Last year I wrote an article (which can be found here) about the series of silent "City Symphonies", cinema verite documentaries made in various cities in the twenties that used the urban setting as a canvas to portray the city in all it's bustling glory as a complex human story. The acknowledged masters of the genre were the German Walter Ruttman with his classic "Berlin; Symphony Of A Great City" (1927) and the Soviet Dziga Vertov with his "Man With A Movie Camera" (1929). Critics have hotly debated which film is better but often left unsaid is that whatever the similarities and differences between the two films, the massive differences between the two filmmakers were even greater and they coloured the different ways they approached the subject. Ruttman (who I also wrote about here) was a craftsman who had made his start as a maker of Dadaist Op Art art shorts and early animation while Vertov started out as a film writer and maker of Soviet propaganda newsreels.
DZIGA VERTOV
Vertov (1896-1954, real name David Kaufman) worked with his cameraman brother Mikhail Kaufman (1897-1980), and edited by his wife Yelizaveta Svilova (1900-75). Vertov and his brother were part of a group of young Marxist documentary filmmakers who used documentary films to inspire the masses towards Revolution and rejected the very idea of non-fiction films as appropriate to tell such rousing real life stories. Like Derain and Mayer, Vertov started out in the 1910's as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, including film and photography. After the Russian Revolution he was the editor of a film magazine who became fascinated about the possibilities of documentaries as a medium for spreading revolutionary consciousness. In this he was thinking along the same lines as Lenin and Trotsky who had long seen film as a propaganda tool. Although it is often not not fully recognized in Europe and America who when looking at the first generation (pre WW1) of film tend to focus almost exclusively on America, France and Italy, Tsarist Russia was an important centre of film production with a rich and popular catalogue of films covering a number of genres. Lenin (who in his pre-revolutionary career had been an aspiring pianist and writer) and Trotsky (another aspiring writer) quickly spotted the role film could take in reaching the masses with a dramatically presented message that would have more emotional impact than written the traditional pamphlets, newspapers and speeches, especially given that many of those masses were functionally illiterate and the sheer number of languages spoken in Russia. The resulting films were called "Agit-Prop" for "Agitate-Propagandize", itself a take on the Polish/German revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg's "Agitate, Educate, Organize" slogan. Film must not provide propaganda, it must also inspire and rouse the masses to action by portrayal of the regular man playing a role in creating the new workers state. As a film critic Vertog was disdainful of fictional films including those of Sergei Eisenstien whose "The Battleship Potemkin" he dismissed as phony and manipulative insisting only documentaries could present the truth. Starting in 1922 Vertov started a series called "Kino-Pravda" ("Film-Truth") which made a series of two dozen newsreel type shorts that showed aspects of Russian post-revolutionary society as one on the move, building a new world. He focused for the most part on workers and farmers rather than promoting a leadership cult to the extent that unlike later Soviet and Nazi films, although there would inevtably some focus on from Lenin paticularly after his death. Also unlike later Soviet and Fascist propaganda he even occasionally showed problems yet to be overcome including the poverty of the rural and urban poor albeit with the implication that such problems could and would be solved by hard work and the new leaders. A notable difference with the films of Ruttman, Charles Sheeler and Joris Ivens was that while they were focused on the form and function of machines, buildings, trains, boats etc, Vertov was more interested in the people or at least the society they represented. Vertov was also more willing to take the sort of flashy camera tricks used on occasion by Ruttman, Ivens and Derain and give them full rein for a more kinetic experience.
Ruttman was making a work of art while Vertrov on the other hand was making newsreels designed to promote the Revolution and specifically the Bolshevik faction of Lenin. His "Kino-Pravda" series of 23 shorts starting in 1922 were named after the Russian words for "Film-Truth" as well as not coincidentally using the name of the Bolshevik's official paper "Pravda" which had been published since 1911. These shorts used mostly authentic footage along with some staged scenes to tell the story of the successful revolution, a hopeful new society rebuilding, threats from within being crushed (in the form of the rival Socialist Revolutionary Party who are shown on trial), Lenin as a dynamic leader and later after his death as a beloved father figure.
These newsreels viewed in total show how Vertov devloped the kinetic and essentially humanist style that would animate his full length "Man With A Movie Camera". In this they are notably different from the rather bland newsreels made in America, France or the UK by the likes of Pathe at the same time with their stodgy posed shots of various political, military, sports or entertainment figures and flat location shots shot in predictable angles and edited in conventional ways. Unlike the mostly annonymous makers of western newsreels and educational films who were assembly line professionals and who worked to a standard template as quickly and efficiently as possible Vertov was a theorist with a willingness to experiment with his ideas for a more kinetic and involving style. Ironically for a time Vertov who worked under an authoritarian system had, at least for a time, more freedom to experiment than newsreel makers in the West who worked under the assembly line studio system.
The Kino-Pravda series of 24 newsreels ran from 1922 to 1925 at irregular intervals showing a mixture of political events along with a few more human interest stories. The time period began with the ending of the Russian Civil War, the war with Poland and the post war famine, continued through infighting with the Communist rivals the Socialist Revolutionary Party, their attempt to stage a coup and assassinate Lenin leading to the first Soviet Show trials which the series covers frequently. The series continues along to the death of Lenin and it's aftermath. The newsreels range in length from several minutes to a full reel although it's possible some episodes may be missing a few minutes. Episode 12 is missing completely. Due to the highly topical nature of some of the subjects the films are full of obscure political figures that nobody who hasn't made a detailed study of Revolutionary Soviet history could possibly expect to know.
============================================
Episode 1. June 1922; The opening episode was shot when the USSR was still suffering under a devastating famine which Vertov shows with harshly realistic shots of starving children with the haunted, hopeless look we have become used to but which was still shocking in 1922. Not because major famines hadn't happened before because of course they had, but because there wasn't normally a film crew around. Vertov and his camera does not flinch but he does not dwell overly long either before moving to the next sequence where the riches of the Orthodox Church are shown being handed over, broken up and sold off to feed the hungry children who are then shown well fed and happy. Even religious Christians would find it hard to dismiss the imagery. There is also a Church official present to hand over the treasures. Next we have a flight of a transport plane which brings in some food then takes some officials on a flight over Moscow which gives Vertov and excuse for some fine arial shots of the city which indidentally looks pretty quiet. Note that the plane is clearly a German Junkers transport plane. The USSR actually had a civil relationship with their recent Great War foes Weimar Germany and post Ottoman Turkey who were among the first to recognize the USSR and maintain diplomatic and economic relations while their former Western allies refused to do either. This extended to cultural activities including film with films beiong exported back and forth and director Robert Weine ("The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari") directing his version of "Crime & Punishment" there. Finally we see a parade of pro-government workers.
2. 1922
Starts with a Party rally. A parade of officials, speeches being given to an open air meeting afterwards, food is served, a band plays and people dance, kids in costume dance, there are carnival rides. These happy scenes contrast vividly with the scenes of starvation and poverty in the first episode. The major political event of the year was the attempt by rivals the Socialist Revolutionary Party (AKA the SR's) to stage a coup against the Bolsheviks and assassinate Lenin which failed resulting in a series of trials. Here we see various SR members arrive in court surrounded by armed militia along with various officials, charges are read out.
3. June 1922
The trial of the SR's begins with more reading of charges, various officials mill about, a rally is held outside with more speeches and marches.
4. July 1 1922
The trials continue with more speeches. We shift gears, literally with a new fast car in Moscow that uses an aeroplane engine with a giant propeller that looks distinctly unsafe. Reportedly there were two of them and this was the start of a race to Sevastapol. After this bit of futuristic technology we see grain being delivered by run-down trucks and horse drawn wagons to be loaded on to barges. The grain is stored in locked warehouses protected by armed guards so while the famine is being dealt with it is evidently not over, at least outside the cities. Finally we journey to the Caucasus and Georgia to visit the vacation resorts with their crumbling castles and sub-tropical trees and sidewalk cafes.
5. July 7 1922
Vertov starts to become more inventive and playful with the title cards as this one opens with the title being shown on a newspaper being read by a man on a balcony. In another advance in editing this motif will also be used during the short to introduce different subjects. We start with showing Vasilij Jakovenko, the Commissar for Agriculture then we see plowing being done first with old horse drawn plows then heavy mechanical equipment. Progress! Next we are back in the Georgian resorts which include sanitoriums including for children which again contrasts with the images of child poverty and famine from episode one. More progress! Finally we are back in Moscow for a well attended harness horse race known as the first Red Derby. Still more progress! Peace & Prosperity awaits! Note that Jakovenko seems to have been a victim of the Stalin Purges of a decade later when scapegoats were needed to explain the later famines Stalin caused.
