Every so often I do a random (online) search through the DVD listings at the library. With 8000 or so titles they're bound to have some gems I've never heard of. I pick a title that seems interesting for whatever reason, plug it into IMDB[^] and go from there. Thus I found Man with a Movie Camera[^]. Looked interesting so I placed a hold and picked it up tonight.
You can imagine my delight when I discovered that this 'silent' movie has a new soundtrack written by Michael Nyman. That's an interesting recent trend; take a classic old movie (preferably silent) and write a new soundtrack to go with it. They did it for Fritz Langs Metropolis[^], Philip Glass did it with La Belle et la Bete[^] and I have to say that if it's done well I'm all for it. In all three examples I've cited it's done well!
Man with a Movie Camera is a movie without a plot, dialogue, actors. Just random shots taken around the city of Odessa in 1928 intermixed with shots of the cameraman himself and the editor of the movie. We see the process of selecting a sequence and how it's put into context. Heck, we even get to see parts of the movie screened to an audience; there the movie is up on the screen and there's the audience watching it!
Well, the very fact that it was shot in the Soviet Union in 1928 automatically roused my interest. Both from a fascination with the history of that troubled era and from the fact that the Soviets did some very interesting stuff musically and visually in the 1920's.
One interesting detail from this movie (remember it was shot in 1928). One sequence shows a girl at a shooting gallery at an amusement park. One of the targets has a swastika; when she hits it a sign opens that says (translated) 'The father of fascism'. I hadn't realised that, nearly 5 years before he took power in Germany, Adolf Hitler was regarded so dimly in the Soviet Union.
How many movies have you seen where the camera itself plays a part? I don't mean in terms of the camera capturing the scene; that's a given. In this movie we see a stop frame sequence where the camera itself is the actor we see up on the screen.
I've ordered my own copy. Higher praise I cannot give!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment