Review of Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Spencer S — 12 Feb 2015

Part documentary, cinema verite, and Avant-Gard art film, "Man with a Movie Camera" shows the everyday life of the 1920s Soviet Union. The disparity is evident, as the cameraman moves between the dissident streets of merchants and the poverty stricken, and elegant bourgeoisie riding in motor cars, their hats fluttering in the wind.

Vertov melds together the documentary feel of a single day in his home country with the interconnecting narrative of the filmmaker, the audience, and the surreal. The surreal is constructed from film splicing that resembles special effects that would be recreated in many other art films of that decade.

The film itself stands as an amazing historical record of the beauty, the poverty, this new nature of filmmaking, and the astonishing strangeness of the world at this time. Essential watching for those who love the craft of filmmaking, or love historical records of that time.