Editing in Man With A Movie Camera - Dziga Vertov (1929)

   

             
 Man With A Movie Camera is an experimental Russian film, made in 1921, that has no plot or actors. It simply aims to portray one day of life in the Soviet Union. This is done by showing various shots of Russian citizens both working and enjoying leisure time in a number of Russian cities. This film is considered to be one of the most innovative films of all time because of its large number of new editing and cinematography techniques that the Director, Dziga Vertov, Cinematographer (and Brother), Mikhail Kaufman, and Editor (and Wife), Elizaveta Svilova both used extensively and created.

            Man With A Movie Camera is, in many ways, about the power of the camera, and of film. By superimposing the image of the camera and filmmaker on top of shots of buildings, and being used in moving cars, Vertov is drawing attention to the many possibilities that video cameras, and film can offer. Later in the film he even employs a stop motion animation that shows a camera setting itself up and rolling tape.  Through the film Vertov also hoped to portray Soviet life in a positive and utopian way while also stressing important values of their society. He did this juxtaposing shot of industrialization and hard manual labor with those of Russians at the beach or at the local cinema.

            The film, while being a montage documentary, is considered by many to be one of the most significant avant-garde or experimental films of the early 1900’s. Vertov belonged to a group of radical film coalitions known as the Kinoks, who aimed to abolish all forms of filmmaking that were non-documentary. Despite this, in Man With A Movie Camera, Vertov uses a variety of different shots (tracking shots, stop motion, dutch angles) and editing techniques (jump cuts, split screen, fast and slow motion) that were not common in the documentaries or, in many cases, any films of the time. Even more alarming, to both critics and audiences alike, was the sheer number of shots that Vertov used in the film. Man With A Movie Camera consisted of 1,775 shots. This was more than four times the average amount of shots in any given film was at the time. To put it into another perspective, the average shot length at the time was 11.2 seconds, yet in Man With A Movie Camera the average shot length was 2.3 seconds. One critic wrote of the fast paced editing, "The producer, Dziga Vertof, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention."

Along with this lighting fast editing, Vertov also incorporated freeze frames, fast and slow motion, split screens, double exposure, and even backwards projection into the film. Because of all these factors, many debated whether or not Vertov should be considered as a part of the Kinok movement. Regardless, these are also the same reasons that Vertov, and his film, have gone down into cinematic history.