The spirit of punk throbs in this extraordinary silent classic from 1929, now on cinema rerelease. Dziga Vertov’s experimental documentary essay remains fascinating after all these years, as potent as an exposed fragment of sodium. It shows scenes of city life in Moscow, Odessa and Kiev, and the credits describe it as an “experiment in cinematic communication of visible events”, which doesn’t do justice to its dedication to transforming and upending reality. This film is visibly excited about the new medium’s possibility, dense with ideas, packed with energy: it echoes Un Chien Andalou, anticipates Vigo’s À Propos De Nice and the New Wave generally, and even Riefenstahl’s Olympia. There are trick-shots, split-screens, stop-motion animation, slo-mo and speeded up action. Welles never had as much fun with his train-set as Vertov had with his movie camera. The title self-reflexively describes what is happening: we see the cameraman recording the images we are seeing; a man is shown with his camera tripod, rushing about, daringly hanging from trams to get his shot. But it is also the film’s subject: man and cinema. Vertov shows machinery and factories and intuits that this is what cinema is: the mass production and consumption of image. The combustion engine gave humanity the new experience of speed; now the movie camera gave us a dizzying new speed of perception and creation. Man With a Movie Camera is also gleefully sexy. The bodies on the beach are sexy – and the camera makes everything else sexy and exciting as well.
