In 1929, cinema was a drug. Cinema was the craziest, most far-out art form around. It was inherently disorienting. It was big, loud and fearsome (nobody was watching films on a 4.7″ cellphone screen). Editing was fascinating. Lighting was fascinating. Cinema was capable of telling convincing lies to the sense that you trust most in life: your eyesight. Cinema was a new format with a still-developing language, which is a rare thing when it comes to art. Communism had a manifesto. Surrealism had a manifesto. Cinema needed a manifesto, too. Here comes Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov with his own shot at it. His goal was to make a wholly cinematic work. Something that owed nothing to literature or drama. It needed no actors, nor did it need a script. Vertov instead prowled the streets of a few Russian cities with camera in hand and then showed us what he saw without words or narrative, but with the whole cinematic bag of tricks at his disposal. Double-exposure effects, slow-motion, fast-motion, stop-motion animation, wide angles, close-ups, split-screen, rapid-fire editing that risks triggering eplipetic seizures. Along the way, it also exposes the making of films when Vertov cuts in footage from the editing room of the very scene that we’re watching being put together. Man With a Movie Camera doesn’t break new ground all by itself. Rather it sums up the advances already made. It’s a line in the sand. A State of the Cinema address circa 1929, feverish, intense, kinetic and hopeful, sweat dripping off the podium.
The 2014 restoration is STUNNING, by the way. Footage from nearly ninety years ago looks like it was shot yesterday and the playful score by The Alloy Orchestra provides sturdy support.