The year was 1919, the locale was Soviet Russia, and the mood was positively revolutionary. Luckily for him, Dziga Vertov was on the right train, filming Soviet Chairman Mikhail Kalinin on a propaganda tour. As a young filmmaker and theoretician, Vertov...
[more]The year was 1919, the locale was Soviet Russia, and the mood was positively revolutionary. Luckily for him, Dziga Vertov was on the right train, filming Soviet Chairman Mikhail Kalinin on a propaganda tour.
As a young filmmaker and theoretician, Vertov was at the forefront of a roaring debate about the role of art in Soviet society. How would artistic endeavors best serve the ideals and practices of the people and the State? With the 1919 publication of the "Kinoks-Revolution Manifesto," Vertov announced his solution to the aesthetic conflict, and Soviet cinema was never the same.
Attacking Russia's "film-dramas," Vertov criticized the industry's movement toward sophisticated narratives that relied on the same fantastical techniques as literature and theater. In his manifesto, he equated contemporary Russian cinema with religion, replacing the "religion" in Marx's famous maxim, "Religion is the opium of the masses" with "film-drama." Vertov denounced the hypnotic powers of both institutions. For the most part, film had always been a source of pleasure and entertainment aimed at the working classes. But as cinema itself became a profit-driven business, the powers-that-be manipulated content as a way of maintaining the existing social order. Show the masses fantastic images of the good life, Vertov maintained, and they will lie about complacently, dreaming of a day when they too can luxuriate in baths of plenty. Vertov loathed these so-called fiction films and insisted that the future of cinema depended on reporting the truth.
And so it did. In 1922, the State established the Lenin Proportion, which developed a fixed ratio between the number of entertainment narratives and the number of documentary-like productions. Soon after, Vertov founded the screen magazine Kino-Pravda (Cinema Truth) and put his principles to work. "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929) stunned audiences with its highly self-conscious use of the camera as the eye to replace the human eye. A day-in-the-life of an urban metropolis like Moscow, "Man with a Movie Camera" employed the montage techniques that Vertov mastered back in medical school.
Critics pointed to Vertov's heavy reliance on editing and shot manipulation as proof of his own hypocrisy -- can the truth ever survive the hand of the director? Vertov responded that he sought "the purest possible essence of truth," not plodding verisimilitude.
Following the introduction of sound to Soviet cinema, Vertov flourished, with successes like "Enthusiasm/Symphony of the Donbas" (1931), a look at the miners of the Don Basin, and "Three Songs about Lenin" (1934), a poignant tribute to the Soviet leader through the eyes of the Russian peasantry.
Success was sweet, and then came Stalin. All artistic production found its way under the sturdy umbrella of the State, which declared Socialist Realism as the official style of the Soviet Union. Although Vertov did not receive an official slap on the knuckles like some of his formalist colleagues, he did reduce his artistic output significantly under the new regime.
Vertov's remaining years on the outskirts of Soviet cinema did not taint his reputation or diminish his influence on the international community. Often deemed the "Father of Cinema Verit'," Vertov's liberal editing style and highly sophisticated camera techniques ensured his venerable spot on cinema's timeline.
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