It is a disjointed array of scenes in which the producer, Dziga Vertoff, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention.
Man with a Movie Camera(Человек с киноаппаратом)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Soviet Union · 1929
1h 8m
Director Dziga Vertov
Starring Mikhail Kaufman
Genre Documentary
Add to Watchlist
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
In this silent Soviet documentary, a man wanders around Moscow, Kharkov, Kiev, and Odessa with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling innovation. A towering achievement in experimental cinema.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The Independent by Geoffrey Macnab
It is more a film poem, an ode to modernity and a symphony of a city.
The Observer (UK) by Jonathan Romney
This is an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be.
It's a unique, unforgettable, enlightening experience.
The film would be exciting to watch even completely silent, both because it’s a valuable record of Soviet city life at the end of the 1920s, and because it explodes with visual ideas.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The combustion engine gave humanity the new experience of speed; now the movie camera gave us a dizzying new speed of perception and creation.
It was about the act of seeing, being seen, preparing to see, processing what had been seen, and finally seeing it. It made explicit and poetic the astonishing gift the cinema made possible, of arranging what we see, ordering it, imposing a rhythm and language on it, and transcending it.
No other film – not even by Georges Méliès at his most fantastic – trumpets early cinema's status as a magical science and scientific magic, quite so loudly or melodically.
Vertov’s experimental essay proclaims its ‘complete separation from the language of theatre and literature’ in the opening titles. What follows is cinema in its purest form: movement, sensation, action and visual trickery.
Users who liked this film also liked
Un Chien Andalou
(Un chien andalou)
A classic avant-garde surrealist film from the cooperation of director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dali.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1929
- Director Luis Buñuel
- Cast Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dalí, Pierre Batcheff, Simone Mareuil, Robert Hommet, Marval
- Genre Fantasy, Horror
- Available on Fandor Amazon Channel, FlixFling, IndieFlix, Fandor, Tubi TV
La Jetée
The story of a post-nuclear war experiment with time travel, constructed almost entirely from still photos.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1962
- Director Chris Marker
- Cast Jean Négroni, Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jacques Ledoux, André Heinrich, Jacques Branchu
- Genre Romance, Science Fiction
- Available on Criterion Channel, DocAlliance Films, Apple TV, Amazon Video
The Passion of Joan of Arc
(La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc)
The 15th-century teenage warrior Joan of Arc takes on the French church.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1928
- Director Carl Theodor Dreyer
- Cast Maria Falconetti, Eugène Silvain, André Berley, Maurice Schutz, Antonin Artaud, Michel Simon
- Genre Drama, History
- Available on Criterion Channel, FlixFling, Max Amazon Channel, Apple TV, Amazon Video, Tubi TV
A Man Escaped
(Un condamné à mort s'est échappé)
During World War II, a French Resistance fighter tries to escape a Nazi prison before his execution.
- France • 1956
- Director Robert Bresson
- Cast François Leterrier, Charles Le Clainche, Maurice Beerblock, Roland Monod, Jacques Ertaud, Jean Paul Delhumeau
- Genre Drama, Thriller, War
- Available on Criterion Channel, Apple TV, Amazon Video
The Emigrants
(Utvandrarna)
A new land...a new hope...a new dream.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Sweden • 1971
- Director Jan Troell
- Cast Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Allan Edwall, Eddie Axberg, Monica Zetterlund, Pierre Lindstedt
- Genre Adventure, Drama
- Available on No streaming locations found.
The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!
(Ирония судьбы, или С легким паром!)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Soviet Union • 1975
- Director Eldar Ryazanov
- Cast Andrey Myagkov, Barbara Brylska, Yuriy Yakovlev, Aleksandr Shirvindt, Georgi Burkov, Aleksandr Belyavskiy
- Genre Comedy, Romance, TV Movie
- Available on No streaming locations found.
A Man from Boulevard des Capucines
(Человек с бульвара Капуцинов)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Soviet Union • 1987
- Director Alla Surikova
- Cast Andrey Mironov, Aleksandra Yakovleva-Aasmyae, Mikhail Boyarskiy, Oleg Tabakov, Nikolai Karachentsov, Igor Kvasha
- Genre Comedy, Romance, Western, Music
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Voyage in Time
(Tempo di viaggio)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Italy • 1990
- Director Andrei Tarkovsky, Tonino Guerra
- Cast Tonino Guerra, Andrei Tarkovsky
- Genre Documentary
- Available on No streaming locations found.
À propos de Nice
A exploration and interrogation of life in the costal city of Nice in France.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1930
- Director Jean Vigo
- Cast
- Genre Documentary
- Available on Criterion Channel
La Roue
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 1923
- Director Abel Gance
- Cast Séverin-Mars, Ivy Close, Gabriel de Gravone, Pierre Magnier, Max Maxudian, Georges Térof
- Genre Drama
- Available on Criterion Channel, Amazon Video
Shadowboxing
(Бой с Тенью)
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Russia • 2005
- Director Alexey Sidorov
- Cast Andrei Panin, Elena Panova, Denis Nikiforov, Dmitriy Shevchenko, Alexander Kuznetsov, John Amos
- Genre Action, Drama
- Available on No streaming locations found.
The Bandit
(O Cangaceiro)
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- Brazil • 1953
- Director Lima Barreto
- Cast Milton Ribeiro, Alberto Ruschel, Marisa Prado, Vanja Orico, Zé do Norte, Adoniran Barbosa
- Genre Drama, Adventure, Western
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Augustine
Augustine, the star of Professor Charcot's experiments in hypnosis, transitions from object of study to object of desire.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- France • 2012
- Director Alice Winocour
- Cast Soko, Vincent Lindon, Chiara Mastroianni, Roxane Duran, Olivier Rabourdin, Grégoire Colin
- Genre Drama, History
- Available on Hoopla, OVID, Apple TV, Google Play Movies, Vudu, Amazon Video, YouTube, Tubi TV, Kanopy, Plex, Plex Player
Kino Eye
(Киноглаз)
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Soviet Union • 1924
- Director Dziga Vertov
- Cast
- Genre Documentary
- Available on Kanopy
Behemoth
(悲兮魔兽)
A sobering Chinese documentary about the environmental, sociological, and public health effects of coal-mining in China and Inner Mongolia.
- ✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
- China, France • 2015
- Director Zhao Liang
- Cast
- Genre Documentary
- Available on Fandor, Hoopla, Metrograph, Apple TV, Kanopy
V.I.P. Cop. New Year's Eve Mayhem
(Полицейский с Рублёвки. Новогодний беспредел)
We need your money
- ✭ ✭ ✭
- Russia • 2018
- Director Ilya Kulikov
- Cast Alexander Petrov, Sergey Burunov, Aleksandra Bortich, Roman Popov, Tatiana Babenkova, Sofiya Kashtanova
- Genre Comedy, Crime
- Available on No streaming locations found.
Like the description says, "few films better enable a viewer to feel the massive power of editing than this towering achievement in cinema." I would add that this film is perhaps the most essential of all the Soviet Montage films.