[top photo from here]
I wonder how my coffee tastes after watching Dziga Vertov's Three Songs about Lenin (1934). A smile, fundamental to all things, and a comforting yet voluminous feeling of joy composed the whole of my emotional state. There is, in a way, a revelation in all this. That cinema is a methodical way of documenting reality and that this has been a home for many filmmakers. Vertov goes further when he compared man to machines saying:
"In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people... I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see"Vertov has a poetic eye, i suppose this might be one's comment when one look at his frames (see images below). Though the film was shot a year after Pudovkin's Deserter (1933) --- probably the last of the Soviet Montage kind (1924 - 1930), it still remains true to its origins. Thus, editing, which is so fundamental today, is much of an art, and perhaps central to Three Songs. Superimpositions, juxtopositions, and capacity to encapsulate momentary pauses and chaos dominate the editing style of Three Songs. The quality of the images is rich with symbolic overtones, and often 'faces' (some close-ups are shown below) draws sympathetic response to audiences.
I never seen Lenin filled with such humanity and character!
PS. My coffee tastes better!
Ciaofck!
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