Write about the particular implications of interior space in two films. You might consider its exceptional status in the city symphony (Man with a Movie Camera), or its psychological investment in romance plots (Piccadilly).
Dziga Vertov’s Modernist film Man with a Movie Camera (1928) and E.A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929) both use interior space as more than a mere setting. Man with a Movie Camera attempts to capture ‘life as it is,’ employing a partial documentary aesthetic as it films the everyday urban experience. Contrastingly, Piccadilly is set in the backstage areas of the Piccadilly Nightclub. This private setting of the nightclub is a space from which most people are typically restricted. Other sequences in the film show areas other than the cabaret, including offices, the kitchen and the scullery. The audience gains insight into interior spaces that are usually not accessible. In Man with a Movie Camera, we see the ‘everyday’, and yet the experimentalist and sometimes intrusive aesthetic dictates that this everyday is just as fascinating as the backstage drama of Piccadilly. In some ways, the interior spaces of Man with a Movie Camera are more fascinating, as the people are presumed unaware of the camera’s presence, and a curious voyeuristic element becomes involved. Ironically, it is as though Man with a Movie Camera shows us these private spaces in crafting a ‘backstage of life’ – how people act when they are unaware of being watched or filmed. It is this cinematic language that affects the dynamics of the interior space in Piccadilly as well. Not only is the interior space of the nightclub very different, but the other settings of the film actually directly influence the power dynamics of the characters, and we therefore see the way in which the interior spaces of both films become much more than a fixed entity in which one works or lives, but a dynamic, malleable and fluid space.
Vertov’s film, Man with a Movie Camera, is a difficult film to categorise. In some sense, it is a documentary, an extended montage film, and it also absorbs tenets of the 'city symphony genre'. The film is essentially unstaged, as the opening credits specify: it is “an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events, executed without the aid of intertitles, without a script, without theatre, without sets and actors.” The film utilises numerous innovative stylistic techniques that challenge conventional narrative modes in traditional filmmaking. [1] Man with a Movie Camera is self-reflexive and experimental, as Michelson observes, “If one of the film’s goals was to acquaint people with the grammar of cinematic means, then to hide that grammar would have been strange.”[2] The ‘interior’ in this film is thus crafted in a very peculiar way. Rather than being a domestic or privatised setting that is shown for the purpose of the narrative, the interior settings are shown as a way of drawing attention to the filmic product itself – the voyeuristic nature of viewing private settings.
Piccadilly is a backstage drama, where the majority of the action takes place in the private interior spaces of the backstage of the nightclub, as well as in characters’ homes and offices. Piccadilly was composed at the threshold between silent and sound cinema. Curiously, though it is a silent film, it is preoccupied with noise – the music of the dancers and performers, and the bustling of the nightclub. The audience is shown both the performance side of the nightclub as well as the backstage politics. We also gain insight into the interior workings of the club, witnessing a butterfly effect after a customer complains about a dirty plate. This complaint leads us from the restaurant to the scullery, as the Maitre d’ explains “The restaurant is the restaurant, the kitchen is the kitchen.” Similarly, the kitchen’s response is that “The kitchen is the kitchen. The scullery is the scullery.” It is in the scullery that we are first introduced to Shosho, who is entertaining her fellow scullions with a dreamily sensuous tabletop dance.[3] This performance was pivotal for actress Anna May Wong, who, despite third billing, commands every scene she is in with presence and charisma.
In Man with a Movie Camera, it is not the backstage that we see, but ‘real life’. Ironically, this ‘real life’ is something that we see everyday, and yet it is the medium of film that draws attention to the particular qualities of the urban experience. Vertov considered the camera to be the “instrument an artist could use to penetrate the essence of external reality.”[4] Interestingly, in penetrating this reality, Vertov consequently creates a new reality – the one upon the film screen. The camera itself automatically and inevitably makes images subjective. The frame of the cinema screen is a finite space, and the cinematographers and director must make the choice as to what is to be included in the mise-en-scène of the shot. In attempting to film ‘life as it is’, Vertov and his cameraman Kaufman were well aware of how difficult this was, and they attempted different techniques to try and avoid the problem of people’s reactions to filming, for example, the use of telephoto lens.[5] However, the response of the people within the film plays a substantial part developing the film’s self-referentiality, and provides an interesting comment on the role of performance and acting in general.
