Man with a Movie Camera

Six reels of superbly-filmed fun in and out of several cities. The peculiarly Russian sense of humor was not admired by Grierson, who thought it was a “photo album”.

The enchantingly skillful editor adjusts the film as it is being shown to a theater full of patrons.

Latter-day accompaniments, some professing to follow “Vertov’s musical instructions”, have proven to be an alloyed pleasure.

A Surrealist masterpiece when rightly understood, more closely related to Léger & Murphy’s Ballet mécanique than anything else.

With Lon Chaney, Jr. as the bust of Marx. The steamship Lenin (Odessa to Yalta) slows things down, a final stretto compensates.

Hitchcock avails himself of the streetcars in Foreign Correspondent, Bergman the audience in The Magic Flute.

Three Songs about Lenin

In the midst of an advertising technique that later became quite commonplace in the West, a sudden irruption.

MY university...

MY factory...

MY collective farm...

MY hands...

STALIN’S hands...

(МОИ руки...

СТАЛЬНЫЕ руки...

hands of steel...)

(First song).

An effective picture of the nation in thrall to the “head of the workers’ dictatorship in Russia” (Second song).

But grief, like Lenin, passes away (Third song).