Sightlines · reception
How Man with a Movie Camera was received
1929 · Dziga Vertov · Man with a Movie Camera on Sightlines
The arc
In 1929 even fellow Soviet avant-gardists balked — Eisenstein famously dismissed its tricks as 'unmotivated camera hooliganism' — and it puzzled audiences at home and abroad. Now it's the establishment: Sight & Sound's 2014 critics' poll named it the greatest documentary ever made, and it cracked the top ten of the magazine's 2012 all-time list.
What’s debated
Film fans still argue over whether it's even a documentary at all — a truthful 'life caught unawares' or the most gorgeously staged con in nonfiction history.
Its footprint
It's the ur-text every city-symphony montage, hyperkinetic documentary, and 'day in the life of a metropolis' sequence traces back to, and because it has no dialogue it's been endlessly rescored — by the Alloy Orchestra, Michael Nyman, and the Cinematic Orchestra, whose 2003 album made it a chill-out-room staple.
Where it stands
A film-school rite of passage that turned Letterboxd darling — the rare 1920s silent people watch for the pure adrenaline of the cutting, not out of homework obligation.
Did you know? It was a family production: Vertov directed, his brother Mikhail Kaufman shot it (and appears as the cameraman on screen), and his wife Elizaveta Svilova edited it — and can be seen in the film literally editing the film you're watching.