--- title: "Man with a Movie Camera" year: 1929 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/man-with-a-movie-camera" fi1m_score: 91 critics_score: 92 critics_reviews: 11 published: "2026-09-17T04:36:15.128738+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T04:36:40.163393+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Directed by Dziga Vertov · 1h 08m · Documentary **Fi1m score: 91** · Critics 92 from 11 reviews *In a sentence:* The city wakes, the trams run, and a man on the roof has decided none of it needs a caption > Dziga Vertov’s silent record of a Soviet city from waking to bedtime is the quickest 68 minutes in the documentary canon, and most of its tricks have not been bettered. Its politics have dated; its cutting has not. ## Synopsis A cinema fills up, the seats fold down on their own, and a projector is threaded. Then a Soviet city, stitched together from Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa, wakes at dawn: a woman asleep under a sheet, shop mannequins in the windows, empty tram tracks, a drunk on a bench. The Cameraman (Mikhail Kaufman) sets out with a tripod over his shoulder to film all of it, climbing a factory chimney, lying flat between the rails as a tram passes, hanging off a moving car. In a cutting room, the editor (Elizaveta Svilova) sorts strips of film and pins them to a rack. There are no actors, no sets and, after an opening declaration, no intertitles. Dziga Vertov directs. ## Review Dziga Vertov opens with a run of title cards explaining what we are about to see: an experiment in filming real life with no story, no actors, no sets and no further titles. He then keeps his word for 68 minutes. What follows is a day in a Soviet city, assembled from footage shot in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa and cut to look like one place, from a woman waking in her bed to a crowd leaving a cinema at night. The nearest thing to a character is a man in a flat cap with a tripod on his shoulder, played by Mikhail Kaufman, who also shot most of it and is credited as The Cameraman. Kaufman is the reason the film still looks dangerous. He lies flat between tram rails and lets the tram pass over the lens. He bolts the camera to a moving car and films a carriage from the road at full tilt, then swings round to film the passengers laughing at him. He rides a mine bucket, climbs a chimney, hangs from a bridge. Gleb Troyanski is credited alongside him, and between them they try every trick a hand-cranked camera allows: double exposure, split screen, a tripod that walks across a stage on its own, athletes slowed until a high-jumper hangs in the air with time to think. Most of these shots would still need a permit and a lawyer. The editor is Elizaveta Svilova, and Vertov puts her in the film. We see her at a bench with strips of celluloid pinned above her, holding frames up to the light, and then the film shows us what she does with them: a galloping horse stops mid-stride, a child’s face stops mid-laugh, and we are shown the stopped frames as strips in her hand before she sets them running again. It is the plainest lesson in how films are made that we know of. Her cutting gets quicker as the day does. By the last reel she is down to single frames, and trams, typewriters, machine parts and spinning reels go past faster than the eye can sort them. We should say what it did to us. Halfway through, Svilova cuts between a wedding being registered and a divorce being registered at the same sort of desk, then between a funeral procession and a woman in labour, and the birth is shown, all of it, without a cutaway. We were not ready for that. We sat forward, and the film went straight on to the next thing as though it had shown us a tram. Later, in the final rush, we noticed we were breathing quickly. It is an advertisement for Soviet productivity and it had our pulse up anyway, which we found slightly embarrassing and entirely to its credit. It is not all that good. The middle stretch, in the factories and the mine, makes the same point about labour a dozen times, and the smiles of the women at the cigarette-packing machines are carrying a lot of it. The beach passage, with the sunbathers and the mud baths, runs a few minutes past its usefulness. The trickery sometimes becomes the point: the cameraman superimposed to giant size and striding above a crowd is funnier the first time than the third. And this is a city where nobody minds being filmed, which was not the Soviet Union of 1929. The film is silent, and any copy you find will come with somebody’s music; one much-circulated version carries a Michael Nyman score. The pictures already hurry. Music that hurries them further can leave you worn out by the half-hour mark, so if there is a choice, take the quieter one. Walter Ruttmann had made *Berlin: Symphony of a Great City* two years earlier, and it is the more graceful film. This is the cheekier one and the one later documentaries keep borrowing from, because it films the people who filmed it. The poster for the restoration that reached British cinemas on 31 July 2015 calls it the greatest documentary ever made, which is not a phrase we use. We understand the temptation. It asks 68 minutes of your evening, and you will spend a fair share of them wondering how a man with a tripod got up there. *Fi1m score 91, published 17 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews are unanimous: eleven in, none mixed or negative. Most critics agree that Dziga Vertov’s silent film still feels fresh nearly a century on, and the praise clusters on the editing. The fast cutting, double exposures and trick shots that turn a day of Soviet city life into something closer to a piece of music are singled out again and again. Several also point to the self-reflexive structure, which makes the act of filming and editing the film’s own subject, and note that it manages without plot or intertitles. The spread is narrow, with every score between 80 and 100, and the reservations are small. Little White Lies wonders whether the film’s utopian outlook is naive. Eye for Film finds the added Michael Nyman score occasionally drowns the images. Slant’s complaint is not with the film at all but with one particular Blu-ray transfer, which it judges inferior to earlier restorations. Nobody dissents on the work itself. ### Reviews we read (11) - **Little White Lies**, Trevor Johnston (5/5/5): The critic praises its thrilling technical trickery and inventive editing that creates an ecstatically cinematic experience, highlighting its role as a foundation stone for modern cinema and a democratic vision of the medium. He notes its invigorating return to visual language basics despite potential naivety in its utopian outlook. