50
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.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
The Independent by Geoffrey Macnab
It is more a film poem, an ode to modernity and a symphony of a city.
100
The Observer (UK) by Jonathan Romney
This is an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be.
100
It's a unique, unforgettable, enlightening experience.
100
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.
100
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.
100
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.
100
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.
100
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.
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.