Essay Questions

Why is this film considered so important to cinema?

Dziga Vertov's film is considered important to cinema as the techniques he and cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman became techniques that are still used to this day in filmmaking. They developed stop motion animation, tracking shots, footage played backwards, double exposure, slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, split screens, jump cuts, Dutch angles and extreme close-ups while making this film.

What is the significance of the poster with people peering into the sleeping woman's room?

Vertov shows us these images of posters on the wall as if they are looking at the sleeping woman in order to reveal to us that art is peering into real life. That the camera is art and in the same way will be peering into the everyday lives of the people in the city. It also shows art's desire to be like life, to be fully inhabited rather than just a single moment in time, and cinema comes closer to that than paintings or photographs as there is motion and actual life being captured and re-transmitted onto the silver screen.

What is the meaning of Vertov showing the empty machines in the beginning of the film?

Vertov shows us machines in factories during the beginning of his film. Then people come to bring these machines to life during their work day. The imagery shows us that though there is great output from these massive machines, they require man to make them move. In the same way, though the camera creates the film, it requires the cameraman to tell it what and where to capture life.