The Man With A Movie Camera (which, as is this list's wont, is probably not its title) is described as an "experimental silent documentary with no story and no actors". Clearly, therefore, it'll fall into the "arthouse bullshit" category - those films that are 10% intriguing and 90% boring nonsense. Who the hell voted this all the way up to no. 5? Sheesh... Except that in this case that's not right at all - this is a masterpiece and everybody should see it.
As described, it doesn't really have a storyline, but you could say that it's the story of a day in the life of a Soviet city in 1929. People wake up, people ride in cars, people go to work, babies get born, beers get drunk, people go for mud baths, trains ride by. We also see people going to the cinema and watching a film. The film is called Man With A Movie Camera, which is a bit odd. We also regularly see a man with a movie camera, filming Man With A Movie Camera, and a woman in the editing room editing said film. Sometimes the film fractures and we see some stills, but that's just because she's taking a break.
Such self-reflexive fourth-wall breaking could be a bit annoying, but it's so seamlessly done that it functions more as a running gag than some sort of knowing comment on the nature of filmmaking. You smile at the director's cleverness rather than try to decipher his meaning. It's basically like the final fight scene in Blazing Saddles, which I doubt anybody has ever said before.
The film is super important for students of film history. As Wikipedia tells me, Vertov, the director, invents or develops a staggering array of film techniques: double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, footage played backwards, stop motion animations. What a show off. But what's even more impressive is that even 87 years later, when all of these techniques have been done to death and watching a film with an average shot length of 2.3 seconds isn't such a shock to the system (fuck you, Michael Bay), it still feels fresh and new and exciting. I'm not saying it would make a lot at the box office, but if this was released today as a new 2016 film it would not look dated.
The editing is the true triumph here. The direction is very inventive in places, but really anyone can wander about a city and shoot random stuff, and then have another person shoot the person shooting the random stuff. The genius is Elizaveta Svilova, Vertov's wife, who had to compile all the footage and stitch it together into 68 minutes without once losing momentum and letting it get boring.
I should also note that I watched the version with a 2002 Michael Nyman score, which really enhances it. Silent films were never truly silent and - just like with any "talkie" - the music is a hugely important factor in how you perceive and enjoy the film.
I genuinely recommend this to anyone with a passing interest in cinema. You don't have to watch it all, although it's only an hour and I doubt you have anything better to do. Just watch ten minutes and get a feel for it - you might get swept along and watch it to the end. It's currently available on Youtube, although I have no idea how legal it is. Presumably the film is out of copyright, but the music won't be.
