Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, Soviet Union)

As the title indicates the star of the film is the medium itself. It explores the everyday life in the State og the (Soviet) Union and also the workings of the cinema with experiments in montage and photography. Marriage, divorsce, birth, death, work, play, sleep, drinking, public transport, industry are filmed as the camera looks at human activity as well as being a textbook of film technique.

“Life caught unawares” said the director about the film and is that a suitible description of the beautiful and uncontrived footage taken of citizens and their livelihood. Vertovs love of the machanical nature of things is celebrated in the use of the montage. Evolution of the machine is shown from the abacus to the cash register and in the difference in a woman sewing and a sewing machine. The film is a non-linear narrative form, a glorious tribute to everything movie-making is.

Dziga Vertov began his career making newsreels for the State, filming the Red Army in the civil war. He was one of the founders of the montage-movement and a member of the group called Kino-glaz (Cine-eye). This film is widely thought to be more touching, more historically informative and comic than any Russian film of the period. Ultimately, Vertov, could not accommodat to Socialist Realism and his carreer faltered.

Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, 1923, Denmark/Sweden)

A typical stroyline is almost non-existant in Haxan, it is divided into three major chapters, the first studies the appearence of demons and witches in medieval culture, the second is a series of shorts theatrically demonstrating medieval superstitions and beliefs concerning witchcraft, and the third is a long narrative about a woman accused of witchcraft by the family of a dying man where it shows the misunderstandings of mental illness as witchcraft.

It´s hard, or almost impossible to define Haxan as a certain type of film, except maybe avant-garde. Often labeled a documentary it uses various cinematic approaches to depict the nature of witchcraft and diabolism from ancient Persia through then-modern times while breaking and bending the laws of the documentary. In staged scenes where director Christensen shows the audience every frightening image he can find in the historical evidence he often blends fact and fantasy. And since the documentary was not clearly defined when Haxan was made it is even more vague in its genre.

But Haxan stands alone as a visually intimidating and stunning film where Christensen´s sence of the setting (mise en scéne) is haunting with eerie undertones in lighting, props and set design. Influences can be seen in films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) where props and background detail is used to create an atmosphere of potential violence and is as well a forerunner of devil-poession films like The Exorcist (1973).

Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960, UK)

Mark Lewis suffered traumatic experience as a child when his father, a psychologist, had him involved in some gruesome tests on human fear. Now all grown up Mark works as a focus puller by day, is a girlie photographer in the evening and after dark he is a SERIAL KILLER.

Though this film is today considered a Britsh masterpiece it was buried by critics when it came out in 1960. What upset critics the most then was the inventive use of camerawork which incriminated the viewer with the morbid desire to watch (scoptophilia). The film also examinates film-making as Mark documents all his with his handheld camera. To put another demension to the film examenation the director Michael Powell casts himself as the father. The film is released two months before Pshyco and that’s intersting because both of them present its madman as a sympathetic but not admirable character.

Michael Powell might be better known for his work with Emeric Pressburger as they made a wide selection of films in many genres. Their most famous movies might be The Thief of Bagdad, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes and A Matter of Life and Death (the last one mentioned is also being shown later in our program). Powell was written of as an eccentric decorator of fantasies and was later rediscovered by other director such as Martin Scorsese who is one of Powells fans (Powell later married Thelma Schoomaker, who is the editor of most of Scorseses movies).

M (Fritz Lang, 1931)


The undertitle for Fritz Lang´s M is A Ctiy looks for a Murderer (Ein Stadt sucht einen Mörder), at first we don´t see him but recognize his presence even more intensely through his compulsive whistling of Edvard Grieg´s Hall of the Mountain King. The film handles the uproar of a city left in terror by a children serial killer and the citizen´s unity in hunting him down. The police guard the streets and angry mobs attack anyone who speaks to a strange child. The organized crime bosses even join in on the search since their job has become almost impossible with the more visible police force on the street. They organize a patrol with the beggars and drifters on the street who look out for any suspicious activity or strange characters. The city is unified in the search but divided in punishment, the citizens want revenge while the police want a trial. The only certainty is the murderer will strike again.

The film was made in Germany, late in the Weimar Republic and depicts as Lang´s earlier film Metropolis (1927) a division in the city between the rich and the poor, an overworld and an underworld, that is compelled to reach an agreement. It was made in the early sound era, where develpoments in sound were very different between Europe and America (Hollywood), the latter emphasizing on musical numbers while the former did more experiencing with sound for suspense purposes. In M the whistling of the murderer goes very far in creating suspense and with the images of a deserted ball or a lost baloon it depicts very intesely the murders without showing more.

Fritz Lang was one of the directors of German expressionism in the 20´s and his film Metropolis while doing poorly upon release, has caught on and is now considered a masterpiece of the silent era, others include: Die Nibelungen, Dr Mabuse and Spione. According to Lang, he was invited to be the film maker of the Third Reich, but declined, the title later going to Leni Riefenstahl, and left Germany to go to Hollywood to continue his career with great success.

Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnés Varda, 1962, France/Italy)

A succesful French singer, Cléo (Corinne Marchand), wanders through the left bank of Paris, awaiting in anguish for result of a medical examination. She meets up with a young soldier, in who she finds uninspected intimacy and renewed hope. The movie runs in real time with genuine grace, generating, powerful emotions and showing slow breakdown of the leading character face.

Agnés who before making films was a widely travelled photographer. The film is more like a series of fluid whited-out photographs than organic structure. She uses technics from cinema vérite to produce a feeling of a documentary, where her anxious and depersonalized views of the world are depicted in these two hours of her life, while waiting for the doctors verdict.

The film dwells on feminism before it even existed, a womans fear of losing her beauty and also questioning of the truth of that beauty as the film progresses. This is well put in Molly Haskells essay on the film; “Varda paints an enduring portrait of a woman’s evolution from a shallow and superstitious child-woman to a person who can feel and express shock and anguish and finally empathy. In the process, the director adroitly uses the camera’s addiction to beautiful women’s faces to subtly question the consequences of that fascination—on us, on them.”

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! ( Russ Meyer, 1965, US)

Three curvey and violent drag-racing female protagonists seek new challenges in life so they turn to murder and kidnapping. After killing a drag-racer and taking his girlfriend hostage, they retreat to the desert where they stumble upon a rundown farm. Thera a farmer and retarded son “vegetable” live and the trio sease the house for their hideout, keeping everyone hostage while they search for the farmers life-savings they believe he keeps somewhere on premises.

Meyer, a innivative action director and Americas best-known tit man, made sexploitation movies in the 60´s and said that naked girls just might be….well….fun. The film is nasty and brutish and though it conveys erotic atmosphere it shows less flesh than his earlies works. The film is also almost a decade ahead of movies like Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with its use of the wierdo desert family motiv.

Though the film is a exploitational device of the grindhouse tradition, in later years the troublesome sexual politics of the movie have been reconsidered and the lightly dressed trio have a certain uncompromising girl power attitued that preceeds Tarantinos heroins.