IV.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.
A brief investigation reveals several possible
explanations.
The first explanation is simply ideological
and political. Due to the economic dominance of the Anglophone world in the media
world during the Twentieth Century, some Western cinema historians and critics ignored
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 widely 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: the role of Stalin. Stalin’s personal interest in
the Soviet film industry has been well documented, and, for many years, Eisenstein
enjoyed Stalin’s blessing and support, while 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 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; we also now know that that Montagu was, in fact, a
Soviet spy during this period, so there are grounds for questioning Montagu’s real
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 in print 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. [6]
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.”[7]
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.”[8]
Whatever
Grierson’s motives for his brusque rejection of a documentary 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…”[9]
IV.5.
Dziga Vertov’s Contribution to the Development of Documentary:
It
is time for a serious re-evaluation of the relative roles played by Grierson
and Vertov in the development of documentary. As mentioned before, with the collapse of the
Soviet Union, and the subsequent end of the Cold War, we now finally have
access to more of the films and the original writings of Vertov and his
contemporaries. These films, along with
his theoretical and practical writings provide proof that Vertov was developing
a documentary aesthetic and style in the Soviet Union at least a decade before
Grierson. Indeed, the Vertov documentary aesthetic and style have both withstood
the test of time far better than either that of Flaherty or Grierson.
A
brief look at Vertov’s professional career and achievements might be useful.
In
1918, a young man, then known as Denis Abel Kaufman, joined the newsreel
department of the Moscow Cinema Committee, and, in an overt homage to the
Futurist group led by the famous Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, he
immediately changed his name to Dziga Vertov,
meaning “ spinning gypsy.” He
initially worked as an editor, churning out newsreels on the war between the
Whites and the Reds, and developing his skills and style.
In
1919, he met Elizaveta Svilova, a colleague who became both his wife and his life-long
creative collaborator as editor. In 1922, his brother Dennis joined him and
became first cameraman. Inspired by the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda, Vertov developed his first
original programs in 1922, the weekly Kino
Pravda. What distinguishes the Kino
Pravda from previous newsreels was the use of editorial themes rather the
mere recording of events, and the use of creative editing to express those
themes. [10]
Artistic or poetic expression to convey political messages was accepted as the
norm in writing and painting at the time, and Vertov extended this approach to
film, even using Constructivist fonts for his intertitles.[11]
During
this period, he also wrote two of his most well-known manifestos on the cinema:
“We: Variant of a Manifesto” , and “Cine-Eyes: A Revolution”.[12]
These
manifestos reveal an awareness of the need to unite Constructivist theory with
the rapidly developing practice of film montage to convey a message and a story.
Vertov and his wife Elizaveta were soon arguably
the world’s first documentary editors. In the process, Vertov was quickly learning
what worked and what did not. For example, he soon understood that politically
stage-managed events were not cinematically interesting. In his instructions to
his cameramen, he wrote,” Temporarily
avoid photographing parades and funerals (we’ve had enough of them and they’re
boring) and recordings of meetings with an endless succession of orators (
cannot be conveyed on the screen)[13]”
While
most contemporary documentarians would agree with Vertov’s opinion on the
soporific quality of filmed parades, Vertov’s dislike for artifice went much
further; he regularly denounced all dramatic film as “theatrical” and therefore “ bourgeois”
– and, therefore, by implication, counter-revolutionary.
In
the Soviet Union of the 1920’s calling or even implying that someone was a
counter-revolutionary was a serious charge; by doing so, Vertov made many
enemies among his colleagues, including most notably, Sergei Eisenstein. This
alienation of colleagues was to subsequently cost Vertov dearly, as shall be
been
Be
that as it may, Vertov’s theoretical documentary
concept of Kino- Eye (Cinema-Eye) has
been adopted by subsequent generations of socially engaged documentarians inspired
by statements like this one, delivered at a Vertov lecture in Paris in 1929: ‘The history of Cinema Eye has been a
relentless struggle to modify the course of world cinema, to achieve in cinema
a new emphasis on the unplayed film over the played film, to substitute the
document for the mise--scene, to break out of the proscenium of the theater and
to enter the arena of life itself.”[14]
In
terms of current documentary technique, there can be little doubt that, in
terms of camerawork, editing and his pioneering concept of visual literacy,
Vertov was decades ahead of both Flaherty and Grierson. His body of work, ranging from silent features
like “One Sixth of the World” (1926),
“The Eleventh Year “(1928), [15]and
the previously mentioned “The Man With
the Movie Camera” (1929), are all widely recognized today as examples of
cinema craft and artistry.
Dziga
Vertov also succeeded in making a seamless transition to sound more
successfully than most of his peers. His sound features “Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas” (1931) and “Three Songs of Lenin “( 1934) are
also appreciated today for their creative use of music, location recorded sound
and interviews at a time when many others were content to merely record a
talking head.[16]
Ironically,
it was Vertov’s very dedication to the development of the documentary language
and form that got him into ideological trouble as Stalinization of the Soviet
arts scene ushered in an aesthetically regressive period in the late 1920’s.
