I read the insert about Dziga Vertov and found it very interesting. Vertov was adamantly (and oddly) against fictional films. The text even refers to his “crusade against the fiction film”. He was bored with the usual fictional films and wanted to film ‘life caught unawares’. I think this is very interesting to think about when watching The Man with the Movie Camera because many parts of the film only depict life as it really happens. The segments in the morning sequence that show various stages of a young woman’s morning (waking, cleaning, dressing, etc.) are clearly not ‘life caught unawares’. They look very much like it, but they staged. This makes me wonder what Vertov’s standards for reality are. I know that reality or truth in film is very difficult to define, but my opinion is that anything staged is not reality. It seems that Dziga Vertov must think that anything that depicts reality is ‘truth’ even if it is not truly ‘life caught unawares’.
The text later says that Vertov was inspired by the Italian Futurist Manifestos and futurist poetry. This is a clear influence on his work in The Man with the Movie Camera. Vertov expressed his futuristic influences in eclectic sound compositions. These compositions seemed to be various sounds combined in creative ways to create meaning. The Man with the Movie Camera seems like it might be similar in style to these audio compositions even though it is a silent film. I imagine the sound projects to be very fast-paced and moving like the feel of real life. The Man with the Movie Camera has the same effect, changing shots frequently in combination with music that echoes real life noises to create a feeling of everyday city life.
Alie, Do you think it is ever possible to "catch life unawares"? Does a camera's presence affect "reality" and therefore change it? Does cinematography and editing affect our view of the world or do you believe it is really possible to show "the world as it is"? You wrote in your post that "many parts of the film only depict life as it really happens" and that there are also parts are staged and are "clearly not ‘life caught unawares’". How do you distinguish between the two? Does it matter? And can anything ever be "reality" in film? Last off, can something "staged" ever represent reality better than direct, traditional documentary footage? There is a lot to think and learn about when it comes to documentary theory about reality, truth, and subjectivity - there are a lot of ideas and opinions out there! For example, check out what Werner Herzog says about cinema verite.
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