Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

There are films you admire and films you enjoy, and sometimes those are the same thing. Man with a Movie Camera sits firmly in the first category, and I think it's worth being honest about that distinction rather than pretending otherwise.

What Dziga Vertov pulled off here is, by any reasonable measure, extraordinary. Shot across Moscow, Kyiv, and Odessa, the film presents itself as a day in the life of Soviet urban society, workers rising, factories humming, streets filling, leisure and labour intercut with relentless energy. But that description barely scratches the surface of what's actually going on. There's no script. No actors. No intertitles. What you get instead is pure visual rhythm, a self-reflexive argument about what cinema can be and what the camera can see that the human eye simply cannot.

The techniques Vertov deploys are staggering when you consider the era: split screens, double exposures, freeze frames, stop-motion, whip pans. He's not just using these as flourishes. He's making a point with each one, that editing is thought, that the camera is a different kind of consciousness. The film is as much a manifesto as it is a movie. More so, probably.

And some of it is genuinely, breathtakingly beautiful. There are sequences where the kinetic energy feels shockingly modern, where the cutting has a pulse to it that would make plenty of contemporary editors sit up straight. The piano scores added in recent years help enormously here. Without them, stretches of the film risk feeling clinical and cold. With them, there's an emotional texture that anchors you when the images alone might send you adrift.

But here's where I have to be straight with you: it's also deeply disjointed, and not always in a way that rewards patience. Without narrative or character to hold onto, you're being asked to surrender entirely to Vertov's logic, or his deliberate lack of one. For long passages, it stops feeling like a portrait of real life and starts feeling like a technical exercise in montage for its own sake. Which, yes, is arguably the point. Vertov wanted to smash the conventions of dramatic cinema and replace them with something purer. I respect that. I also found myself losing the thread repeatedly, checking back in rather than being pulled through.

It reminds me a little of the experience I had watching The Color of Pomegranates (1969), another film that operates almost entirely on its own terms, where admiration and slight alienation sit side by side throughout. That's not a dismissal of either film. It's just an honest account of what it's like to sit with work that was never really made to be comfortable.

For a more grounded and, frankly, more fun engagement with the idea of a man and his camera, I'd point you towards The Cameraman (1928), which came out the same year and treats broadly similar subject matter in an entirely different register. Buster Keaton's film is about the romance and comedy of a man trying to capture life on film. Vertov's is about whether film itself can think. Both are worth your time, but only one of them you'd call a good night in.

Three stars.

Because this is what three stars means to me: significant, worth seeing, genuinely impressive in ways I can clearly articulate, but not a film I can say I fully loved. Man with a Movie Camera is a landmark, full stop. A century on, its fingerprints are all over avant-garde filmmaking, music video, documentary, and experimental work in ways that can't be overstated. It changed what cinema knew it could do. It's less a movie you watch and more one you study, you marvel at, you argue about over a second pint. Just don't be surprised if, somewhere around the fortieth split-screen, your mind starts to wander.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1929  | Watched: 2026-03-08

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: BFI Player · GuideDoc · BFI Player Amazon Channel · BFI Player Apple TV Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: Brew · GuideDoc
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Fandango At Home
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from Soviet Union: Viy (1967) · Earth (1930) · By the Bluest of Seas (1936) · The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
More from the 1920s: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · The Docks of New York (1928) · A Throw of Dice (1929)
More documentary: Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Style Wars (1983) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)