Popular reviews

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  Review by PTAbro ★★★★½ 9

  It's really a bittersweet feeling to know that I will never be able to truly understand what it must have been like to sit in a theater and watch one of the first screenings of Man with a Movie Camera. As enchanting as the images and editing techniques are to today's audience, I try to imagine how much more mindblowing such revolutionary concepts would be in 1929 and I fall far short. It's a virtual encyclopedia of techniques, performed with bravado and a certain show-offiness, but redeemed by the fact that it pulls off the act to perfection. How close to magic this must have been (frankly, it still seems as much), and how much more exhilarating and frightening the…

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  Review by Elwood B. ★★★★★ 6

  It's not really the editing or the technical innovations, not even the metaphoric quality, that the film possesses, which i find most fascinating about this experimental montage-masterpiece. It's the conviction of the film, that it's all worth it. Climbing mountains, laying under speeding trains, witnessing nature's most dangerous outbursts all seems so outrageiously stupid just to get a few pictures with your camera and yet the movie not only convinces you, that it's not just not stupid, it's logical, the right thing to do, something that HAS to be done.

  It's been about 90 years since this movie came out and everybody involved in making it is most likely dead by now and yet the symbol of everything that was before and that will be after, the symbol of conviction about filmmaking will never be lost and will outlive every human on earth.

  Totally worth it.

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  Review by Jonathan White ★★★★★ 37

  Part of the 30 Days in May challenge, 2014 edition

  USSR

  
  I’m positively gob-smacked.

  Completely unexpectedly I’ve witnessed the birth of pure visual and emotional storytelling. Now, you can’t be completely caught off guard as director Dziga Vertov states the fact conclusively right at the start of the picture, but even that stern warning doesn’t prepare you for what is to immediately follow.

  Man with a Movie Camera joyously bursts onto the screen like an invigorating swim at the break of dawn. It’s alive; its buzzing; it’s jubilant. Watching it is like being swept along by a coursing current twisting and turning through mountainside gorge; you’re helpless to resist it.

  This is far more than simply telling a story visually;…

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  Review by Wes ★★★★★ 3

  painting with light, composing with cutting, sculpting with reality. feels like a beacon, or peace terms, sent from an advanced alien civilization attempting to speak to us in a form we're comfortable with. if dziga vertov's goal in life was "creating a truly international language", rest easy.

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  Review by Lise ★★★★★ 7

  Part of the 2014 30 countries challenge, Film #18 - Soviet Union

  I can't think of another film that has created such excitement in me. About 20 minutes in I was grinning ear to ear, glued to the screen, and just so happy. It is unbelievable what this guy does. I mean, he does it all. Every type of shot, every type of transition, every kind of magic that can be done with a camera. It was crazy! The only thing he didn't include was 3D. That's it. That's the only thing. In 1929!

  I've seen the Samsaras of the world, and I enjoyed them as much as the next guy, but this, this is the real deal. This was story told with images. This was avant-garde. This was beautiful. Just beautiful.

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  Review by Reznikov🔥 ★★★★★ 2

  This film is just so beautiful. I...have no words.

  #48 on My Favourite Films List
  #39 on 2020: First Time Watches List

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  Review by Darren Carver-Balsiger ★★★★★ 7

  Man with a Movie Camera shows us the potential of cinema. It is an experiment in cinematic communication; a wordless, story-less experience. Dziga Vertov thought this would be the future of cinema but he was sadly mistaken. Man with a Movie Camera is a look into a frontier that has barely been explored, cinema is still essentially what it was in 1930 (focused on narrative and escapism). It is a film about being a film and an extremely watchable, meta look at what cinema and the world can be. Man with a Movie Camera is the purest form of cinema, images of reality cut together to create something more.

  Man with a Movie Camera is just one long montage, but it has such…

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★ 20

  A long time ago, I read an argument (which I can no longer track down) that suggested that the smaller fragments of our lives approximate the shape of the larger fragments. So, for instance, if you spend a third of your average day working, a third of your day sleeping, and the final third on some combination of leisure activities, then the broad strokes of your life will share those same proportions. The point of the argument was that we have to spend each our individual days the way that we want to spend our lives because that's ultimately all that life is, a series of days, and that idea has really stuck with me ever since, but here in…

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  Review by feedingbrett ★½ 21

  Review In A Nutshell:

  Forgive me Letterboxd, for I have sinned.

  Man with a Movie Camera is no doubt a groundbreaking feat for the documentary genre through the stripping of a conventional narrative and utilising natural elements to evoke emotion and poetic imagery, but it rarely left me captivated with what was delivered on screen; finding cohesion in themes but lack the power to surge them. I was left as a passive viewer throughout, constantly hoping for something to capture my attention.

  I have prepared myself for the infinite lashes that is surely going to come my way.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★½ 2

  Time capsule of a world where electric guitars, Slinkys, LSD, antibiotics, bikinis and Xanax didn’t exist yet people somehow managed to smile.

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 11

  This man had a purpose, and a very specific one. Initially, a documentary had the aim of working as a reflection of reality. Dziga Vertov had as a main purpose to create a universal language through cinema that would be capable of connecting the most outstanding and respected art forms created by the human being. Chelovek s Kino-apparatom, a title that was translated as "The Man with a Movie Camera", is officially one of the most influential documentaries within the genre, not only because of the subject matter treated, but also because of its direction and filmmaking style. This is the kind of cinematic treasures I thank humanity for granting them to us during past periods. Certainly, Chelovek s Kino-apparatom…

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  Review by Dane Coopernick ★★★

  REVIEW IN SPANISH
  Seccion de Peliculas q estoy viendo y reseñando para mi examen de convocatoria de la carrera de Cine (y de las cuales el libro menciona estas peliculas) y ojala logre aprovar este examen xd.

  Efectivamente...es el hombre con la camara de cine...

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  na mentira, pos la pelicula desde un principio da a entender su proposito, sin guion, sin intertitulos, sumamente experimental, su proposito, sacar provecho a como de lugar sobre el poder del montaje, ver de cual todas las imagenes al azar te parece el mas indicado, y como el montaje no solamente es algo meramente descriptivo, sino…