6. July 18 1922
The opening goes further in breaking the fourth wall as a box containing a film reel labeled as being "Kino-Pravda 6" is opened and the reel is spooled into a projector and shown. Note that Vertov would make aggressive use of this framing device in his later full length "Man With A Movie Camera". We see a street scene with traffic and the aftermath of an accident with an overturned streetcar, factory workers at work, a bicycle race that turns into a motorcycle race and back again and finally units of the Red Army on maneuvers with new tanks all of which BTW are clearly direct copies of the hulking British Mark V and smaller French Renault tanks from the Great War. Note that while previously the Tsarist and Red Armies had armoured cars these were their first tanks. We also get a fly-over from a fairly ricketty biplane which already looks several years obsolete by Western standards. We also see an armoured train of the sort that saw action during the Russian Civil Wars.
7. July 25 1922
Back to the pro-forma title cards and more trial footage. Then we head out to the provinces with stops at a farm village in Siberia with a large house under construction, a train ride to scrounge in a mica pit mine, then down to Sochi in Crimea and another health spa with people enjoying the rocky beaches. Then we leave the USSR for the first time for a trip to Kabul with silk traders and a parade of elephants. After that rather medieval spectacle we move forward to contrast with a Mark V tank being used to assist in farming, then back to the mountains of the Caucasus with a rugged mountain road and tunnel and a small chapel. The timeline on this one is a little scattered.
8. August 15 1922;
To start we get a cold open with two men in a cafe placing a wager on the SR's trial. Then after the usual titlecard more trial footage including the verdict. Vertov shows the passage of time by using a montage with a manually sped up clock and pages torn from a calendar while people read the newspapers and doze off. The verdict is guilty BTW in case you were placing bets. In a nicely done transition we see men reading about the verdict while in a car and on a streetcar which allows for a change of topic to the more prosaic working on the streetcar tracks. We also see the remains of a crashed plane which seems more advanced than the one we saw flying overhead in episode 6. We close off with another tank being used in farming. Likewise this tank is a more modern model than the clunky monsters we saw in episode 6.
9. August 25 1922;
We return to the opening motif of showing a film projector. We see a conference of Orthodox Church Priests and Bishops. This is actually the first time we have seen any religious leaders since they handed over their valuables in episode one. More street scenes showing the interiors and engines of a streetcar along with various cars and trucks. We attend a horse race that includes betting including some obvious losers. A new movie camera is displayed. Machine shop workers are seen at work. An especially bulky projector with a generator is set up outside in the street as another party parade marches by.
10. September 3 1922;
A gathering for International Youth Day with parades, speeches and street theatre. Delegates gather for a group photo. A plane lands. We see some athletic events; A tennis match, various track & field events featuring men and women. These were the Soviet response to the Olympic Games as the USSR was barred from competing in those games until 1952. More street scenes and another streetcar accident. Mechanics work on a large engine for a new truck. We see a cross country motorcycle race.
11. October 5 1922;
The All Russian Congress Of Trade Unions meets. Various officials and delegates arrive. Cossacks do a ride-by and a military band marches. Actually a little surprising that this is the first time we've seen Cossacks. A confectionary factory is shown at work. A building catches fire and a fire brigade arrives. More factory scenes from a heavy machine shop. Komosol Day, a Party rally for kids happens with the usual marches and speeches. Troops are shown on maneuvers including infantry, cavalry, armoured cars and planes.
13. October 1922 (Episode 12 is missing);
This episode is more than twice as long as usual as it's the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution celebrations with plenty of the usual marches and speeches, including one Trotsky but not from Lenin who by this point was incapacitated by a stroke. In fact we see Trotsky a few times here giving speeches, shaking hands and handing out medals apparently acting as Lenin's surrogate. Lenin is seen in some older footage. There are also the usual military parades, maneuvers, ride-bys and fly-bys which leads to more aerial shots of Moscow. There seems to be an exercise involving the use of gas. Much of the footage for this episode was clearly recycled from earlier episodes.
