III.4.
Dziga Vertov and Kino Eye:
The stature of Flaherty’s contemporaries Dziga
Vertov and his colleagues in the Soviet documentary movement has fared better
in recent years, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
discovery of previously inaccessible films and written materials. Indeed, when
it comes to Western recognition of the historical and artistic importance of
Dziga Vertov, his work, and his theories, there appears to be a major
re-evaluation in progress today.
Why the importance of Vertov and his Kino Eye
movement has been overlooked for so long by many Western documentary historians
is a bit puzzling, particularly since Vertov’s contemporary and Soviet
cinematic peer Sergei Eisenstein has long been the subject of adulation both as
a filmmaker and theorist.
However,
an investigation reveals several possible explanations.
The first explanation is simply ideological. Due to the economic dominance of the
Anglophone world in the media world during the Twentieth Century, many Western
cinema historians and critics persisted in ignoring the quality and significance of the early Soviet documentary
film in the development of documentary, dismissing the work of Vertov and other Soviet artists as communist propaganda. However, while
Vertov was indisputably an enthusiastic creator of propaganda for the Soviet
revolution, the same might also be said of Sergei Eisenstein.
Since
today both are recognized as great cinematic innovators, the answer must lie
elsewhere.
Aside
from their well documented creative
differences, there was one significant difference between Eisenstein and
Vertov: Stalin’s personal interest in the Soviet film industry, which has also
been well documented. For many years, Eisenstein
enjoyed Stalin’s blessing and support, and Vertov, who had been a favorite of
Lenin’s, most certainly did not. Vertov had made many enemies in the 1920’s
with his sweeping denunciations of dramatic cinema as a “bourgeois art form”,
and the new climate gave his enemies a chance for revenge, and they took it.
Vertov
was soon subjected to withering
ideological attacks by the communist party hierarchy; interestingly, he himself
was not a member of the party.
As
a result, during the 1930’s, Eisenstein’s major films were accessible in the
West, and Vertov’s generally were not. The same was true of their writings. Since there was no Cold War between East and
West in the 1930’s, the official approval of the Communist Party, not to
mention Stalin himself, was doubtless a blessing among Western intellectuals,
rather than the curse it was to later become.
The lion’s share of the blame for this flagrant
historical oversight must belong to John Grierson himself, who stubbornly
refused to ever acknowledge any cinematic debt to Vertov and his Kino Eye Manifesto. “The record shows,” writes American
documentary historian Jane M. Gaines,” that
Grierson eschewed the Russians – was disinterested in Vertov and was not that
deferential to Eisenstein. Basil Wright once said of Grierson that he ‘ never
used the word revolution.”[1]
In
other words, although Grierson seemingly shared the Soviet movement’s
aesthetics and social engagement, he chose to downplay the relevance of
Vertov’s theory and practice for his own documentary work. According to Russian
cinema historian Jay Leyda, Grierson acknowledged only the famous Soviet feature
director Sergei Eisenstein as an inspiration:” John Grierson’s work on the American version of “Potemkin” lends
veracity to the story that the British documentary film movement was born from
the last reel of “Potemkin”.[2]
British film critic Ivor Montagu, a Grierson
crony, handled the import of “The Man
With the Movie Camera”, which was
not shown in England until 1931.”[3]
We now know that the film was not popular in
the ruling Stalinist circles; Leyda informs us that Montagu was a frequent
visitor to Moscow, ostensibly to find new films promote; however, we also now
know that that Montagu was a Soviet spy during this period, so there are ample
grounds for questioning his agenda .[4]
After the first screenings in Paris and
Stuttgart in 1929, Vertov’s film received very enthusiastic responses from prominent
European intellectuals, including cinema historian Siegfried Kracauer, who
wrote,” Now a new Russian film has
arrived in Berlin that proves that the Russians have not remained stuck at the
level they have already reached…If Vertov’s film is more than simply an
isolated case, then it must be regarded as symptomatic of the inroads universal
human categories have made in Russia’s rigid political thinking. [5]
In
contrast, when “The Man With the Movie
Camera” was finally shown in England in 1931, Montagu compared it
unfavorably to the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, and criticized it for being
stylistically derivative of “Berlin:
Symphony of a Great City” (1927) by German Walter Ruttman. Grierson’s
own evaluation of the film in print was not flattering. “The Man With The Movie Camera,” he wrote,” is in consequence not a film at all; it is a snapshot album. There is
no story, no dramatic structure, and no special revelation of the Moscow it has
chosen as a subject. It just dithers about on the surface of life picking up
shots here and there, and everywhere, slinging them together as the Dadaists
used to sling together their verses, with an emphasis on the particular which
is out of relation to rational existence.”[6]
Grierson was thus able to summarily dismiss
Vertov’s aesthetic and ideological significance, as well as the relevance of Kino Eye for the fledgling British
documentary movement. As British cinema historian Jeremy Hicks noted recently,”
For Grierson, Vertov’s film is all
record, and no art. Therefore, in his terms, it is not documentary.”[7]
Whatever
Grierson’s motives for his brusque rejection of a documentary film now widely
recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, it is safe to say that this
rejection served his interests in his own self-promotion as the founder of the
documentary film genre. Indeed, his harsh treatment of Vertov’s work was
reminiscent of his equally brutal denunciation of his former hero Robert
Flaherty.
In
cinematic terms, in eliminating all potential rivals, Grierson effectively had made
himself the patriarch of documentary film for years to come. As a result,
contemporary film historians such as the American Jack C. Ellis can still write,”
It was Grierson who arrived at the
concept of the documentary film as we think of it today; not to tell a story
with actors but to deal with aspects of the real world that had some drama and
perhaps some importance…”[8]
[1]
Gaines (bid)p. 86
[2]
Jay Leyda( Kino: A History of the Russian
and Soviet Film) Third Edition, Princeton University Press, 1983, p.195
[3]
Jeremy Hicks (Dziga Vertov – Defining
Documentary Film) I.B. Taurus, 2007. pp.123-124
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Montagu
[5]
Yuri Tsivian, (Lines of Resistance- Dziga
Vertov and the Twenties)2004, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, pp358-359
[6]
John Grierson, The Clarion, Vol. 3, no.
2, February 1931. From Tsivian ( ibid),
p. 374
[7]
Hicks ( ibid),p.124
[8]
Ellis and MacLane ( ibid) p. ix
