"El hombre de la cámara" Me parece muy interesante, las tomas me gustan mucho, en cuanto a su forma y contenido, como juega con los tamaños y perspectivas me parece geniál.

La película transcurre mostrándonos tomas, encuadres y movimientos de cámara audaces (para la época y para hoy) que crean sensaciones de suspenso, acción, paz, sensualidad, por medio de ritmos de diversos grados, pantallas divididas etc.

La cámara se va independizando del camarógrafo hasta convertirse en un “ser” autónomo introduciendo otra vez la ficción (con sensación de ciencia ficción) con fines metafóricos.

En El hombre de la cámara podemos encontrar tal vez la primera expresión del documentalista subjetivo, lírico, experimental, entre otras cualidades artísticas y estéticas, pero ante todo (y lejos del primer comentario de los alumnos) la película deja la sabrosa sensación de haber degustado el cine en el amplio sentido de la palabra.

(http://sierpegrana.blogspot.com/2007/07/el-hombre-de-la-cmara-dziga-vertov.html)

Se ha relacionado con una modalidad de documentales urbanos que tuvo éxito en la época, las "sinfonías de grandes ciudades", ejemplificadas por películas como Berlín, sinfonía de una gran ciudad (1927), de Walter Ruttmann, o Lluvia (1929) de Joris Ivens. Lo que distingue a la obra de Vertov de las citadas es la voluntad de realizar un análisis marxista de las relaciones sociales mediante el montaje. Además, El hombre con la cámara pone el acento en el proceso de producción y consumo del cine (rodaje, montaje y contemplación).

Este texto habla sobre Dziga Vertov, su influencia y el cine que propuso.

Film Truth and Dziga Vertov’s “Man With a Movie Camera”

Primarily in the 1920’s, filmmakers such as Dziga Vertov experimented with a theory called kino pravda, or “film truth.” Perhaps even more of a montage than what was produced by Pudovkin and discussed by Eisenstein, kino pravda set out to capture fragments of reality and combine them to reveal a deeper truth, one not readily visible to the naked eye. This truth would be one accessible only through the eye of the camera.

Vertov called fiction film a new “opiate for the masses” and belonged to a movement known as kiniks (or kinokis) who hoped to abolish non-documentary film-making. His “Man With a Movie Camera” was Vertov’s response to critics who rejected his earlier “One-Sixth Part of the World.” Because of its experimental nature, Vertov worried this later film would be ignored or destroyed, hence the film’s opening statement:

“The film Man with a Movie Camera represents
AN EXPERIMENTATION IN THE CINEMATIC TRANSMISSION
Of visual phenomena
WITHOUT THE USE OF INTERTITLES
(a film without intertitles)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A SCRIPT
(a film without script)
WITHOUT THE HELP OF A THEATRE
(a film without actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation work by Kino-Eye is directed towards the creation of an authentically international absolute language of cinema – ABSOLUTE KINOGRAPHY – on the basis of its complete separation from the language of theatre and literature.”

Despite Vertov’s claims that filming could capture reality without intruding, cameras of the day were large, loud, and could not be hidden easily. To be truly hidden, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman attempted to distract their subjects with something else, something louder than the camera. So even if the camera itself was not imposing itself on the scene, the necessary distraction would alter the “truth” to some extent. Therefore, “film truth” could not technically be a reality during Vertov’s time as a filmmaker.

Much like Vertov’s earlier “Kino-Pravda” series, 23 short documentaries created over a period of three years, “Man With a Movie Camera” contains a propagandist element. Vertov wished to create a futuristic city following the Marxist ideal, an industrialized city built on the back of workers and their hard labor. Much of the film’s style seems to borrow from the earlier “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” by Walter Ruttman. However, these stylistic choices do seem to create a symbolic language which is generally effective.

While “Man With a Movie Camera” may not fully realize the goal it sought to portray, a “truth in film,” it may have inadvertently produced a true statement of the era which produced it. The film contains an optimism, idealism and naivety representative of its place in history.

When the dust settled from the October Revolution in 1917, there was a brief, shining period of uninhibited artistic experimentation in Russia. Before the authorities clamped down on such “decadent” behavior, Russian artists in the 1920s explored communist ideals with more sincerity, hope and optimism than probably at any other time in history in every medium, from architecture to graphic design. In the realm of film, this exploration manifested itself as Kino-Eye, or camera eye. Devotees of this filmmaking style believed that the camera should be used to record the truth of Soviet life without the aid of screenplays, actors, makeup or sets. “I am kino-eye, I am mechanical eye,” wrote Dziga Vertov in the Kino Eye Manifesto in 1923. “I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.” The crowning achievement of the movement was the 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, made by Dziga Vertov (a name that translates to “Spinning Top”) and his brother, Boris Kaufman. The film presents the day in the life of a Soviet city from morning until night, with citizens “at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life.” 

Sadly, things didn’t end well for Dziga Vertov in Russia, though they ended better for him than for most people in his position. When Socialist Realism was declared the “official form of art” in 1934, many of his colleagues were ostracized or exiled. Vertov was able to get away with a couple more films in the 30s, but they were edited to conform to the government’s expectations. After his last creative film, Lullaby, in 1937, Vertov worked on editing Soviet newsreels for the rest of his life. Interestingly, his brother Boris was able to move to America and worked with Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet as a cinematographer. Kazan infamously named many colleagues as communists to McCarthy’s committee, but Vertov’s brother wasn’t one of them. I wonder if the two brothers stayed in touch, and how they felt about their work and how their lives had diverged. Was Vertov a bitter man as a news editor? Not necessarily; a lot of people, even when robbed of their ability to make art, made up excuses and remained devoted to communist ideals to the very end.  And how did his brother Boris Kaufman fare in the paranoid environment of McCarthyism? Who felt that he got the better end of the deal, I wonder?