Man with a Movie Camera: Cinematic Masterpiece and Artistic Propaganda

Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera uncovers the life of a cameraman who explores a city full of machines and technology as he documents the everyday life of ordinary people in Russia in the late 1920s. The film is full of excitement, originality, and revolutionary camera techniques including fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, split screens, and jump cuts. With the emphasis on the concept of Kino-Eye, the movie claims to break away from traditional filmmaking “without the use of intertitles, without the help of a script, without the help of a theatre.” The film focuses on the portrayal of city life after the introduction of machinery in Moscow and Odessa, yet it also contains an important political message behind the industrialization and modernization of the society. In the end, Man with a Movie Camera is an artistic piece of Leninist propaganda with a big appreciation for the industrial revolution.

The movie begins with a slow pace with slow, flowing images depicting the city waking up in the morning. The streets are peacefully deserted and quiet, representing the old world, a world without machines. Suddenly the pace of the film changes to fast images flying across the screen, so fast that it becomes impossible for the audience to see everything that is happening. This is the beginning of the new society, the modern society with advanced technology. In this process, the film gives birth to a unique relationship between men and machines. Millions of artistic and avant-garde images of men with machines testify how humans not only control the machines, but are also a lot like machines. Fast-paced moving shots that show the city functioning like a factory, with humans’ exploitation of technology and their movements synchronized with the machines, show that men are the driving forces of modern society.

This phenomenon can also be seen through the very concept of the making of this movie, namely with Kino-Eye. Kino-Eye represents the perfect production of an image as a result of the collaboration between humans and camera (the machine). The multiple recurring shots of the interlaying images of the camera lens and the human eye symbolize Kino-Eye as they indicate this concept as a window to the new world. Vertov uses fresh and unique styles of capturing images and editing in inventive ways to demonstrate the positive outcome of the combination of humans and technology. The train scene demonstrates how this new window can deliver pictures that were impossible to be captured before the development of the new camera techniques. The camera was set up so that the train seems to be coming right towards the lens, creating fear and anxiety in the viewer. As the train is about to seemingly collide with the lens and the cameraman, the screen moves under the train as the shot turns into the train’s point of view by displaying the fast moving railroad tracks beneath it. This initiates a series of intense rapid images through various jump cuts and fast motion, resulting in a shocking and powerful moment for the audience. Additionally, the frequent use of split screens when exhibiting parallels in life such as young and old, marriage and divorce, life and death, and work and recreation illustrates the film’s intention to show the duality of everything in life.

While presenting the perfect marriage between man and machine through the unconventional use of the camera, Man with a Movie Camera subtly conveys Lenin’s political ideology in that era. The movie puts a great emphasis on a Proletariat-oriented society under the rule of Lenin. The members of the upper class enjoying the horse-carriage ride is portrayed pejoratively as old and outdated compared to the automobiles and trolley cars. Most of the scenes of the film show the unity among the common people en masse, mostly proletariat, enjoying and participating in the same activities, whether they are working or playing. The film expresses the pleasure and satisfaction resulting from a society where everyone shares and works together equally and fairly. The film also constantly highlights the idea of a structured society that functions properly, like a machine, through repetitive images of factory workers and their machines. This stresses the society’s dependency on the working class and the importance of every society member as the backbone of achieving and maintaining the prosperity of their society. With its creative portrayal of everyday life in 1920’s Russia and the hidden political meaning through Vertov’s progressive camerawork, Man with a Movie Camera is both a lasting cinematic masterpiece and a paradigm of artistic propaganda.