14. 1923;
After some creative title cards that use Alexander Calder or Marcel Duchamp style mobiles we see a ship being launched and Kino-Pravda goes to America. We have the streets of New York, crowded restaurants, some dancers in a club, a spinning globe then back to the USSR and Petrograd where yet another Party Congress as the Comintern meets. You know what that means; more speeches by Trotsky, Radek, etc. More spinning garphics, another Party Congress, more speeches, more graphics one of which uses a swastika although to be fair in 1922 even though the Nazi Party existed in Germany it's unlikely Vertov knew who they were and it's almost certainly just a coincidental use of a graphic he liked the look of. We also get some footage of Lenin speaking although it's probably old footage as he had been incapacitated by a stroke by this point. More troops being reviewed, farmers at work, trains, factories, belching smokestacks and steel plants with happy workers and happy children. More Lenin, this is actually the first time we have really seen much of him but as we know he was seriously ill by this point the film is really covering for him. We also see Vertov using as a framing device the image of a cameraman busily cranking away. This is a device he would make use of in the later "Man With A Movie Camera".
15. 1923;
Delegates meet to discuss world peace. One of them appears to be Stalin and if so this is the first time we've seen him. Religious figures are mocked and icons are removed, see episode one again. More parades and speeches along with statues. Propaganda papers are fired out of a cannon. Winter sports with ice hockey and cross country ski racing. Sailors perform maneuvers on the ice. Troops parade on skis. Cavalry on maneuvers.
16. 1923;
This one has an opening title card that was clearly added many years later. After some street scenes we have a scale model of the Red Square Palace and an arts & crafts exhibition. Next we have some sort of lottery and some artsy camera angles. The famine still hasn't been eliminated in the provinces as we see more suffering children although this time in a hospital getting care unlike in the first episode. Later we see them happily at play looking fit. More progress! More marching Red Army soldiers. Out of the blue we get footage from a film being shot by Sergei Eisenstein, "Dnevnik Glumova" with a nattily dressed cat burglar scales the walls of a castle, then jumps off and harlequin figures mug for the camera, scamper over a tank and engage in some dissolving camera tricks. We also see another large swastika for some reason. Vertova and Eisenstein would later came to dislike and criticize each other with Vertov dismissing the feature filmmaker's work as "artificial" and this George Melies style sequence is indeed rather jarring compared to the gritty realistic content of the rest of Vertov's work. We see a meeting of the Young Pioneers youth group well fed and busy at work and on parade. It's May Day so we get a flyover from a twin engine bi-plane and some more aerial footage and more parade footage including some elaborate floats. Somewhat more surprisingly we also get a fashion show, albeit a rather staid one.
17. Feb. 1924;
Opening of women working in the fields and waves of grain, no crop shortages here. Lev Kamanvev visits and is once again greeted by happy children and gives a speech. Working on a busy open pit mine. Trains and wagons full of produce. Men work on a lumber yard, more miners and farmers. Lenin dies.
18. 1924;
After a title card that uses a little Ruttman style animation we are in France where ascend the Eiffel Tower and see some birds eye views of Paris before our bird races back to Russia as the farmland of Ukraine rush by. Looking a little parched actually but that may be due to being in black & white. Next we get another auto roadrace and street scenes with people at a street market, riding a streetcar and reading the papers which are sold by cigarette smoking newsboys. More factory workers, miners and construction workers and more aerial shots. Reaction to Lenin's death with some speeches. A young couple with a newborn get some free clothes and food. More progress benefitting the workers in the new state! Finally some increasingly artsy shots of those happy workers among grinding factory wheels.
19. 1924;
We are on a train ride through the countryside which starts in the apparent summer then suddenly turns to winter as we cross a trestle bridge. We are in a resort probably in Northern Karelia (near Finland) where people are taking dips in the icy water, speed skating, cross country skiing, running dog and reindeer sleds and seal and bear hunting. We meet some traditional Inuit people. Back to a city where some sort of election is going on. Some winter street scenes. Since this is Russia it's actually a little surprising this is really the first time Vertov has actually shown us any winter scenes. Another cross country train ride and scenes of women at work at various jobs; farming, factory and office jobs. They work hard but they also get a say as they are shown having political meetings. More progress! Lenin is still dead and shown in his coffin followed by older footage of him speaking and greeting workers. We also see his widow Vera. Another woman is shown editing film. This is probably Vertov's wife Yelizaveta Svilova who would later be shown in much the same way in "Man With A Movie Camera".
