Experimental Cinema (1930-1934)

SIMON KOSTER DZIGA VERTOFF Dziga Vertoff, the Russian film-pioneer is on a tour through Europe. He has been in Berlin for a few days, in Paris, London, Holland, and everywhere he has given lectures on Russian film-art, on the film-art in general and on his own sound-film Enthusiasm, Symphony of the Don-Basin in particular. A talk with Vertoff pays. For is he not the great discoverer of new possibilities in filming? For the greater part we owe to him the notion of construction, the foundation of all film-aesthetics and still now, every new film which he produces is a seeking for new forms of expression. It does not affect him that others popularize the possibilities discovered by him, and get credit for it. He doesn't want the great international cinema-crowd. He seeks the film, that is; the film as a special and independent means of expression (which needn't necessarily be a form of art to him). In 1919, he started his first attack on the filmindustry of that time by condemning the Russian comedy-film, by means of a manifesto and by demanding the fabrication of pictures, without actors, without action, and without artificial scenery. He also pleaded for the sound-film which couldn't, at that time, be foreseen at all, in that same manifesto, which could not be published until 1921. But before that Vertoff had achieved some practical work, namely when in 1918 he arranged and made up forty weekly news-films after the principles of the Film-Eye group, supplied by him. In 1919, he made his first great picture, the historical documentary film, A Year of Revolution, out of existing film-material. One year later it was followed by The Struggle of Tsaritsin, again a documentary film which, however, in striking contrast to the methods of that time, he arranged out of small groups of two or three pictures. This film was his first step in the direction of his last and most famous silent-picture The Man With the Camera. In 1921 were published two sensational manifestos — "one destructive and one constructive" as Vertoff calls them himself. The first demand in these manifestos was that the programs in the cinemas should no longer consist of 99 percent acted films and 1 per cent of documentary films, but for 75 per cent of documentary ones (actual, scientific and culture films), and, at the most, for 2 5 per cent of acted pictures. It was called the Lenin Proportion as Lenin, who has asserted himself that the actual news-film was to be the foundation for cinematography, had exacted a similar demand. In the manifesto, it was pointed out that also in daily life the stage takes up about 10 per cent of the time and that one is wrong in including the general means of expression "Films" in that tenth part. So the group "Film-Eye" demanded that film-studios should be built in which merely documentary films were to be produced, not only for Russia, but for the whole world. The "Film-Eye" also contains the program of Vertoff and his men. As the microscope and the telescope are means by which the eye can see small and distant objects, so the film-eye — "the camera" — is a means for the human eye to conquer space as well as time and, besides, the subjective human way of seeing. Therefore the film is the ideal means to render facts, to teach people to see in an organized way, to show them that which — through the difference in time or place — they cannot spot with the naked eye. After the manifesto on the "Film-Eye" Vertoff brought us one on "Film Truth." In the period from 1922-25 he produced 23 small and great films, which he called "Film-Truths" and which were devoted to the most divergent subjects. Vertoff enumerates some of them: Spring, Two Worlds, The Black Sea, The White Sea, Moscow; Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, Pioneers, Radio and Lenin. All these films were documentary, but made up in a very unnatural way. Neither the connection of time nor that of place is respected. The pure filmforce of contrast and harmony, the impulse of the didactic construction, leads the composition. This Vertoff style forms the greatest possible contrast with the usual style of acted films and yet, one day a man appears who seeks the middle between two poles and who connects the form, the composition and the scenery of the "film-truths" with the theatrical means of acted films: Eisenstein produces his Potemkin. In the meantime in 1923 there appears Vertoff 's film, The Film-Eye, in which he realizes his theories in a strictly dogmatic way. In 192 5, March Soviet, a striking symphony of the raising of a new society; starting from hunger, misery and death and rising to an apotheosis of the new life. In 1926, follows a sound-film experiment, The Sixth Part of the World, a heavy political film, accompanied by spoken text, which was broadcast from a wireless station into the film house. In 1927, Vertoff produces The Eleventh Year, a non-speaking film the construction of which is on a musical foundation. And in 1928, his last silent picture, The Man With the Camera. With this the first part of Vertoff's work comes to a close, for Enthusiasm, which he produced in 1930, is according to him, not his last but his first picture. (This explains Vertoff's attitude towards the sound-film.) Also when making this sound-film, Vertoff at once found his own method. From the very beginning he did not take any notice of the carefully constructed theories of the technical men. Whilst these gentlemen gave severe orders that at two miles distance round the studio no noise was to be made, 27