Indeed, it's the camera that is the hero of this influential documentary.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2024

This documentary uses techniques and tricks to show us more about life than we can otherwise discern. In addition to that capability, Man with a Movie Camera also makes us think more about what cinema is and can be.

| May 7, 2024

It took a long time for the documentary to hazard such expansiveness of form and risk again.

| Jun 12, 2023

Anyone studying or teaching filmmaking technique needs to check this out just for Vertov’s mastery of editing and music.

| Original Score: A | Aug 30, 2022

Dziga Vertov was a master of assembling found footage or even creating it into dynamically edited documentaries that convey a message.

| May 5, 2022

Just a little over an hour, it nevertheless towers over film history as an example par excellence of cinema’s ability to communicate in unique and transgressive ways.

| Apr 8, 2022

Vertov brought the camera itself into the action, pulling out all the technical stops in probably the most exhausting, extravagant and dazzling "documentary" ever made.

| May 12, 2021

Almost every human activity, occupation or aspect of life you can think of is in Vertov's film, all in the space of 68 minutes!

| Feb 11, 2021

The work of Vertoff is no longer legendary. We have seen it, others have seen it. Everybody must fight till they do see it!

| Jan 14, 2021

This magnificent movie may be a film studies set text, but it defies attempts at explanation, and in fact, it has a unique way of wriggling out of any category you might try to impose on it.

| Mar 27, 2020

No million dollar appropriations. No full page advertisements. No phrases out of Barnum's corpse:... Just an experiment by a Russian director and his cameraman trying to find out what can be done with a camera and a will to create.

| Sep 12, 2019

A masterpiece of avant-garde experimentalism and, fleetingly, an unexpected critique of the continuing class struggle.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 21, 2017

[Director] Dziga Vertov's documentary Man with a Movie Camera is more than 80 years old, yet it positively thrums with the onward rushing energy of a freight train, a type of futurist dynamism as surprising as a slap in the face.

| Aug 22, 2017

Little can be added to the praise heaped upon Man with a Movie Camera over the years, other than to emphasise quite how entertaining it is.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 3, 2016

The film remains a testament to the early days of filmmaking and the commitment to innovation and exploitation of the then-new medium.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 18, 2016

The sheer jouissance of Vertov's experimentation in a film defined by odd angles, jump cuts, split screens, tracking shots, double exposure and... playful montage, might alone propel Man with a Movie Camera onto greatest film ever lists.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 7, 2016

This is an exuberant manifesto that celebrates the infinite possibilities of what cinema can be.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 2, 2015

Fascinating enough as a social document, but genuinely thrilling in how its multifarious technical trickery whips up an ecstatically cinematic delirium.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 31, 2015

Silent stunner.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 30, 2015

Dizga Vertov's 1929 experimental Soviet propaganda picture is breathtaking in its formal ingenuity.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 30, 2015