Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The first of it's kind?

I found Robert’s reading of The Man with the Movie camera to be exceptionally helpful in trying to understand the film. Unfortunately, history is not my strong suit so understanding a film like this in the context of Russian history is incredibly hard for me to grasp on my own. His chapter on “The Historical Context” was invaluable in allowing me to make some sense of a film that made absolutely no sense on first viewing. In addition to Film Analysis, I am also taking a French Cinema class this semester. One of the films that we screened in that class was called Ballet Mecanique. It was made in 1924 by Fernand Léger. The film is only 19 minutes long and is visually similar to The Man With the Movie Camera. In the film we see montage of people, instruments, transportation and machines. In an analysis, the film can be understood as a critique of the rise of industrialization and humans as machines. This came to mind because of the first sentence of the Preface of Roberts book “… [The Man With the Movie Camera] is unlike anything that came before or after it… in the history of film”. Although Ballet Mecanique may not be a political commentary similar to Man with a Movie Camera, it is interesting to note that there are similarities present that Roberts does not allude to. After reading this book by Roberts, I am intrigued to watch Man with a Movie Camera again to get a deeper understanding of the film.

I am pasting below a YouTube link to the first part of Ballet Mecanique if you are interested in taking a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SgsqmQJAq0

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