.::Song Of The Little Road::.

Two of the gems of experimental cinema - Manhatta and The Man With The Movie-Camera - were screened at the Gallery Beyond yesterday. Since I missed the first one (I watched it on the internet anyway), I shall review only The Man With The Movie-Camera.

Made in 1929 by Dziga Vertov with cinematography by his brother Mikhail Khaufman, The Man With The Movie-Camera captures the Russian life in all its avatars. The movie has no story as such, yet one could call it the story of a people and a time.

The movie shows the Russian way of life in minute detail, and not often in the sad way that directors of art movies are wont to perceive. The camera captures in a most natural way the beautifully uncertain smiles, the lips that make unheard whispers, basking ladies, the victories and the excitement, the routine and the indifference - all captured with the devouring eye of a greedy voyeur and the detailed panache of a keen observer. The result is a movie which speaks of life without judgment and the consequent pitfalls that a jaundiced eye brings to the task of film-making.

Dziga Vertov made use of a variety of cinematographic techniques in this movie. The double exposures, the use of slow motion and fast motion techniques, still shots, multiple split-screens were especially prominent and effective throughout the movie.

Made by him in response to critics who ridiculed his earlier film One-Sixth Part Of The World, The Man With The Movie-Camera was Vertov’s cinematic experiment without the use of a premeditated script, actors, sets, and intertitles. And throughout the movie, this fact of experimentation is highlighted when the movie shows a giant camera apprehending the scenes of common life or when it shows people in the theatre watching the man with the movie-camera do his job of (what else but) making a movie.

For me, the darkness, the quiet and the solitude of Gallery Beyond have become as much a part of the experience as the movies themselves. And I seem to grudge when the lights come on and it’s time to leave.