May 10, 2009|By Michael Sragow | Michael Sragow,michael.sragow@baltsun.com
Long live the consciousness of the pure who can see and hear!
That ringing statement by pioneer Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov articulates my strongest feeling whenever I watch his silent masterpiece, The Man With the Movie Camera (1929), with a score performed live by the amazing three-man Alloy Orchestra. Attending The Man With the Movie Camera with a crowd alive to every joke and nuance brings home what great movies can do - not just clear the palate but foment a revolution in public taste. It reminds you of how electric it can be when an audience connects with something worth appreciating. It screens today at 11 a.m. with the Alloy Orchestra at the Charles. All I can say is, don't miss it.
Well, maybe that's not all I can say. Every now and then, you need a The Man With the Movie Camera to clear the palate and remind you of the basic reasons anyone watches movies: An affinity for the subject matter, be it ethnographic, sexual, or generational; naive delight in technique; the chance to discover something fresh. You may echo Vertov's demand for "Conscious people, not an unconscious mass, ready to yield to any suggestion!" And take up Vertov's slogan, "Down with the scented veil of kisses, murders, doves and conjuring tricks!"
Dziga Vertov was born Denis Kaufman; according to Ephraim Katz, Dziga means "spinning top" (in Ukrainian) and Vertov means "the act of turning" (in Russian). But his chef d'oeuvre isn't merely a celebration of the joy of movement and the gift of sight (as if that weren't enough). With boundless optimism, Vertov salutes the variety and dynamism of everyday urban life.
In this film, when the director's vision lingers on a bum, it isn't to underline the plight of the homeless but to savor the man's languorous freedom and stubbornness; when a skilled female laborer swiftly puts together cigarette packs, she isn't being exploited - she's showing off her expertise.
Setting his prototype cameraman loose to chronicle an unnamed Soviet city from dawn to dusk, Vertov, without any narrative, wrings comedy and a clearheaded lyricism from the commotion in the street and the trolley-yard, the clatter from newfangled exercise devices that would fit into today's infomercials, and the goofiness and chagrin in a bureau that handles both divorce and marriage. His protean style deploys every device, from split and superimposed images to pixelation and freeze-frames; his cross-cutting (from, say, a waking lady to a hurtling train) is witty and suggestive. The effect is to spark a delight that's simultaneously sensual and cerebral. The camera becomes an agent of modernity and the director a cheerful comrade who shares his tricks and know-how with the audience.
Years ago, when I saw the movie for the first time in a film-school class, without music, I reacted halfheartedly. (Many I've talked to have the same fidgety memory.) Seeing it on the big screen with the Alloy Orchestra is a genuine eureka experience. Under the guidance of Vertov's own recently unearthed notes, these "junk metal musicians" devised sounds from their synthesizers, bottles, handmade drums and other instruments that release the film's soaring Machine Age gallantry and humor. The main theme has a spacious imminence reminiscent of Jerome Moross' score to William Wyler's The Big Country - you sense momentous things are about to happen.
But the rippling clangs and sly interpolations of jazz and wedding music give their work a cosmopolitan cheekiness. "On the movie-house habitue," Vertov once wrote, "the ordinary fiction film acts like a cigarette on a smoker. Intoxicated by the cine-nicotine, the spectator sucks from the screen the substance which soothes his nerves. A cine-object made with the materials of newsreel largely sobers him up, and gives him the impression of a disagreeable antidote to the poison."
With the suitably dubbed Alloy Orchestra, The Man With a Movie Camera defogs the brain and renews the gusto of any movie addict.