20. 1924;
A Young Pioneers parade. A young mother shows off her baby and children all wearing Pioneers uniforms. More shots of the countryside and women working the farm. These farms are relatively prosperous, the people healthy and a far cry from the struggling desperate ones from earlier episodes. A celebration with folk dancing and more Pioneers parades. Another train ride showing the cultivated fields. People are hard at work sawing wood rails and plowing the fields when the Young pioneers march up and pitch in to help. Then a collective dinner is served and magazines are read. The Pioneers visit a zoo where they see a parade of various animals; elephants, bears, kangaroos, monkeys, seals, wolves, etc.
21. Feb. 1925;
On the first anniversary of his death this is the Lenin memorial episode with plenty of shots of Lenin giving speeches and meeting people and red Army troops on maneuvers to portray the Russian Civil War. We see happy people across the USSR, not only Russians but people from the Caucuses and Central Asian Muslim areas including a girl who happily throws off her headscarf. Mass rallies and parades along with modern farming and industry and trains recycling some footage we have already seen including as contrast the early scenes of famine and starvation. In the new Russia we have farms getting electricity for the first time. Moving on we are at Lenin's funeral as crowds pass by his coffin along with various officials including his widow Nadezhda Krupskaya, Trotsky, Kamenev and Stalin who we clearly see for the first time and who is also mentioned by name for the first time. Once again we see people from across the regions and ethnic groups of the USSR as we are told that hundreds of thousands of people attended the funeral. In an animated sequence we see a plutocrat laugh over Lenin's death only to be horrified as he is told the USSR is recognized by various nations, and the masses join the Communist Party. For some reason the animated plutocrat looks oddly like Lenin himself which is a little confusing and poor planning on Vertov's part. We get more parades and emotional crowds as a motange of Lenin speaking is superimposed over his tomb in Red Square. Finally we get more speeches from young and old and a train rides into the future.
22. 1925;
Another tribute to Lenin. More people file past his coffin. More parades and speeches including from his widow. A group of peasants come to Moscow for the first time by train for the funeral. They are fed in a soup kitchen and see red Square with Lenin's Tomb. They tour a display of agricultural improvements under Lenin. Trotsky speaking about world revolution and we see activists in India, China and Africa. Activists sing the "Internationale".
23. 1925;
Special episode about the new technology. A villager buys a new radio receiver and a tree is cut down to erect an antenna. After a charming little animated scene showing a cut-away building to show a radio transmitter set we get a longer series of schematics then scenes of technicians assembling and operating the radios sets some of which are quite large. As a program is broadcast we see various singers and musicians perform while people listen intently on earphones. Later we see a store selling radios and radios being mass produced.
24. 1926;
One of the later episodes of the series, assembled after Lenin's death serves as a compilation of "Kino-Pravda" episodes.The Soviet government was not slow to see the value of films as agit-propaganda and not only for domestic but also foreign audiences and that would certainly include the films of Vertov. Accordingly excerpts of the "Kino-Pravda" series would be edited together with added subtitles in different languages for export. This last one was made for English speakers and includes excerpts about; Repairing the Moscow Trolley line, using tanks for construction and farm work, the trials of the Socialist Revolutionaries, more street scenes, peasants joining communes, a children's hospital, combatting famine in the rural areas, setting up portable movie projectors.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Although the Kino-Pravda series is better known as it can be used to show Vertov trying out some visual themes he would later use in "Man With A Movie Camera" this was actually his second newsreel series with his first starting in 1918 just after the Bolsheviks seized power. This series was called "Kino Week" thus also debuting Vertov's use of the name "Kino". Of the original twenty four shorts in the series only eight remain.
Week 1 - Mar 20 1918;
Marching wokers, Lenin, Trotsky reviews Red Army troops, cavalry and sailors. Soviet and German troops and officals are shown on the border as peace negotions are carried out to end Russia's involvement in WW1. More speeches from now forgotten figures. A street scene showing market day with various vendors.
Week 3 - June 3 1918 (week two is missing);
A collection of unrelated scenes with various officials, women working on a farm, a soup kitchen distibutes food, a naval officer, wounded soldiers return from the front, a train station, a tug of war contest.
