Comparing Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was made up of a series of revolutions in Russian with the aim to disassemble the authoritative Tsarist autocracy that eventually led to the upsurge of the Soviet Union. During this time, a new wave of innovative filmmakers who were determined to create a new way of seeing came about. Before the revolution, Russian films were dark, slow-moving melodramas featuring popular stars, but by 1917 the Russian film industry was galvanized by young men and women who despised the oppressive customs put in place by the Tsarist regime and they thus made tentative moves that resulted in the growth of a national cinema movement which would reflect new social ideals. These young people wanted to establish a new type of cinema
“WE proclaim the old films, based on the romance, theatrical films and the like, to be leprous. Keep away from them. Keep your eyes off them. They’re mortally dangerous- contagious!” (Kino-Eye 7). Vertov was similar to Eisenstein in the sense that he also put the montage technique to a smart an effective use. Vertov too wanted to portray the “truth”, which he believed could only be done through a camera’s objective lens. Most people remember Vertov for his fascination with the documentary film. His 1929 film The Man with a Movie Camera is the perfect example of one of his documentary films that utilizes the montage technique. In this film, Vertov uses Soviet montage to make the camerawork obvious. He disliked the continuity system, which tried to hide the filmmaking, and thus did whatever he could to go against it. This film provided a filmic exaltation of life in Soviet Russia. Vertov wanted to portray communist principles by showing clips of life in a Soviet civilization, and he also utilized the technique of Soviet montage to create meaning from imagery that would usually be considered