Will Sorg-

By the end of the 1920s, film history was on an unstoppable march towards the innovation of talking pictures. The death of the silent film was heralded by 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, and through the 30s, filmmakers made the somewhat awkward transition into sound. The sound did change the landscape of cinema forever; stories came to life in dramatically different ways due to the ability to actually hear dialogue, music, and sound effects. In many ways, it marked the blending of film as a medium with other arts. Films became an amalgam of theater, music, photography, and novels. Eventually, film served as a melting pot of art that birthed the type of narrative film we are used to today.

Yet even back in 1929, there was a movement to showcase the distinctly cinematic language of film. Of course, it is impossible to separate film from the other arts because there is intersectionality with all art. However, Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov created a film to exemplify what makes film an art form by itself. The Man With The Movie Camera is a little over an hour long, but it captures the essence of the film within its short runtime.

Vertov’s documentary is a simple one; it’s a series of seemingly unrelated scenes edited together. There are shots of people on the beach, soaring high-angle shots of city activity, the process of cigarette packaging at a factory, and plenty of other sequences. However, it all furthers Vertov’s thesis that film without the influence of the other arts should capture “life unawares.” The film feels like a mosaic of early 20th-century life. Edited by Vertov’s wife Elizaveta Svilova, the film is a chaotic, almost overwhelmingly quick piece. It feels strikingly modern as the camera is not bolted to the unmoving tripod typical of early film. Rather, the camera is unhinged from our reality. The documentary is almost dreamlike as we watch photos begin to turn into moving pictures and buildings merge into each other as the editor cuts two images together.

This style of filmmaking is something that is rarely seen in Hollywood, yet this movie is deeply influential for film as a whole. I could pick out several scenes in this movie that have been directly referenced in major Hollywood releases in the last 95 years. Some of the influences are smaller than others, but it is remarkable how this Soviet film from the late 20s has forever changed the scope of what people can do with film.

The best art is often made under self-imposed restriction. Here, Vertov could have easily constructed a narrative documentary or even just used sound and text to aid his message. However, by committing to his uncompromising vision of the uninhibited cinematic language, he created a film that is unlike any other up to that point. While watching this movie, I felt deeply moved simply by how artfully constructed it is. You can put on this 68-minute film and be transported to a moving record of the way film was, the way film is, and what it has the potential to become.