Week 4 - June 25 1918;
More obscure officials, construction workers restoring an old building, new recruits get physicals, St Petersburg city scenes, people, apparently once respectable are now selling possesions on the street.
Week 5 - July 2 1918;
Still more officials, street scenes with beggars and lineups, ships at the docks, more dispossed people milling about.
Week 21 - October 22 1918 (weeks 6 - 20 are missing);
A Moscow street scene with people milling about a government building, officials outside a train try out a new automobile which is designed to run along the train tracks although it drives pretty slowly, a river bank in a rural area with an old rope & pully ferry, a larger river paddlewheeler, some cavalry ride in review, army officers arrive by train.
Week 22 - October 29 1918;
Moscow, footage of revolutionaires Lenin and Balbanov, street scenes, with people lining up for food and a busy market, at the train station with troops gathering to be reviewed and hear a speech from Trotsky. At a different city (probably in Ukraine) German troops are shown marching in the street as they leave occupied territory.
Week 23 - November 5 1918;
Street scene; Officials and troops mill about smoking, another speech from an unknown official, troops march by along with a funeral cortage, newspapers are handed out to men lined up outside a train, we see the outside of some sort of cabaret theatre advertising a show but we do not go inside, nurses gather outside a rural hospital.
Week 24 - November 19 1918;
Moscow, troops and civilians mill about in the street, the troops gaather for review and speeches by various officials including Yakov Sverdlov (one of Lenin's most trusted lieutenants and possible sucessor if he hadn't died in the 1919 Pandemic) and Lev Kamenev (another top leader and possible successor, later killed by Stalin), statues are unveiled, we see Russian and German troops fraternizing at what appears to be a POW camp.
Week 25 - November 26 1918;
Moscow; More statues are unveiled, another speech from Kamenev, more troops marching, more speeches.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
These newsreels show that for his first efforts Vertov is a competent but conventional newsreel filmmaker but lacks any of the flair, playfulness and willingness to experiment that begins to emerge in the "Kino-Pravda" series. He had not yet found his own style. They also may show the limitations of propaganda filmmaking as there are really only a few themes and visuals shown over the course of the series that are simply repeated but which are not inherently very interesting visually; there are plenty of parades, troops on review, statues and speeches given mostly by now forgotten officials along with some street scenes. Unlike the later work of Vertov (and Ruttmann) the subjects are fully aware of the camera and often stand around awkwardly staring at the camera. This entire series could probably have been edited down to two reels, at least what we have left, although the missing episodes are probably little different. It's possible that Vertov's choices in subject matter were dictated by the regime who also wanted the repetition to drive home it's message. It's also evident that if you live in an authoritarian system you had better enjoy parades, rallies, flags and speeches because you are going to be seeing a lot of them.
Finally we have another short possibly filmed by Vertov several years later.
"MAXIM GORKY";
We know they were filmed later as this one features the writer and poet Maxim Gorky who spent the twenties in exile in Europe after siding with the Socialist Revolutionaries, opposing their trials and criticizing Lenin and Trotsky. Highly popular he would be invited back the USSR by Stalin in 1931 after he reconciled and he would become a public supporter of the regime until he died in 1936 so this footage must have been shot within that fairly narrow window. Additionally for a few reasons the USSR was slow in making the changeover to talkies and were still making silent films by the mid thirties.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Speaking of playfulness and experimentation, Vertov also used animation for a couple of propaganda shorts. Unlike Walter Ruttman's animation experiments which came out of the Dada art scene and were abstract, dreamlike and surreal, Vertov's were conventional and realistic animation of the time done with some skill albeit not quite up to the level of American animators like Winsor MCay (already well known as the first to make full use of animation), and the just starting out Walt Disney and the Fleischer Brothers, lacking their fluidity of motion and expressive faces. It is unknown who did the actual animation for these as Vertov himself simply did the production and possibly some editing.
Parts of this one had appeared in Kino-Pravda episode 21 and are about the international success and growth of Communist Party even in the aftermath of Lenin's death while the second longer part is specifically about early farm collective and worker collective programs.
