Man With A Movie Camera - Notes

Constructivism

The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world. Vladimir Tatlin was crucially influenced by Pablo Picasso’s cubist constructions (Construction 1914) which he saw in Picasso’s studio in Paris in 1913. These were three-dimensional still lifes made of scrap materials. Tatlin began to make his own but they were completely abstract and made of industrial materials.

By 1921 Russian artists who followed Tatlin’s ideas were calling themselves constructivists and in 1923 a manifesto was published in their magazine Lef:

The material formation of the object is to be substituted for its aesthetic combination. The object is to be treated as a whole and thus will be of no discernible ‘style’ but simply a product of an industrial order like a car, an aeroplane and such like. Constructivism is a purely technical mastery and organisation of materials.

Constructivism was suppressed in Russia in the 1920s but was brought to the West by Naum Gabo and his brother Antoine Pevsner and has been a major influence on modern sculpture.

MODERNISM

Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that better reflected modern society

Other key movements:
Bauhaus
Cubism
Futurism

1917: Tatlin, Malevitch formulated theories of Constructivism. Emphasis wasn't on reproduction of reality but was making/building from pieces or fragments and analysing reality. Cinema became synonymous with progress in its combination of both art and technology.

The artistic revolution that had begun in Europe in the early years of the century had spread to Russia before 1917. Young artists attacked traditional art forms and absorbed European modernist movements such as Cubism and Futurism with their interest in abstract forms. Constructivism was the new art form of the Revolution. Art also had to free itself from its bourgeois past; new ideas and experimentation were taking place in all the arts. Easel painting was linked to bourgeois decadence. There needed to be new forms.

After 1917, Russian artists such as Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin formulated the theories of Constructivism using a combination of technology, science and art. The emphasis was not on the reproduction of reality but ‘making’ and ‘building’ from pieces or fragments and analysing ‘reality’. Rodchenko used photo-montage, in which fragments were given new meanings. The artist, a technician first and foremost, used his or her labour to produce a work of art as a social product that served the needs of the proletariat, no longer divorced from everyday life but part of the revolutionary struggle. Theatre was bourgeois; film was the art form of tomorrow. Cinema became synonymous with progress in its combination of both art and technology. 

Aleksandr Rodchenko

Russian artist Aleksandr Rodchenko was a leader in many avant-garde movements during a time of great change for his motherland. Known especially for the Constructivism movement, he has made contributions to painting, photography and, most notably, what became known as modern graphic design. His works were as radical as his causes, but his dedication has also helped art flourish across Russia.

Silent Cinema:
- Films in 20's often considered amongst greatest masterpieces created in whole history of the medium -> cinema should be regarded as primarily a visual medium -> believe by mid 20's, filmmakers developed ways to tell film stories visually with great skill & ingenuity
- Filmmakers & critics alike despaired with the coming of sound at the end of 20's as the unique dimension of film had been discarded
- Dialogue-driven narrative perceived as dragging cinema backwards as a form of theatre, rather than as the brilliantly new, innovative & artistic form of visual expression it was proving itself to be

Engaging with Silent Film:

Trying to recapture this sense of the brilliance and independence of mature silent cinema is important. Instead of seeing silent film study as nothing more than an historical curiosity, and working from a deficit model in relation to their experience of contemporary cinema, spectators should be encouraged to appreciate the thrilling qualities of a quite distinct kind of film.

One thing always to remember: silent film was never silent – it just didn’t have recorded speech. A silent film always had a musical accompaniment, the function of which was very much to influence spectator response. One of the film options, Sunrise, was released with a recorded soundtrack. This was in part to provide a consistent experience for the spectator – otherwise every viewing of the same film was potentially an entirely fresh experience because the improvised musical accompaniment was unique to that performance.

Of all the learnt pleasures of watching silent films, the most important is to recognise that the lack of recorded dialogue can be seen as a strength, not a weakness. The argument is that lack of recorded dialogue draws the spectator into a much more active engagement with the film. Even when we have inter-titles, these rarely do more than provide a summary indication of what is being spoken between characters. As spectators we are able to make the detail of the film story our own, thanks to the sketchy way in which the spoken word is indicated. Indeed, the ultimate ambition of the great filmmakers of the mature silent cinema period such as Eisenstein and Murnau was to make films with no inter-titles at all. Rather a film would be a visual canvas on to which the spectator could project their own imagined detail, in other words become co-storytellers. 

Dziga Vertov (1896-1954):
- Was a constructivist
- trying to represent reality

For him, montage was part of the selection process. The combination of shots would affect the audience, making them aware. He founded the experimental group Kino eye together with his wife Elisaveta Svilova (co-editor) and his brother Mikhail Kaufman (cameraman). They felt the task of the Soviet film was to document reality ‘to reveal truth’ and were opposed to the fiction film that depended on artifice ‘the ordinary fiction film acts like a cigar or cigarette on a smoker. Intoxicated by the cine-nicotine, the spectator sucks from the screen the substance which soothes his nerves… distorting his protesting consciousness in every possible way’. 

Man With A Movie Camera:
- Vertov, USSR, 1929
- 'film hooligan'
- 'unmotivated camera mischief'
- 'a visual symphony'
- a self-reflexive film about the making of the film
- 'experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events'
- Exhilarating, dynamic & collective experience about the life & rhythm of a city, in which the spectator plays an active role as both subject & audiences

Context:
-> Social: 1929 (Soviet Rev into & beyond first decade), role of new Soviet Citizen, Openness to experiment initiated under Lenin now beginning to close down under Josef Stalin. 
-> Historical: 1928 Stalin introduced the First Five- Year Plan whose chief aim was to rapidly expand industrial production to bring a vast country into line with Western Europe. 
-> Political: Vertov associated with the Revolutionary LEF group (Left Front) whose members included Rodchenko, Mayakovsky and Eisenstein. In 1928 the first All-Union Party Congress on Film Questions criticised ‘formalist devices’ as used by Eisenstein and others. These were considered to make films inaccessible to a mass audience 
-> Technological: recording images & events, then edited them together to form newsreels & documentaries. Vertov had worked on the agit-trains, mobile propaganda centres sent to the Eastern front and the far corners of the Soviet Union. Their task was to disseminate propaganda through films, plays, leaflets and posters. To do this they both projected films (giving many audiences their first experience of cinema) and recorded images and events, which they edited together to form newsreels and documentaries as the train was speeding across the USSR. They worked on the move. 
-> Institutional: Early 1922 Lenin established a fixed ratio between entertainment and documentary film ‘The Lenin Proportion’. This was 75% fiction films to 25% documentary films. By 1925 cinema was a vital public institution. Production was rising. Policies of distribution and exhibition ensured that even remote areas had cinemas. 

Innovative techniques:
- double exposure
- superimposition
- animation
- speeded up action
- freeze frame
- reverse motion
- overlapping motion
- split screen techniques
- slow motion
- stop motion

Key Scenes:

Opening: the empty cinema

08:50 – 11:30: waking, washing

19:20 – 23:50: split screen, stills, slow mo, the editing process

25:20 – 29:50: life cycle – birth, marriage, death

37:00 – 42:00: work

44:40 – 47:00: leisure and sport

53:00: rotation

54:30 – 57:30: entertainment, drinking – reverse motion, chess, stop motion

59:20 – end: stop motion, editing, celebration of film