The title gives us an idea of what the film is "about", but a more accurate title may have been "Action Camera Team!™ which, in the perfect world, would look like this:
In theory, there is only one man with a movie camera, but for that to work, one's mind has to be blown: a lot of the action in this movie is the act of filming. If one considers only one camera in this equation, how can they reconcile what they see? Frequently, it does not even seem that we're witnessing what a camera in perilous places has witnessed - notable exceptions being the car, where one can even see a passenger mimicking the turning of the camera crank, and the train running overhead. Normally we're simply being told "a camera can make its way to astounding places!"
As the film progresses, the Action Camera Team™ asserts its power all the more. In the editing suite, the sole female member of the team holds moments in time and brings them to life. As the mistress of these captured moments, she holds Moscow and the people in in her hands.
Following this, the people of Moscow sit within the cinema, enraptured by the team's efforts. At the same time, the Man With the Movie Camera stands atop the city, a veritable Russian King Kong, capturing Moscow's fascist shooting galleries and perhaps even terrifying screaming starlets.
A marvellous and perplexing piece of metatextuality, Man With A Movie Camera appears not to have a narrative, but it has messages and meanings inherent that were distinctly lacking in Berlin. Despite its experimental nature, deliberately eschewing the tenets of literature and theatre, Man With A Movie Camera is more than flexible and open enough to justify an audience.
4 comments:
i wonder what your action camera team would have done with Berlin?
I think the inclusion of your team (suspiciously reminiscent of the power rangers in that photo...)as they sped about on motor bikes with cameras and sipped tea in the green room in a parodic version of the film would be well worth an audience as well.
In many ways Vertov's film makes me think of a behind the scenes look at a modern feature which modern audiences seem to be so greedy for - perhaps it is this impulse which permits or demmans and audience for the film?
I like you're questioning of the 'one camera' assumption. It seems to also accord with what Deleuze says about cinema, in terms of the autonomy of the camera (camera as subject) and the liberation of individual perspective to the inhuman eye of the camera.
A little off the topic, but when I was little I used to be the yellow power ranger.
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