Man with a Movie Camera (Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack) on Vimeo. (The soundtrack doesn’t start until about 3:45 into the film; occasional subtitles are available with the CC button.)

Man with a Movie Camera (Человек с киноаппаратом) is a documentary-art film from 1929, directed by “Dziga Vertov”, filmed by his brother Mikhail Kaufman, and edited by his wife, Eliziveta Svilova.

Man with a Movie Camera is made up of various real-life – or at least purpotedly real-life – scenes: birth, marriage, divorce, death, city life, the countryside, industry, leisure, journalism, theatre, sport, dancing, filmmaking, drinking, and much more. It’s most notable for the range of cinematic techniques it uses in these scenes: Wikipedia lists “multiple exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, match cuts, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, reversed footage, stop motion animations and self-reflexive visuals (at one point it features a split-screen tracking shot [where] the sides have opposite Dutch angles).” The way these techniques are used would be amazing in a film made today, let alone a film made 95 years ago with the technology of that time.

But Man with a Movie Camera isn’t just an astonishing technical marvel. It’s also playful, moving, funny, even sexy, and – it seems to me – socialist and feminist too. It’s also a very self-reflexive film – it’s effectively its own making-of documentary: the nearest thing we have to a “character” in the film is the titular man with a movie camera, whom we see as he goes about with his camera and tripod, and we watch the various ways he manages to film the shots in the movie itself. (Or are these scenes invented too, as part of the trick?)

Watching it in 2023, it’s also impossible not to notice that this was a film produced by a Ukrainian production team and largely shot in Ukraine, most notably in Odesa but also Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Man with a Movie Camera is, of course, a silent film. I assume that originally most people would have seen it accompanied by a guy on a piano or organ playing along. I think this wouldn’t be the best way to see it now – it would risk making the film seem old or dated, when in fact, despite its age, it’s an incredibly vibrant and modern film.

There are three fairly widely available soundtracks, as far as I can tell. First there’s one by Michael Nyman from 2002, available on the BFI Bluray/DVD. I don’t really like this soundtrack: it’s just too insistent – it’s too stressful and I find it exhausting way before the 65 minutes is up – and it pays too little attention to what’s actually going on on screen. (The scene near the beginning of the orchestra frozen in motion just before it starts playing, for just one example, should obviously be either silent or very quiet, it seems to me, while Nyman’s score just keeps pounding away at top volume.)

Second, there’s a soundtrack by the Alloy Orchestra from 1995, available on the Masters of Cinema Bluray/DVD. There’s plenty to like about this soundtrack: it’s loud and clattery when the film requires it, but (unlike the Nyman) relaxes when the film is calmer. It also claims to be based on the orchestral notes left behind by Vertov himself. (Having finally tracked down these notes, it seems they have paid attention to them, but are not following them super-religiously.) This soundtrack matches the action much more carefully, although I don’t find the music particularly memorable in its own right. I also dislike the synths they use: half the time they sound like cheap orchestra-substitutes and half the time cheesy 70s electronica, and neither work well.

My favourite soundtrack, though, is the one by the Cinematic Orchestra from 2002. Fans will recognise many of the tracks as instrumental versions of songs from their album Every Day (although I understand the soundtrack came first, then lyrics were later put on top for the album). The electronic-infused jazz works excellently – Man with a Movie Camera is, in some sense, a “jazz film” before its time, and the electronic additions stop it from sounding dated. We have laid-back loungey jazz for the early cityscapes, harder jazz for the industrial scenes (including a rapid drumkit solo with DJ scratching for the hectic montage in the middle of the film), loping swingy jazz for drinking scenes, something more uptempo for the sports scenes, and so on. I also like that it starts with a long period of silence, which seems appropriate for getting the modern viewer in the silent-film headspace. And there are two funny moments: the very loud HONK! that greets the appearance of the cruiseship, and the little electronic whirrings that accompany the very cute stop-motion animation of the tripod.

(I do have one criticism of the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack. The very end of the film – say, the last 90 seconds – is another frantic blizzard of very rapid cuts, and I think deserves an equally frantic soundtrack to match it. Vertov’s notes read, “Towards the end [the music] reaches the maximum strength the orchestra is capable of.” But the soundtrack here – an instrumental version of their excellent song “All Things to All Men” – just gently winds down to a relaxed finish, which doesn’t fit the spirit of the film here imho.)

The Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack is very widely available in music-only format – just check your favourite streaming service. The whole film – soundtrack synced to pictures – had some sort of DVD release, and although it’s difficult to track down physical copies, it’s all over the internet.

The bad news about the version of the film with the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack, though, is the picture quality. It’s really bad! I appreciate it’s an old, old film, but compared to the BFI/Nyman version (surprisingly good for its age) and the Masters of Cinema/Alloy Orchestra version (superb), it’s obviously significantly worse. Consider this comparison:

[Left: Cinematic Orchestra print. Right: Masters of Cinema print]

Not only is the whole picture dirty and grubby, but the film hasn’t even been lined up properly in the scanner, so we can see the line of sprocket holes all down the right-hand side of the film. And as bad as this freeze-frame looks, it’s even worse in motion – seriously, just look at it.

So, we’re in the situation where my favourite soundtrack to one of my favourite films is only available with a terrible print of the film. I thought I should fix this: take a lovely clean print (that appears to be from the Masters of Cinema release – or at least from the same source) and put the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack over the top! That’s what the video at the top of this post is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Appendix: technical notes

It turns out, the task wasn’t quite as easy as that. Comparing the print actually used on the Cinematic Orchestra DVD to the clean print, there are various places where shots are missing or are slightly different lengths, which means just swapping the soundtrack over isn’t enough – there are important places where the soundtrack doesn’t line up with the picture properly where it needs to. Using iMovie, my extremely crude and basic iMovie skills, and a few hours of time, I did my best to tinker around to make the sound and picture match adequately, although still imperfectly. I have some technical details about that below in case you’re interested, but I don’t recommend actually reading this.