"SOVIET TOYS";
Vertov considered himself a good Socialist Realist and rejected any of the abstract art schools such as Expressionism, Dada or Surrealism but there is no other way to describe this weird cartoon than Surreal. It starts out conventionally enough with a group of children's toys under the Christmas tree acting out political stereotypes. A greedy Capitalist stuffing his face at dinner, his shifty eyes making him look even more creepy. The Capitalist becomes so bloated that he throws up then falls over and can't get up. Still he calls for women to amuse him and one duly arrives and dances for him but then things become more hallucianatory as the prostitute also gets consumed by his ever growing stomach. Then a Worker arrives and laughs as the Capitalist briefly turns into a pig. Two church bishops arrive but instead of chiding the Capitalist for his decadence they bow to him and bicker with each other. The Worker, finding no support from the Church attempts to get the Capitalist to give up some of the money fail as he literally tries to carve it out of him with giant scissors but he is not strong enough. Then a Farmer arrives and after suggesting they work together against the Capitalist the two join together (literally) to break the Capitalist open like a pinata and money leaks out and into the people's bank. Eventually the Red Army arrives (along with a cameraman from Vertov's studio) and several soldiers join together (again literally) to form and tree upon witch the Capitalist, Bishops and Prostitute are strung up, although she is merely punished while the men are lynched. The tree then turns into a Christmas tree (it's Christmas remember) and the strip ends with and ad for Vertov's studio. If this was made with kids in mind they must have been very confused. These were the only experiments of this type attempted by Vertov and he thereafter stuck with his Realist documentary style that would lead to "Man With A Movie Camera" by the end of the decade.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If we are going to take into account Ruttmann's later work for the Nazis in judging his work then we must also do the same with Vertov. Just as hindsight places Ruttmann's "Berlin" in the context of a society on the brink of collapse, praise for the vibrant and energetic society and happy workers Vertov's films show can not be seen without the hindsight that we are seeing a society heading into a complete totalitarian police state, something Vertov is an active cheerleader for. To be fair to Vertov these films were made from 1922 to 1925 or 26 with "Man With A Movie Camera" being made in 1929 and at that time the full repression of Stalin had not yet happened. In the 1920's one could still believe that the worst excesses of the Revolution were over. 1922 had seen eight years of war, revolution, civil war, terror and famine but by 1929 it was just possible to believe that the future was indeed bright; there was peace, the economy had picked up and Soviet society was visibly on the move. That was indeed the sincere position most (but certainly not all) Marxists took at the time both in the Soviet Union and abroad. Lenin had died in 1924 and Stalin had taken over but he had done so peacefully and his power was not yet absolute. The horrors of Stalinism, the purges and show trials, more famines, the Holodomor in Ukraine, ethnic cleansing of Tartars and other groups, mass arrests and terror, were still in a future few could yet see. Vertov's films do actually show a few muted criticisms of the Soviet government with scenes of extreme poverty and famine in some of the "Kino-Pravda" shorts and a few fleeting views of what seem to be homeless men in "Man With A Movie" camera albeit this is done within that larger context of the theme that the dynamic new Soviet government and it's bold leader Lenin are fixing the problems. Lenin was actually not opposed to all criticism and debate as long as it was deemed "constructive" and "positive" and would probably not have minded this, but under Stalin any such critiques, however veiled, would not be allowed. Vertov can be somewhat excused from predicting, much less showing any of the horrors of the regime but only somewhat, he was still an enthusiastic propagandist for a regime that even under Lenin was hardly free and had committed many crimes and atrocities which Vertov ignores and there is nothing to indicate that even privately he expressed any doubts. Under Stalin he would later make films like "Enthusiasm" that showed he is still a cheerleader for the by now clearly Stalinist regime. Like Rutmann under the Nazis he would have had little choice in the matter whatever their private thoughts but if the dark shadow of the Nazi regime is in hindsight seen to hang over "Berlin" and if Ruttmann's later propaganda work is to be counted against him than Vertov must be held to the same standard. After this film Vertov and his brother had a falling out and did not work together again although Vertov would continue to make films for a while until his flashy style fell afoul to the increasingly stodgy censors of the Stalinist era and he ended up back where he started as a low profile editor of newsreels dying in 1954 aged only 58, outliving Stalin by a year. His brother Mikhail dropped out of film and became a photographer, dying in 1980. Vertov's wife and editor Yelizaveta Svilova continued to work with Vertov but retired from film after his death to concentrate on assembling his various writings. She died in 1975.
No comments:
Post a Comment