Rating: 
Summary: VERTOV CREATES ROLLERCOASTER FOR THE SENSES
Review: This movie, originally made for Communist Russia's Propaganda Department, does it's job and makes one motivated to be active. This movie is a dawn-to-dusk look at 1920's Oddessa. Made wholly by two cameramen, "Man" blurs the distinction between camera and eye by using a fast-paced editing process that harkens of a blinking eye; from the bedroom of an imminent mother to a beach on the Black Sea, to the depths a ore mine, this is a wonderfull testament of film making. Along with this, there runs an original score written by Vertov himself in 1925, and is the direct link to composers like Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. The score has many different themes and actually carries the movie at times. Vertov, in 1925-1929, created a work of art which has slipped through the cracks, but, recently, has been getting more well known. Man With a Movie Camera is a giant leap forward in thought and action in film making. Vertov combines image and sound to create a world that only existed for him, and now can exist for us....
Rating:
Summary: and 5 more
Review: Vertov's _Man with a Movie Camera_ is not only the hallmark of Russian Constructivist film but one of the greatest films ever made, no hyperbole intended. Vertov's main premise was to create a new city, an Utopian ideal, through montage and editing. The scenes in the film are taken from footage of the three Russian cities of Kiev, Moscow and Odessa. Unlike many of the other reviewers, I would have to suggest watching the film with the sound off (at least once.) The music, although originally composed by Vertov, has been adapted more recently by the Alloy Orchestra, and can have the tendency to be a distraction. Indeed, Vertov stated that film should be a medium that stands alone, not muddled by the addition of psychology, romance, or music. He placed tremendous value on the camera's ability to distill truth from visual "garbage," with what he termed "Kino-Eye" or "Truth-Eye." Additionally, I would recommend reading Vlada Petric's meticulous still-by-still dissection of the film---_Constructivism in Film : The Man With the Movie Camera : A Cinematic Analysis (Cambridge Studies in Film)_, as well as Andrei Bely's novel _Petersburg_, which Nabokov cited as one of the four most important literary works of the 20th century and deals in part with a similar urban improvement motif, and of course Vertov's own theoretical writings _Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov_.
Rating:
Summary: The best of early cinema
Review: Wertov's movie could be described as a highly observant portrayal of the move from traditional society (horses, buggies, etc) to the machine age - automobiles, factory machines, trains etc. Done with no dialog, but to his own choice of music, this is exquisite photography of a day in the life of Soviet Russia in 1928, prior to Stalin. It shows a much more free enterprise society than we might have expected, but which was killed by Stalin. The 'Man with the Movie Camera' is an epic of early cinema, and is really not to be missed.
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