A Man With A Movie Camera

While watching this film in class it was apparent that this wasn't "typical" cinema. It appeared as random clips thrown together fashioned with music. But, there is a story to be told within these clips, one of daily life. Lez Keulshov said "Cinematography is the organization, construction, and interrelationship between shots". This quote further proves what this film is about, and how it works so well. As I said earlier, what appear to be random shots turn out making sense in a storytelling way. If you look closely the film begins with closeups of various items. In no particular order are these shots placed at first, but later they make sense. The minds ability to remember images it has previously seen is used carefully throughout. These once stagnant shots of things, later become action shots of these items being used in life. Various events in the typical life are filmed in a scattered way. Instead of a camera focusing on one person, or event, it follows a man with a camera as he records what is around him. This film uses the Russian technique of Montage film editing.  Montage being the joining of a series of shots into a pre-determined order from which a film is made, or the organization of cinematic material. Now unlike Lev Kuleshov or Sergi Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov believed in the idea of a society in which everyone uses a camera to capture what they see. Now this film also highly proves the film technique tested by Kuleshov. He placed a picture of a man with three other various items, and showed it to different audiences to see what they would make of these images. Everyone made connections between the man and whatever images were placed afterwards. Example: Man and bowl of soup must mean he is hungry. Now in this film there was a part that appeared highly confusing. It was various shots of people, at first you couldn't understand what they were doing, but then all you needed was a close up of the papers they were signing and you knew exactly why they were there; marriage, divorce. There were large differences between the two couples as they were singing the papers, the newly married were smiling, close together. The divorcing couple distant, and bitter. This section was by far my favorite part. It was showing all aspects of life that can be seen in one day that you're not even aware of. While showing these couples he also showed scenes of outside and the busy streets almost as if to say "while you're all going about your days there's people doing these exact things, and experiencing these exact feelings." Then there were shots of a weeping old woman feeling the pain of perhaps a lost love. A man being carried in a casket filled with flowers, and while all these shots are going you see a woman writhing in pain. This woman is giving birth. All of these images placed in random order create confusion since they seem to not correlate. But, it's a series of shots showing the two most significant events of life, death and birth. I really enjoyed this whole bit of the film because I often think about how while I am sitting writing this Blog post, there's someone whose marriage is falling apart or just beginning, a person whose life is beginning, and one that's ending. Montage film editing is one I enjoy quite a bit. Most of my works in film have been in the style of montage. I think it's fascinating to put a story together in a way where it can be interpreted differently based on who's watching. Instead of there being a definite plot it's open to the interpretation of the viewer, and I think that makes filmmaking more interesting.