One Paragraph Movie Review: Man with a Movie Camera

Three hundred and fifty-third film: Man With A Movie Camera, a 1929 experimental sort-of-documentary that watches like a laundry list of subject matter and cinematic techniques and whizzes by in no time. On paper it’s a lot of quick and often creative bits of freshly-filmed footage of Russian life, from street scenes to athletics, daring and dangerous shots of moving trains, a couple registering for marriage and another for divorce, human and mechanical factory scenes, people relaxing at the beach, a woman coyly donning a threadbare bra from the back, and another woman nudely giving birth very much from the front. Sometimes it shows a man with a movie camera — so I guess it’s a docu-meta-ry — which suggests there’s actually TWO men with TWO movie cameras, but I’ll allow it. To watch it is a bit extraordinary and frenetic, with snappy editing and tricks like split screens, stop-motion animation, reversed footage, and freeze frames. It’s Soviet-Era Koyaanisqatsi, and even though it’s silent you can hear director Dziga Vertov saying “hey comrades, what if we filmed THIS” in every scene. It’s good, and it’s only an hour long, so it’s even better. Three and three-quarter bare seaside mud bath tiddies out of five.