(Below, when I say “original version” I mean the crappy print that was synced to the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack on the DVD.)

One thing I only noticed very late in the project was that there are a couple of places where a scene (or part of a scene) in the original version is radically slowed down compared the clean version, to the point where it becomes a sequence of freeze frames. My unevidenced speculation is that this was done specially for the DVD to make the Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack match up properly. And if this was what was done on that original DVD, perhaps the “thematically correct” thing for me to have done in some places was the same – instead, I mostly tried to make minor cuts to either the soundtrack or picture instead. At one point (48:18; see below) I inserted a black screen for a few seconds – rather unsatisfying but the least-worst thing I could think of and had the technical ability to do – but perhaps this “radical slow-mo” solution might have been better there in particular.

Here’s the change log:

  • 3:50 Start of “The Projectionist” shifted so that it matches with the flash.
  • 4:15–4:16 Outro to “Melody” extended so that “Dawn” begins with the shot of the window.
  • 18:38–18:41 Short silence added so that “Reel Life – Evolution II” begins with the shot of the fountain.
  • 25:41 I changed something so that “Postlude” begins with the shot of the registry office, but I’ve forgotten whether it was adding or removing some silence.
  • 27:25–27:32 Outro to “Postlude” extended so that “Evolution – versao portuense” begins with the shot of the funeral.
  • 33:16–33:19 Outro to “Evolution” extended so that “Work It! (Man with the Movie Camera)” begins with the shot of the woman throwing mud.
  • 39:49 Shot of the machinery shortened so that the breakdown in “Work It!” matches the cameraman running down by the waterfall.
  • 43:31 Shot of the tree shortened so that “Voyage” begins with the shot of the ship’s horn. (If you look carefully, you might notice I messed this up a bit…)
  • 43:50–43:57 I changed something so that “Odessa” begins with the shot of the beach, but I’ve again forgotten whether it was adding or removing some silence.
  • 46:00 Shortened the outro of “Odessa” so that “Theme de Yoyo” starts with the launch of the discus.
  • 48:14–48:20 Added a roughly five-second black screen after the shot of the swimmers diving into the sea so that “Magician” starts with the shot of women doing aerobics. Perhaps I should have done the slowing-down freeze-frame thing – although in this version it would have had to have been quite a lot more slow/long even than the original version, which was perhaps only covering a two-second gap, so maybe that would have been unsatisfactory too.
  • 50:46–50:51 Silence added so that “Theme Reprise” begins with the shot of the magician raising the figurine.
  • 54:50 Shortened the black screen after the “5” title so that “Drunken Tune” starts with the shot settling on the “Зеленая Мануэлла” sign at 55:02.
  • 56:18, 56:50, 57:12 Swaying shot of beer bottles, shot of woman reading the newspaper, and shot of woman reloading gun all shortened so that the chord at 57:20 matches to the gunshot. A few seconds needed removing between 55:02 and 57:20; I did this pretty hackishly (the shot of the woman reading the newspaper in particular seems unnaturally short), and a subtler editor than me could have done this much better.
  • 57:23 Cut in “Drunken Tune” so that “Tripod” matches the start of the tripod section at 59:46. The cut is that the chord echos three times instead of seven – it works highly imperfectly but quite a bit better than one might reasonably have expected, imho.
  • 1:00:01 Small cut of silence in “Tripod” to try to get the tripod section to match better with the soundtrack. This stop-motion scene of the tripod (59:46–1:00:43) is the section that would most benefit from a careful and skillful editor delicately matching the sound and picture up perfectly – the humour of the scene kind of relies on it. The matching here is as good as I, an editing novice, could do in iMovie in 20 minutes or so, but is highly imperfect. Ideally, the audience shots should have no sound running under them, as in the original version, but I prioritised getting a match – or at least a reasonably adequate match – with the movement of the tripod instead.
  • 1:00:45 Silence in “Tripod” shortened so that the loud chord matches the shot of … whatever abstract swirly thing that is.
  • End The final segment of the film is slightly shorter than in the original version, so the outro of “All Things” goes on longer into and past the “The End” title, but I think it works rather well, so I just let “All Things” fade out on a black screen.

Another thing I belatedly realised is that the numbered chapter titles (except “1” at the beginning) don’t appear in the original version – I don’t know if they were missing in the print, or deliberately removed for the Cinematic Orchestra version. Usually the soundtrack doesn’t stop or pause naturally at these titles, so having them in feels a bit disjunctive; maybe I should have cut them. On the other hand, it’s weird having a “Chapter 1” but no later chapters, so maybe this is an improvement.

Lastly, I had to squash down the file to 500MB to get it on Vimeo, which means it’s more compressed than I’d have liked. (I can tell the difference between this and the 2GB version on my hard drive, and I’m not at all an expert eye for this sort of thing.)

  • Wikipedia says that the film Man with a Movie Camera is in the public domain in Russia and in the US, and I have no reason to disbelieve it.
  • The copyright status of modern restorations of old public-domain films is highly unclear to me and Google doesn’t really help.
  • The Cinematic Orchestra soundtrack to Man with a Movie Camera surely must be copyrighted.

The third point alone means I assume the video above must break copyright rules, so I assume it will be taken down sooner or later.

(I doubt very much that any of my editing to this version of Man with a Movie Camera counts as original and therefore copyrightable work. But just in case it does – and for the sake of clarity – I renounce any such rights.)