For
Russian Futurists like Vertov, Mayakovsky, and author Yevgeny Zamyatin, inability
to change led to biological entropy, which, in turn, eventually to the death of
the biological system. This Futurist philosophy helped make them enthusiastic
supporters of the Communist Party and the Russian Revolution in its early stages;
however, after Lenin’s death in 1924, however, the same worship of change set
them on a collision course with Stalin and his supporters, since Stalin’s
priority was consolidation of power with an absolute minimum of change – in
short, the very state of cultural entropy the Futurists abhorred.
Like
Lenin, Stalin took a great interest in the Soviet film industry. However, it was
soon clear though his recorded comments that he did not like documentary in
general. There were several reasons for this dislike.
First
of all, Stalin wanted to create a cult of personality around himself; unstaged
documentary portrayals of him would be far too revealing and intimate, and not
project the iconic image he desired. As a result, Stalin soon realized that it
was far more effective propaganda if he were portrayed by a suitably attractive
actor in a well scripted fiction film
with a carefully tailored message.
There
was also the cost factor; documentary productions had an unavoidably high shooting
ratio, often of 20:1 or more, and were therefore expensive to produce. To make
matters even worse, quality film stock was hard to find in the Soviet Union. A
well -scripted fiction film, on the other hand, might have a shooting ratio of
as low as 2:1. The communist party finally reached the conclusion that the only
value of any film was its ideological content and all other aesthetic considerations
were, at best, secondary, if not completely irrelevant. All documentary production was to be
terminated.
In this context, it is a bit ironic that the
Soviets’ bitter ideological rivals, the National Socialists of Germany, reached
very similar conclusions regarding their own propaganda efforts. While Leni
Riefenstalhl’s controversial films “Triumph
of The Will” (1934) and “Olympiad “(1938)
achieved international acclaim for their extraordinary cinematic quality , the
Nazi leadership ultimately decided to focus on commercial entertainment cinema
as their primary vehicle for propaganda.
In
Germany, with the domestic Agfa factory producing quality film stock, it
appears that cost was not an issue; it seems that both Hitler and Goebbels,
like Stalin, were also big fans of Hollywood, and they all seemed to agree that
the ideal vehicle for propaganda and communicating political messages to the
general population was the fiction entertainment film, rather than documentary.
In
retrospect, they were all correct; today, most communicators agree that the
political message in an entertainment film like “ Casablanca” is far more effectively delivered than any documentary
could do.
In
the Soviet Union, it was sadly predictable that, by 1931, documentarians like
Vertov were being referred to by the pejorative term documentalists , and that obedient communist party ideologues called
for the complete destruction of documentalism,
which was accused of being both “Formalist”
and “Trotskyist”, which were potentially fatal epithets in those days.
Undaunted, Vertov made a brave defense of his documentary
aesthetics in his essay “On Documentary
and Documentalists” (1931):
“Question: What is the
difference between newsreel, Cine-Eye, documentary and unplayed film?
Answer: There is no
difference. These are different definitions of one and the same branch of
cinema production: it is ‘newsreel’, which points to its continuous link with
the accumulation of the current material of newsreel; it is Cine-Eye, which
points to the recording of this newsreel material armed with the cine-camera,
the Cine-Eye; it is documentary, which points to it being genuine, to the
authenticity of the accumulated material; it is unplayed, which points to
actors being unnecessary, to acting being unnecessary in the production of this
kind of film.”[17]
Vertov’s
last major work was “Three Songs of Lenin”
(1934), ostensibly an homage to the
legacy of Lenin using 3 different musical movements; an homage to Lenin doubtless provided stout ideological
camouflage, and Vertov somehow managed to make the first song a very powerful statement celebrating the
demise of chador, or the veil, in the
new Soviet republics to the South, which were predominantly Muslim.
Apparently,
the film was not well received by the party hierarchy; Stalin objected to the
portrayal of Lenin for some vague ideological discrepancy, and few dared to
question Stalin’s authority on ideological matters; in retrospect, it seems
likely that Stalin’s real objection was that there was way too much Lenin in
the film, and nowhere near enough Stalin.
There
was now blood in the water, and all of Vertov’s many old ideological and
aesthetic enemies saw their opportunity to get their revenge on their former
critic, and even former colleagues and
supports like Sergei Eisenstein joined the party chorus to
denounce Vertov for having ‘ formalist and
documentalist tendencies”.
The
greatest Soviet documentarian was forced to return to where he began - producing
pedestrian newsreels until his death in 1954.[18]
[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
[7]
John Grierson, The Clarion, Vol. 3, no.
2, February 1931. From Tsivian ( ibid),
p. 374
[8]
Hicks ( ibid),p.124
[9]
Ellis and MacLane ( ibid) p. ix
[10]
Links to episodes 1-5 of “Kino Pravda”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QBKBij5_0c
[11]
Hicks ( ibid) p.14
[12]
Hicks ( ibid) p.14
[13]
Dziga Vertov (On the Significance of
Non-Acted Cinema) 1923, in Kino-Eye, p. 51; from Hicks ( ibid) p.15
[14]
Barnouw (ibid) p. 61
[15]
Link to “The Eleventh Year”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csHcuiuTv8
[16]
Link to “Enthusiam- Sounds of Donbas”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBLZzk6pp0M
[17]
Dziga Vertov (RGALI 2091/2/174), from
Hicks, ( ibid),p.84
[18]
Barnouw (ibid) p.65
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