincidentally at
a time when Russia was carrying on with the Five
Year Plans, 'a gigantic social revolution which developed heavy industry and organised
a central agricultural economy.'[12]
This moment in Soviet history would complement Vertov's style of
filmmaking as this period relied heavily on machinery and on the
advancement of technology. In Man
With a Movie Camera, the initial indication that this would be an
extremely radical project presents itself in the opening credits as Vertov
and his Kinoki declare the film to be:
'an experiment in the CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION of visible events without
the aid of intertitles, without the aid of a scenario, without the aid of
a theatre. This experimental work aims at creating a truly
international absolute language of cinema based on its total separation
from the language of theatre and literature.'
This extraordinary introductory
statement is only the beginning of an innovative attempt at creating a
story of Soviet life relying on images, and the construction of these
images to portray it. What Vertov does to create this communication
between the Soviet people and the country itself, is to use the camera as
a tool to capture images of Soviet life occurring during differing times
and spaces. Vertov makes his audience aware, not only of the
happenings in Russia and its day-to-day routines, but he clearly
illustrates through a constant reference to the camera and the cameraman,
that the camera's purpose is to witness the world from a better and more
perfect view than the humaneye. Scenes are shown even at the very
beginning of the film where the cameraman or the camera itself seem to be
larger than life. They take up half or three-quarters of the frame
as if to imply that the truth of Russia can only be seen through the
mechanical lens of technology. The camera, according to Vertov has
no limitations, because it is a machine, he believes it to 'have the
capability that humans do not, to perceive life and , furthermore, to
organise its chaos into a meaningful whole.'[14]
He writes the following in his own manifesto on filmmaking in 1922:
We discover the souls of the machine, we are in love with the worker at
his bench, we are in love with the farmer on his tractor, the engineer on
his locomotive. We bring creative joy into every mechanical
activity. We make peace between man and the machine. We
educate the new man.
For Vertov, the synthesis of worker with machine is a most
powerful metaphor in conveying this sense of reaching a common goal.
Visual metaphors can be plucked out at every moment in the film. Metaphors expressed by way of juxtaposing images of machinery with
everyday life. For example, Vertov makes the implication during a
highly energised sequence where a young girl is working in a cigarette
factory that her role in everyday Soviet life is understood as trying to
work towards the common goal set out by the Five year plans. The
parallels comparing the girl to a machine is quite clearly implied by
Vertov as he construct through montage, a battle between the machine and
the young girl. She speeds up with the machine, she attempts to keep
up and perfect herself for the good of the Societ community. The
'metronome of life and work'[16]
controls her and every other worker. The young girl's direct
reaction and response to the machine through Vertov's quick editing and
cross-cutting displays that the country and its people work together;
communicating with each other as one. People and machines are
equally important to the reconstruction of the Soviet community. This sequence justly illustrates the statement made by Judith Mayne that
'the technology of cinema in Vertov's film functions both as a qualitative
change in ways of seeing, and a component of human labour: in other words,
technology mediates perception and production.'
From www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk
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