Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera

The movie starts out slow and incredibly meta. I don't remember seeing anything quite so reflexive as this one before 1929. The cinematography is fantastic and varied. It's smart, even when showing the camera person. I realize on this showing, I thought there were way more superimpositions than there actually are, which obviously had the most impact on me the first time I saw it. I think the ending ramps up and the editing in the film matches the power of Battleship Potemkin.

Dziga Vertov on the right of the camera looking straight at you

Although the city symphony film had been made the entire decade beginning with Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand’s Manhatta (1921), Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera is the most famous which is at least in part due to the fact that the movie starts out slow and is very meta. The cinematography is fantastic and varied using timelapses, juxtoposition, camera tricks.  It's a culmination of camera possibilities up to this time.  

Undoubtedly the film is considered a giant montage the editing style developed by his own country the Soviet Union.  You see ideas of impressionism, a grandiosity of storytelling techniques combined into one documentary.  On top of that, it’s one of the first reflexive documentaries that we would definitely define today as “meta.”  We immediately are hit over the head that the film is meant to be shown in a theatre as the opening scenes are people going to the theatre to watch this very film. 

Vertov’s thought on cinema was really a precursor to the 1960’s documentary vérité movement that documentarians still seem to refer to today as an ideal of what cinema can be for society, for a sort of objective truth and presented as art combined on screen.  It is journalism, but shows how journalism can present facts with a perspective as well.

It’s really a culmination of the silent era at the end of a decade right when sound was about to take over permanently.

Mikhail Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957)

Beautiful cinematography. Fitting score. Melodramatic acting that works, especially due to the cinematography and framing choices. Incredible new visual elements such as when Veronika (Tatyana Samoylova) is running past the fence in the short emotional montage.

It almost pulled a tear out of my eye with the last few shots. My only quibble is the rape that resulted in the wedding I think was left ambiguous just out of conservatisms. By being ambiguous and not facing the difficulty story point head on, the film confuses and clouds and otherwise incredibly devastating and critical scene to tell a believable story.

Female focused films are fresh.

Fritz Lang's M (1931)

I watched the Criterion Collection commentary for this rewatch. Starts out as a newscast. Lang took time to make his first sound film and resisted for over a year and refused to add a Soundtrack to his previous film. Makes sound an equal partner in his arsenal after he had time to study it.

This movie feels to precede police procedural films and the film noir genre. Many uses of shadow to show people from Expressionism brought to film noir, Lang and this film are definitely an influence on that.

The plot is set during the Great Depression, it's very fairytale like, hard times. The people in the town are almost never shown as full families with mother, father, and kids. The antagonist, killer recalls Peter Kürten mass murder of children of recent history in Germany and Fritz Haarmann is another murderer who influenced Peter Lorre’s appearance.

It’s hard to keep your eyes off Lore. His small actions to start scenes, like rubbing his hands together and his darting eyes that always seem nervous, worried, yet very aware. Apparently Peter Lorre has a German Southern accent indicating he's from Austria. Peter Lorre is foreign from Hungary, but typecast as foreign murderer.

There are lots of cues of sound from clocks, indications of newsreels & non-diegetic sound. In the films' context, it's interesting that sound seems to connote danger.

Sound and no video to lead into a scene so early on in sound history. It's really something we sort of take for granted now, a way of prepping the viewer gradually into a changing scene. The film sees offscreen space to use voice to make it more mysterious. Silence feels eerie despite having all silent films for most of film history up to this time. But these techniques have been used in plays for a long time.

There many unique angles like the beautiful stair architectural shots. Make people look unique and yet in a group for example a group of grotesque men talking politics. Lots of shots from above indicating power struggles. The people/masses are shown out of power and feel out of control.

David Lynch's The Straight Story (1999)

My mom said, "This is the weirdest film I've ever seen." It was her first Lynch film, so I'm excited to show her others.  

Both my parents grew up in small towns in the Midwest and my little brother (and myself for a bit). So it was a treat to watch with my family over the holidays.

A Straight Story is a great story that reminded me of Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, is it poked fun of, in an endearing way, farm life in the Midwest, something which is almost never shown in film or television. It has less of the David Lynch flair, but still very recognizable with the auteur’s thumbprint.  It’s available via Disney, which is so interesting. The movie has amazing acting and the deer killing scene made my day.

The sounds with Mr. Lynch: sawing metal, a hum of industry, and a new prominent one: the hum of a lawnmower. It’s the simple things in this sweet life that David Lynch knew show up in this movie. There are also crazy coincidences, like being someone to nail a deer on the highway so many times in a row. Just “what if” scenarios that I believe were funny to think about for David Lynch, although he presents the idea with a more startling tone.

Lynch also shows how much easier it is to put an old person in peril?  We feel for them.  Why do we not have more movies focused on the elderly?  It’s something that is firmly noted here.

It’s also a firm anti-war movie. It takes the time we wish we would and it grants sentiment for all political points of view to think about deeply about the cost of waging war.

The movie is excellent and Harry Dean Stanton makes the movie perfect.