Ok, first up, I must confess that I haven't seen the actual winner of the 1930 best picture Oscar, 'Broadway Melody' - yet I find it hard to believe, in terms of sheer spectacle, it competes with this remarkable film.
Released in the Soviet Union in January 1929 , director 'Vertov' (actually Denis Kaufman) described his film as, 'an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events, without the aid of intertitles, scenario, sets and actors.' Ok... A documentary, then?
Of sorts, Vertov/Kaufman was a spearhead of the 'Kino eye' group, a movement that sought to present Russian life to the Russian people; and 'Man With A Movie Camera' is essentially a day in the life of a Russian city. But this is no mere travelog, Vertov deploys many cinematic tricks - slow motion, speeded up film, split screens, still photography, creating, in his own words, 'a truly international absolute language of cinema based on its total separation from the language of theatre and literature.'
Of course, there is a dichotomy at work here - between Vertov's artistic instincts and a fidelity to the subject matter. And yes, there are moments where it feels like a soviet propaganda piece (particularly during a rather feshitistic montage of soviet athletes in stylised poses), but to me the film says something of the universality of the modern age - the dizzying rush of modernity. Vertov presents us with towering skyscrapers, giant cranes, billboards for mineral water, glamorous storefront mannequins, biplanes, a steam train hurtling out of control... Motion itself seems to be the common denominator (indeed, the pseudonym 'Dziga Vertov' actually means spinning top): whirring pistons, revolving doors, ringing cash registers, ambulances, fire engines, a speedway, a children's carousel at a fairground, a smith's wheel shartpening an axe, a shoeshine boy vigorously polishing, the darting hands of switchboard operators, secretaries pummelling typewriters, and the whirring of the film camera.
There are moments of poetry too, particularly in the juxtaposition of images as day breaks in the city: trees swaying in the wind in a deserted city park, a tramp asleep on a park bench, a crouched telephone waiting to ring, a woman stirring from her bed, dressing and washing her face. All life is here: childbirth, funeral processions, a registrar dealing with a marriage, then a divorce... All captured by the roving eye and clicking shutter of 'the man with a movie camera' - himself a visible presence in the film, his camera at times positioned high amongst the streetlights, foreshadowing the mass surveillance of our own, more sinister, modern age.
