How does the film ‘The Man with the Movie Camera’ use the soviet montage technique to show the theme of progress?
‘The Man
with the Movie Camera’ is a documentary the life of people in several different
Ukrainian cities. The montage theory was heavily influenced by the
revolutionary tones of 1918 and it is a film that aligns with the parties aims with
the design to gain support for the Revolution and demonstrate the social
transformation under socialism.
The
implementation of a proletariat dictatorship in 1918 revolution meant that
industrialization was one of the main focuses under Stalin and in the film
because it was a symbol of their national progress on the world stage. In 1928
the First Five Year Plan meant there was huge social pressure and excitement
involved with industrialization because they wanted to catch up with their much
more advanced western counterparts- especially America. The types of industrialization
include film making (which itself is seen as a productive labor process)
mining, steel production, communication, postal services and many others. It
presents a seemingly endless, rhythmic cycle of industry that will never end
because there are limitless possibilities to the different industries that they
are able to have.[1] This
is an example of rhythmic montage where there is continuity arising from the
visuals. The clips of these productions are constantly inserted throughout and
are not only concentrated in one part of the film. The proletariat class is the
main focus of the film, no peasants were shown throughout even though they made
up the biggest percentage of the population. They were a symbol of
backwardness- peasants were associated with agriculture and were seen as simple
and uneducated people. Many of the workers travelled from the countryside to
the urban environment in order to gain a better life and therefore the towns
and cities are associated with prosperity and modernity. There was also no sign
of the bourgeoise class either who had been eradicated by the revolution,
indicating that it had been successful in establishing a strong working class.
Rapid
industrialization was realized through the concept of increased speed in the
film. The first and most basic element of the soviet montage system is the
metric editing which is based on the length of a shot. The number of seconds
per shot has been shortened from the traditional 11.2 (this was the traditional
length in 1919) seconds to 2.3 seconds[2] so that the sequence and
clips change over a lot faster. A positive interpretation of the speed could
suggest that the people in the film are constantly moving forward and
progressing in their society because they are constantly learning and being
exposed to new things. In a negative manner, there is too much information for
the audience to process in too little time because they can’t understand and
think about this new information. The clip of the railway tracks and the train
going over the camera from underneath creates the illusion that the workers are
trampling over themselves in their haste to industrialize. The railway is a
symbol of industrialization, it was responsible for bringing material to the
factories quickly and efficiently while also opening up new lines of
communication and transport. The train is moving quickly and it does not slow
down when it sees the cameraman on the tracks. It can be interpreted as a reference
to the darker side of rapid industrialization. Workers worked long hours,
suffered terrible standards of working and living conditions. The lack of a
central protagonist and a focus on the masses shows that the state did not
truly care for the welfare of the individual, but rather they were only focused
on the work force and achieving their targets. While the rate that the state
was able to industrialize was impressive, the emphasis on speed meant there
were issues with the quality of the work produced and the lives of the workers.
According
to Vertov’s, ‘We: variant of a manifesto’, industrialization meant that man and
machine had come together to create a new kind of people, a better kind of
people.[3] There can be no workers
without machines and there can be no machines without workers to use them so
they are intricately linked together. There are many close up and intimate
shots of the insides of the machines, such as the pistons and the steam pipes
moving up and down, allowing the viewers to understand much more intimately how
they worked.[4] It
was almost as if they were seeing into the very soul of the machines themselves.
The workers understood the machinery and they were comfortable using them, the
clips of the machinery and the workers using them are juxtaposed together in
short sequences. This is known as the Kuleshov effect, the intellectual method
of the soviet montage technique. It is a mental phenomenon, allowing the
viewers to derive more meaning from the interaction of two sequential shots
than from a single shot in isolation because it was open to their own
interpretation.[5]
Eisenstein (the founder of the soviet montage system) claims that the
"montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots[6]" wherein "each
sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other[7]". By placing the clip
of the workers and the machines closely together it creates the association
that the workers are using those machines. The montage technique is
connected to “the oneness of the new Communist society- the fact that every
human activity is part of a larger organic whole”[8]
which allows the socialist society to continue to work together to move
forward.
Vertov
wanted “to create a man more perfect than Adam[9]” through these sequences
where the workers had become mechanized through their constant association with
these machines. The idea that machines improve the workers can be considered in
comparison to other works such as ‘Charlie Chaplin swallowed by a factory
machine’[10].
Chaplin has become part of his machine to such an extent that he can’t function
by doing anything else. He continues to make the same motions of unscrewing the
screws even though there is nothing for him to unscrew. He almost becomes a
parody of a mindless worker that is not able to think for himself. The workers
in ‘The man in a movie Camera’ are equal to their machinery who are able to
benefit from them because they have a strong mind whereas Chaplin has become
consumed by them.
There is
also a balance between the demands of work and leisure time for the workers, allowing
the workers to enjoy and discover their own true sense of self. The workers
have extra-curricular activities, for example, swimming and sunbathing on the
beach as seen towards the end of the film. The workers are able to think for
themselves and have some sense of independence outside of the work place by
doing those activities. Drinking and gambling are seen in a negative light
because they don’t compliment the theme of progress and the values of the party
who wanted people to have good morals so that they could work harder and have a
better work ethic, this was also another symbol of them having a well-mannered
and civilized society as their society has become more modernized. According to
Hicks, the creation of the hydro-electric dam in the film encompassed the
energy of Lenin which was connected to the renewing effect of the communist
party. He wanted to reform society’s morals because everyone was responsible
for helping each other. The hydro-electric dam was also connected to water
which was able to wash away the sins of the previous decades under autocracy.