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/man-with-a-movie-camera-1929) - **RogerEbert.com**, Roger Ebert (4/4): The critic praises the film's revolutionary fast-paced montage and self-reflexive structure that makes the act of filmmaking its subject. Vertov's innovative approach to editing and imagery is singled out as still fresh and influential decades later. [Read](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-man-with-a-movie-camera-1929) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (5/5): The review hails it as a thrilling silent masterpiece that teaches everything about cinema's possibilities through pure movement and visual trickery, noting its political and feminist elements alongside innovative techniques like fast cutting and double exposure. It emphasizes the film's purity and excitement as cinema in its rawest form. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/man-with-a-movie-camera) - **Empire**, Ian Freer (90/100, inferred): Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent stunner is a love letter to Soviet urban life from dusk to dawn, rendered with every cinematic technique in the book. It is praised as a foundational work of creative documentary and montage. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/man-movie-camera-review/) - **Financial Times**, Nigel Andrews (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the restored 1929 film a dazzling firework show of symphonic montage across three cities, full of trick effects, multiple exposures and poetic pandemonium that anticipates later cinematic innovations. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/b6c6ca0c-36ac-11e5-b05b-b01debd57852) - **Slant Magazine**, Eric Henderson (90/100, inferred): The critic describes the film as an intoxicating gateway for cinephiles whose innovative editing and self-reflexive structure remain revelatory nearly a century later, while criticizing the specific Blu-ray transfer as inferior to prior restorations. [Read](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/man-with-a-movie-camera-blu-ray-review-dziga-vertov/) - **The AV Club**, Keith Phipps (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a hypnotic masterpiece of Soviet avant-garde cinema, praising its daring experimental editing techniques that create a fluid, self-referential structure without plot or intertitles. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/man-with-a-movie-camera-1798195196) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): The critic praises Vertov’s experimental silent documentary as a visionary and transformative work that remains dizzying, thrilling and sexy, with punk spirit in its dense ideas and energetic transformation of reality through trick shots and self-reflexive filmmaking. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/30/man-with-a-movie-camera-review) - **Paste**, Alex Lei (90/100, inferred): The critic hails it as one of the definitive statements on non-fiction filmmaking, still stunning today. They single out its exploration of the mechanical kino-eye revealing the patterns and rhythms of modern industrial life without reliance on intertitles or staging. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/documentaries/man-with-a-movie-camera-dziga-vertov-soviet-revolution-movement) - **Eye for Film**, Amber Wilkinson (80/100, inferred): The critic describes Vertov's film as a joyful celebration of post-revolutionary Russian life captured through innovative camerawork and editing that positions the cameraman as documenter, magician and stuntman. The added Michael Nyman score enhances the frantic energy, though it occasionally overpowers the images, while the work's enduring innovation surpasses much contemporary Hollywood output. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/michael-nymans-man-with-a-movie-camera-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson) - **The Skinny**, Lewis Porteous (★★★★): Dziga Vertov's uncategorisable masterpiece comes to Blu-ray from Masters of Cinema. Little can be added to the praise heaped upon it over the years, other than to emphasise quite how entertaining it is to even the most casual viewer; when tempos slow down or achieve moments of dizzying catharsis, the effect is utterly disarming. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/dvd-reviews/man-with-a-movie-camera) ## Details - **Director:** Dziga Vertov - **Director:** Dziga Vertov - **Writer:** Dziga Vertov - **Cinematography:** Mikhail Kaufman, Gleb Troyanski - **Editor:** Elizaveta Svilova - **Producer:** Star Mishkel-Eneva - **Cast:** Mikhail Kaufman as The Cameraman - **Runtime:** 1h 08m - **Release (the US):** 12 May 1929 - **Genres:** Documentary - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtTlgxtoqhg ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-17.* Also available in: AT, BR, CH, DE, FI, GB, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Berlin: Symphony of a Great City* (1927): The German city film Vertov was answering; slower, more elegant, less cheeky. - *À propos de Nice* (1930): Jean Vigo turns the same camera tricks on rich holidaymakers and does not like them. - *Koyaanisqatsi* (1982), Fi1m 82: The day-in-the-machine idea stretched across a continent, with Philip Glass keeping time. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/koyaanisqatsi.md) - *Sans Soleil* (1983), Fi1m 82: Chris Marker lets a cameraman think aloud about what he has filmed and why. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sans-soleil.md) - *Leviathan* (2012): Cameras strapped to a trawler; the kino-eye idea taken to sea and half drowned. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/man-with-a-movie-camera