Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929) has a very unified vision of people in Russia. It starts off showing calm, generic shots of places in a city, both private and public. In places where there are people, they are doing the universal action of sleeping. In places where there is no sign of life, there is an eerie feeling that once people begin to wake, everyone will pass through the empty streets and alleys. These ideas serve as a way to show that the people of Russia are all very similar in their daily lives.
Vertov's most poignant demonstration of this point comes right as the people are waking up. The man with the movie camera places his camera on the railroad tracks as a train approaches rather quickly. This shot is inter cut with a women waking up, tossing and turning, as though she is being forced from her slumber by an awful dream. From the inter cutting it seems as though the woman is dreaming of the man about to get hit by the train, and that is why she is so upset. Despite the fact that the two are never introduced as acquaintances, the audience feels that they are somehow connected and cared for each other.
In the reading Nowell-Smith explains that Vertov was reacting to criticism of his recent movement towards more poetic film at the time Man With a Movie Camera was made. He "ruled out the use of all intertitles from his filmic Manifesto" (Nowell-Smith 93), and solely used images to present an idea of unification in the film. This motif of inevitable conformity came from Vertov's political affiliations with "left-wing and constructivist artists", people who supported the idea of a communist Russia (Nowell-Smith 92). This same belief system is the reason people of the Soviet Union referred to each other as comrade. The word had a more intimate connotation, which provided the same feeling of closeness that Vertov's work did, allowing his art to fit in with the modifying public opinion.
The word Quixotic was used in the reading, and since I did not know what it was, I looked it up.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition, the word is an Adjective meaning:
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality. 2. Capricious; impulsive: "At worst his scruples must have been quixotic, not malicious" (Louis Auchincloss).
This seems to be a very good word to describe Vertov's work. In his films he strived to present the world in a more Utopian and idealized way. Many With a Movie Camera is the best example of this because it presents people as nameless equals, and suggests that everyone is exactly the same in their everyday routines, which therefore implies that everyone would benefit from a communist government in which all citizens were regarded as equal. This idea is unrealistic, just like the belief that communism can successfully be applied to any civilization.
Man With a Movie Camera also seems very impulsive when being viewed. Vertov strings together images that are united only in the sense that they occur within the same city. There is no story line to the film, but instead its goal is more to describe life in Russia as a whole without being driven by a plot.
Vertov's most poignant demonstration of this point comes right as the people are waking up. The man with the movie camera places his camera on the railroad tracks as a train approaches rather quickly. This shot is inter cut with a women waking up, tossing and turning, as though she is being forced from her slumber by an awful dream. From the inter cutting it seems as though the woman is dreaming of the man about to get hit by the train, and that is why she is so upset. Despite the fact that the two are never introduced as acquaintances, the audience feels that they are somehow connected and cared for each other.
In the reading Nowell-Smith explains that Vertov was reacting to criticism of his recent movement towards more poetic film at the time Man With a Movie Camera was made. He "ruled out the use of all intertitles from his filmic Manifesto" (Nowell-Smith 93), and solely used images to present an idea of unification in the film. This motif of inevitable conformity came from Vertov's political affiliations with "left-wing and constructivist artists", people who supported the idea of a communist Russia (Nowell-Smith 92). This same belief system is the reason people of the Soviet Union referred to each other as comrade. The word had a more intimate connotation, which provided the same feeling of closeness that Vertov's work did, allowing his art to fit in with the modifying public opinion.
The word Quixotic was used in the reading, and since I did not know what it was, I looked it up.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary Fourth Edition, the word is an Adjective meaning:
1. Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals; idealistic without regard to practicality. 2. Capricious; impulsive: "At worst his scruples must have been quixotic, not malicious" (Louis Auchincloss).
This seems to be a very good word to describe Vertov's work. In his films he strived to present the world in a more Utopian and idealized way. Many With a Movie Camera is the best example of this because it presents people as nameless equals, and suggests that everyone is exactly the same in their everyday routines, which therefore implies that everyone would benefit from a communist government in which all citizens were regarded as equal. This idea is unrealistic, just like the belief that communism can successfully be applied to any civilization.
Man With a Movie Camera also seems very impulsive when being viewed. Vertov strings together images that are united only in the sense that they occur within the same city. There is no story line to the film, but instead its goal is more to describe life in Russia as a whole without being driven by a plot.
American Heritage Dictionary. 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2009. Print.
Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey, ed. The Oxford History of World Cinema: A Definitive History ofCinema Worlwide. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Lydia, I like your engagement with the film and Vertov's attempt to show a unified and connected Russian society. I think you could go deeper in thinking about the connection between Vertov's film as Communist propaganda, his individual ideals as an artist, and the politics of the time period, but you're off to a good start here.
ReplyDeleteAs for the word "quixotic", you missed an important part of the word's history...
Quixotic does imply engaging in foolish impracticality in pursuit of ideals and often accompanied by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality (which might be interesting to relate to Vertov's artwork). Quixotism is usually related to "over-idealism", meaning an idealism that doesn't take consequence or absurdity into account. It is also related to naïve romanticism and to utopianism (see Nicole's last post about "utopia").
But, the origins of the word are really interesting and based in literature:
Quixotism as a term appeared after the publication of Cervante's "Don Quixote"(or in Spanish, "El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha") in 1605. The hero of this novel, that is written by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, dreams up a romantic ideal world which he believes to be real, and acts on this idealism, which most famously leads him into imaginary fights with windmills that he regards as giants.