Washing is a symbol of renewal[11] and these new-found
activities that the workers were able to engage in represented the start of
their new, ideal life.
Society in
the Soviet Union was progressive, because socialism meant that everyone was
seen as equals to each other, regardless of job position or gender. This
allowed Soviet women to gain more freedom and placed them in a far more
superior position to their Western counterparts who were still restricted in
areas of working and participation in society. Female workers were a sign of
progress, the Soviet Union needed as many workers as possible to realize their
industrial dreams whereas previously they had only been regulated to the
domestic sphere. Vertov’s wife herself is
responsible for editing the film which places her as an equal with Vertov who
was responsible for the filming aspect. In one scene where she is sorting
through the different clips in the editing room. She has been given ultimate
power over the film because she controls what the audience is able to see. This
scene is also overlayered with close up footage of her blinking eye which is
juxtaposed with a clip of the blinds opening and closing. This intellectual
method could have several different interpretations. It could imply that his
wife is a symbol of the daily life of the city through the night and the day or
reference once more to her position of power as editor and the fact that women
were now allowed to become part of society.
Women in
the film were also a visual symbol of progress through modernization. Not only
are they able to work but they were allowed to become glamorous outside of their
work and the home and do other leisure activities. In one film clip a woman
working in the factory is juxtaposed with an image of a woman in the salon
getting her make up done. This shows that women were able to deal with both
worlds, the working world and their own luxurious world of makeup. The fact
that she was getting her make up done in a salon and not at home was another
sign of the modernization of women because they were able to afford these
services. Most of the women in the film also have short hair. It was the
fashion in the West because it was much more practical for women that were
working. It was easier to manage shorter hair because it wouldn’t get caught in
the machines and it was easier to wash. This simple change to the female
appearance demonstrates a progressive change in women’s attitudes as they were
allowed more freedom to work and enjoy themselves.
Other
cultural transformations are the open attitude towards previously taboo
subjects, society had become more progressive and open minded. This was done
once more through the intellectual method by juxtaposing scenes of a woman
giving birth and another women getting a divorce. There is no taboo associated
with those scenes whereas even now in the modern society there is still some
stigma associated with it. The birthing scene is taking place in a hospital
with modern equipment and nurses that know what they are doing. They are wearing
clean uniforms and working efficiently and calmly. There is no taboo with
divorce either even though it was not supported by the Orthodox Church. There
is a small element of shame still present though. The woman getting a divorce is
hiding her face with a bag, she seems upset and unhappy in contrast to the joy
she had shown when they were first getting married. The woman in the birthing scene also has her
face covered with a handkerchief which shows that they were not entirely
comfortable having everything being shown. Nevertheless, cultural progress has been made
by showing these controversial topics in the clip.
Vertov’s
film offers a distinctly biased perspective towards the success of the
socialist state. This makes the film difficult to trust despite its documentary
nature and it is difficult to analyze the true extent of progress within the
film in contrast to the Soviet reality. It does not show the downfalls of the
new socialist economic and social policies, all the people in the film constantly
appear to be happy or doing their job for the state. The use of the soviet
montage technique also means that many of the sequences are often left open for
interpretation, making it difficult to understand the true ideas of
Vertov.
Bibliography:
Films:
Chaplin, Charlie, Charlie
Chaplin swallowed whole by a factory machine- Modern Times, Film, Directed
by Charlie Chaplin, Paris: Roy Export Films, 1936
Kaufman, Mikhail, Man with the Movie Camera,
Film, directed by Dziga Vertov, VUFKU: USSR, 1929
Journals:
Mayne, Judith, “Eisenstein, Vertov, and the Montage
Principle”, Minnesota Review, No 5
(1975)
Prince, Stephen and
Hensley. E. Wayne. “The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating the Classic Experiment.” Cinema Journal, vol. 31, no. 2 (1992)
Books:
Hicks,
Jeremy, Dziga Vertov: Defining documentary film (London: I.B
Tauris, 2007)
Turvey, Malcolm, The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011)
Vertov, Dziga, "Kinoki, Perevorot", 1923, Stat'i,
[1] Ed
Anette Michelson, Kino- eye: The writings
if Dziga Vertov (Los Angeles: University of California press, 1984) pp.
xxxvvii (introduction)
[2] Pop Matters, Dziga Vrtov’s ‘Man with the
Movie Camera’ remains a fascinating documentary by Sarah Boslaugh accessed:
10/03/2019 from: https://www.popmatters.com/195156-the-man-with-the-movie-camera-2495510821.html
[4] Mikhail
Kaufman, Man with the Movie Camera,
Film, Directed by Dziga Vertov, VUFKU: USSR, 1929
[5]
Stephen Prince, and Wayne E. Hensley. “The Kuleshov Effect: Recreating the
Classic Experiment.” Cinema Journal,
vol. 31, no. 2 (1992) pp. 66
[6] “Eisenstein,
Vertov, and the Montage Principle”, Judith
Mayne Minnesota Review, No 5 (1975) pp. 119
[7]
Ibid, pp. 119
[8] Malcolm
Turvey, The Filming of Modern Life:
European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s (MIT Press, 2011) pp. 149-150
[9] Dziga
Vertov, "Kinoki, Perevorot" (Kinoks, Revolution), 1923, Stat'i, pp. 55.
[10]
Charlie Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin
swallowed whole by a factory machine- Modern Times, Film, Directed by
Charlie Chaplin, Roy Paris: Roy Export Films, 1936
[11] Jeremy Hicks, Dziga Vertov: Defining
documentary film (London: I.B Tauris, 2007) pp. 59
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