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En 1929 Vertov hizo su película más famosa: El hombre de la cámara de cine. Se trata de un desconcertante ejercicio cinematográfico donde el acto de realización del filme es al mismo tiempo, el producto acabado, donde el proceso y el fin se funden sin solución de continuidad: rodaje, exhibición y montaje. Cientos de “kino-fraza”, o escenas de la actividad cotidiana en San Petersburgo, tomas callejeras, del trabajo y la vida doméstica, unidas en una zaga donde la ciudad moderna y la cámara comparten el protagonismo. Nombrado por la revista Time como uno de los mejores 100 filmes de todos los tiempos, la película puede verse como un experimento auto-reflexivo: La cámara en el acto de filmarse ella misma. Por otra parte, ¿no anticipa acaso El hombre de la cámara el ojo panóptico del Estado totalitario? Hay dos placeres del cine que no se discuten: El juego del movimiento y el placer de la “cámara cándida”. De acuerdo a Vertov, la película se presentó al público como “el primer filme que expone la vida como es”.
"It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple."
ResponderEliminarVertov
Inkie: Me llama mucho la atencio'n ese momento de inocencia del cine.
ResponderEliminarNoria: Creo que la intencion de Vertov es abiertamente avant-garde, una li'nea constructivista de mostrar las cosas en tanto que vanguardia. Eisenstein es mas pragmatico, mas narrativo, mas Hollywood (aunque parezca un disparate decirlo).
ResponderEliminarAT, I found this on the internet, an interesting and pertinent assesment:
ResponderEliminarVertov's work Man With a Movie Camera.
This film chosen for discussion, best exemplifies and integrates Vertov's love for technology and machinery while displaying his true mastery at being able to create a harmony between Soviet life through visual and aural metaphor. (Aural metaphor further explored with his film Enthusiasm) The period in which Vertov produced these two films was coincidentally at a time when Russia was carrying on with the Five Year Plans, 'a gigantic social revolution which
developed heavy industry and organised a central agricultural economy. This moment in Soviet history would complement Vertov's style of filmmaking as this period relied heavily on machinery and on the advancement of technology. In Man With a Movie Camera, the initial indication that this would be an extremely radical project presents itself in the opening credits as Vertov and his Kinoki declare the film to be:
an experiment in the CINEMATIC COMMUNICATION of visible events without the aid of intertitles, without the aid of a scenario, without the aid of a theatre. This experimental work aims at creating a truly international absolute language of cinema based on its total separation from the language of theatre and literature.
"the camera's purpose is to witness the world from a better and more perfect view than the humaneye." Scenes are shown even at the very beginning of the film where the cameraman or the camera itself seem to be larger than life. They take up half or three-quarters of the frame as if to imply that the truth of Russia can only be seen through the mechanical lens of technology. The camera, according to Vertov has no limitations, because it is a machine, he believes it to 'have the capability that humans do not, to perceive life and , furthermore, to organise its chaos into a meaningful whole. He writes the following in his own manifesto on filmmaking in 1922:
We discover the souls of the machine, we are in love with the worker at his bench, we are in love with the farmer on his tractor, the engineer on his locomotive. We bring creative joy into every mechanical activity. We make peace between man and the machine. We educate the new man.
This extraordinary introductory statement is only the beginning of an innovative attempt at creating a story of Soviet life relying on images, and the construction of these images to portray it. What Vertov does to create this communication between the Soviet people and the country itself, is to use the camera as a tool to capture images of Soviet life occurring during differing times and spaces. Vertov makes his audience aware, not only of the happenings in Russia and its day-to-day routines, but he clearly illustrates through a constant reference to the camera and the cameraman, that
For Vertov, the synthesis of worker with machine is a most powerful metaphor in conveying this sense of reaching a common goal. Visual metaphors can be plucked out at every moment in the film. Metaphors expressed by way of juxtaposing images of machinery with everyday life. For example, Vertov makes the implication during a highly energised sequence where a young girl is working in a cigarette factory that her role in everyday Soviet life is understood as trying to work towards the common goal set out by the Five year plans. The parallels comparing the girl to a machine is quite clearly implied by Vertov as he construct through montage, a battle between the machine and the young girl. She speeds up with the machine, she attempts to keep up and perfect herself for the good of the Societ community. The 'metronome of life and work' controls her and every other worker. The young girl's direct reaction and response to the machine through Vertov's quick editing and cross-cutting displays that the country and its people work together; communicating with each other as one. People and machines are equally important to the reconstruction of the Soviet community. This sequence justly illustrates the statement made by Judith Mayne that 'the technology of cinema in Vertov's film functions both as a qualitative change in ways of seeing, and a component of human labour: in other words, technology mediates perception and production.
El Chamo, Diste en el clavo!
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