The Six Realitites of Man

            In 1929, Dziga Vertov created a timeless document of reality with a film that merges so many aspects of artifice, actuality, portrayals and perceptions, that they are ultimately indistinguishable from one another.  The Man With the Movie Camera is not only an ode to the art of cinema;  it examines the intrusion and contribution of the filmmaker’s craft into society, how he is influenced and influential at the same time.  It furthermore includes the viewer’s experience of the film into the film itself, demonstrating the inevitable role of the audience in the whole enterprise.  Vertov manipulates every technique of film to make his statement, creating with the content, filming, editing and scoring, multiple realities that are constantly intertwined.  He thus achieves the effect of speaking to all these realities, in which we, his eternal audience, are ultimately included.
            The first level presented by Vertov is a simple portrait of society.  People of all classes in the 1920’s Soviet Union are shown pursuing their daily lives, naturalistically at first, fluidly moving from sleep to work to entertainment.  Although no particular explanation of events guides the audience in a particular direction during these segments, one cannot help perceiving an underlying social commentary.  Parallels are formed through the deliberate sequence of the scenes:  marriage and divorce follow each other, as do life and death, poverty and wealth.  When intensity builds, the portraits gain more and more complexity by their juxtaposition with each other, until society is portrayed as an overwhelming interconnected organism.  As the artifices of the camera become more evident, however, the cameraman must inevitably include himself in the reality of society.  We thus escape the societal portrait and enter the reality of the documentarian.
            The camera is seen carried by the cameraman and placed with its tripod on a specific location.  The cameraman begins to roll, then we see the material he has filmed.  Other times the footage is seen first:  workmen push carts down the road and disappear over the frame.  Afterwards they are revealed to have walked over the cameraman lying on the road, who then gets up and moves with his cameraman to another location.  Often the lens of the camera itself occupies the entire frame.  All the scenes represented in this reality of the film seem to unravel the artifice of film-making, either exposing the underlying intents of the cameraman, or simply reminding the audience of the subjectivity inherent in any cameraman’s portrayal.  The reoccurring shot of the man directing the camera-lens thus becomes the icon of the film, representing Vertov’s movement of the kinoglaz, his philosophy and entire method of work.
            Eventually, Vertov must also remind the audience that the manipulation of reality does not end with the cameraman’s craft.  Along with cinematography, the essential technique of montage is dissected as the central formula of the narrative.  At this point, already complex sequences become surreal, when life is interrupted abruptly by a reminder that time is relative and we are indeed, still watching a film.  Smiling faces freeze, are intercut with still images of running horses, while the orchestra stops playing and the film editor is shown doing her meticulous work.  Thus a third layer is exposed, where the cameraman is not in control anymore.  However, this exposure is provided by, alas, another cameraman who must have his camera set up in the editing room.  Just as the close-up shot of the camera-lens reveals a reflection of another cameraman operating his camera, the footage of the editor in the editing room must eventually be cut by a different editor.  All is a film within a film within a film.
            Eventually we arrive at the reality owned by the audiences, although this layer has actually been represented since the very beginning of Man With the Movie Camera.  Seats in a large theater, where crowds gather to watch the documentarian’s film, automatically lower as if beckoning us to join that audience in examining the upcoming scenes.  Perhaps it is another statement about the inevitable subjectivity the audience imposes on anything they see, or the filmmaker’s power over what his audience will ultimately see – or not see.  Nevertheless the audience is made as much a subject of the film as the society they observe, or the documentarian that allows them to observe.  Audience reactions immediately follow certain shots, as though predicting our own reactions to the material, or representing typical reactions of 1929 Soviet Union, contextualizing the entire film for audiences that are to come.
            Ultimately, another layer becomes part of Man With the Movie Camera:  that which is removed from it.  The eternal audience that immortalizes it and makes it open for any interpretation and experience that an infinite number of individuals may take from it.  Vertov takes that into account, to the extent possible, and it becomes the essential theme of the film.  Whether or not intentionally, the mixture of footage with cameramen, with editors, audiences, orchestras, society and machinery, instruments and artists, empowers not the filmmaker and his statement but the people and their lives.  The outermost layer of these intertwined realities, we are reminded, is that which has the power to decide what to do with what has been seen:  accept it, transform it, or even completely ignore it.

 

back to writing