While Barnouw categorizes Vertov’s “A Man with a Movie Camera” as a journalistic style of documentary filmmaking, his style may often correspond to the styles and formats of painterly documentary films. With artists such as Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter, film began to take on interests with patterns, shapes, and rhythm. A distinction in style began to form in the late ’20’s with these new interests which were birthed from the art of the era. One may be able to pick apart certain early documentaries and categorize them as either film as art or film as narrative. Film as a narrative being that a plot and perhaps even a climax exists, whereas film as art is not so concerned with a formatted story but rather a story of images (patterns and rhythm).
When comparing “A Man with a Movie Camera” and “Berlin: Symphony of a City,” we notice that while Vertov’s film is reporting it is also employing the stylistic choices of painterly films such as “Berlin”. I couldn’t help but compare his more “trippy” (or surrealist) sequences with the art of Belgian surrealist painter, Rene Margritte, particularly with the play of overlapping film strips and placing foreign objects in front of peoples’ faces. (Rhiannon and I visited his museum in Brussels when we studied abroad together and I remember his work well). It’s safe to say that both films were influenced by the artistic movements of their time but merely choose to emphasize certain aspects by their own means. “Berlin” may arguably be the more artistic of the two; however, it does contain more of a plot than “A Man,” simply due to its chronological sequence of day to night.
But is Ruttman’s film reporting on anything? Both display elements of Vertov’s manifesto. The limitlessness of filming and being behind a camera, or the God-like presence of the Cinema-Eye, is prevalent in both films as well as “fragments of actuality to represent a whole truth”. However, I see Vertov’s perspective as more historically interested in capturing a moment in time in Russia (while simultaneously showing those Soviet scum that he did have a “role in society” (Barnouw 62)), whereas Ruttman is interested in exploring the rhythm and beauty of a city he loves. There’s also an emphasis on the ability of nature (rain, wind, sun, night and day) as well as man (trains, traffic, swiping shutters on man-made houses) to create shape, pattern and rhythm, essentially art, in everyday life in a similar film of the time, “Rain” (1929). An example of this would be the tiny rain droplets collecting and pooling into puddles of water, creating bigger forms and shape capable of movement.
Barnouw writes that films of this era were “zestful and optimistic,” however, this would not carry on with time (81). The inevitable evils of two world wars would result in a paradigm shift and more government intervention with documentary filmmaking as more filmmakers began to have agendas behind their works.