Saturday, January 10, 2009
Man with the Movie Camera
The begininng of The Man With the Movie Camera started like a Twiligh Zone episode would being in black and white, with out of this world background music, in a deserted ghostlike town. The film was shown in a variety of angles like a black and white photograph could be shown. The beginning shots were of everyday life and then those first shots were told into a story when more shots eleborated the purpose of why the shot were taken in the first place. It seemed to me that the shots were taken in a certain order in a sequence that had similarities with the frame before. Examples like a hose spraying water out of it and the next frame a woman bathing or flowers to a tree. A unique and cool aspect of the movie was when the frames were put in slow motion or stilled. The music also playes a role. The more upbeat the music the faster pace the film rolled. What I thought was puzzeling was why was there christmas music playing for when there was a couple going through the process for a wedding registration? The fact that there were no actors made the film unique and unpredictable. The "man with the movie camera" carrying around his camera everywhere and not letting anyone take his camera reminds me of when Jack Black plays a director in King Kong who won't part with his camera even when his life is in danger.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You're right that the sequence of shots in this film are extremely important (indeed essential) for Vertov. Montage is just as important to his style as it is for Eisenstein (though, as we'll discuss, tomorrow, his style of montage is somewhat different--and he's trying to say different things with it).
ReplyDeleteAnd we'll also try to figure out tomorrow just what he's trying to do by slowing down those shots and presenting the stills.
The "Christmas" music you mention is Mendelssohn's Wedding March from the incidental music he wrote for a production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It's kind of neat then how the Alloy Orchestra (the group that composed and performed this particular soundtrack) then deforms the same tune a bit when they then show the divorce registration.