For the majority of the film, the people being filmed are so immersed in their work or activity that they pay no attention to the camera, or they remain unaware of its presence. However, there are several exceptions to this. The instance where we see female workers in the mill is one such occurrence. The workers indirectly express their awareness, and even pleasure, of being photographed. Although they appear absorbed in their activity, their facial expressions and physical gestures acknowledge the presence of the camera.[6] The sense of ‘life as it is’ that is presented by the film thus results in a significant distinction – life as it is, as seen through the eye of a movie camera is in opposition with life as it is as seen by the imperfect human eye.[7] By contrasting these two distinctions, the audience becomes aware of the nature of performance, as well as the role of the spectator. This is seen from the outset of the film, as we witness what Roberts terms, “an exercise in voyeurism.”[8] The camera zooms and tracks through an open curtained window, and we see a woman in bed. In this shot, the camera uses a slight irising technique on the woman’s arm. Subsequent shots show different parts of the woman’s body – a close-up of her in bed focuses on the woman’s neckline, another on her ring. Even the cameraman in the film acknowledges that Man with a Movie Camera is “terribly overloaded with events which were, from my point of view, very intrusive.”[9]
Curiously, in Piccadilly, there are several instances whereby the viewer is playing the role of the voyeur, watching a character in a private, domestic setting. During many of Shosho’s scenes, we are watching what are typically ‘unobserved’ moments - she cleans her nails, and grooms herself before the camera, as though it is not there. Similarly, the very first time that we see Shosho, the camera focuses on her long and languid body as she dances in the scullery.[10] The camera focuses on Shosho’s legs and the pair of torn stockings that she wears (a metonymic reference for Shosho’s current socioeconomic status). The camera then tilts up past a short skirt and a blouse to reveal Anna May Wong. The camera eroticises her body, and gives us an ‘up close and personal’ rendition of her movements, through the focussing of the camera. Another instance of this occurs in Piccadilly when Shosho signs her contract. This is a business deal between two parties, and yet we are privy to the contract’s stipulations and both their signatures.
In all of these instances, Shosho is both aware and unaware of the camera simultaneously. As an actress, she is aware that she is performing, while as a character, she understands herself to be alone. This is a classic trope of narrative film – ensuring that the fourth wall is not broken. Interestingly, these voyeuristic moments are more prevalent in conventional narrative film, as we bear witness to all aspects of the narrative, public and private. However, there is something very different occurring here than in Man with a Movie Camera. As a conventional film, we as an audience expect a certain amount of ‘privileged access’ to the stars onscreen, to both the private and public settings of the narrative. In Man with a Movie Camera, these people are not stars – they have not ‘chosen’ to be presented onscreen in such a way, and there is instead something uncomfortable and unsettling in Vertov’s film for the audience - perhaps the people onscreen should retain their privacy, and avoid our act of looking. In Piccadilly, everything is a spectacle, from the dance onstage to combing one’s hair. It is in Vertov’s avant-garde conceptualisation that a sense of unease is created, through the knowledge that we are watching these individuals go about their daily life, unaware of the camera’s gaze. Thus, it is not the actual act of watching that creates a disconcerting experience, but the awareness that we are doing so.
It was Vertov’s objective to create a new kind of cinematic language. His goal was to break the literary and theatrical conventions that had permeated filmmaking, in order to attain an autonomous film language based solely on specific visual devices unique to the film medium.[11] As Vertov himself states,
When The Man with a Movie Camera was made, we looked upon the project in this way… why don’t we make a film on film-language, the first film without words, which does not require translation into another language, an international film? And why, on the other hand, don’t we try, using that language, to speak of the behaviour of the ‘living person,’ the actions, in various situations, of a man with a movie camera? We felt that in doing so we would kill two birds with one stone: we would raise the film-alphabet to the level of an international film-language and also show a person, an ordinary person, not just in snatches, but keep him on the screen throughout the entire film.[12]
It is therefore necessary for us to ask how this cinematic language is at play in terms of the interior spaces of the film’s diegesis. If we contrast the filmic medium to that of the theatre or the novel, for example, we gain insight into the particular ability of the camera’s gaze. In a novel, it is not always necessary to explicitly mention every detail about the character’s surroundings, while in a film, it is unavoidable. While the theatre must also unavoidably present a setting, the constraints of the practicalities of the stage often dictates that a more simplistic and workable stage be presented. Anything too complex and it is too difficult to orchestrate. Film avoids these issues, but in doing so, raises many problems of its own. Film settings should theoretically flow with some sense of continuity, but the way in which Man with a Movie Camera is composed forestalls this continuity. For example, the initial shots of the cameraman carrying his camera and entering the movie theatre suggest that we are about to follow the film’s ‘protagonist’ throughout different stages of his daily work. However, this does not proceed in a linear fashion – when the cameraman appears again towards the end of the film, this time he is not among the spectators, but rather as the object of their perception – on the screen-within-the-screen.[13] Similarly, the first shot of the movie plays with the perception of filmic scale. A cameraman climbs on top of a camera, which pedagogically demonstrates both the experimental aspects of the film, and also sets up the cameraman as a flexible character who is flexible enough to access all spaces. The cameraman of the film becomes a metaphor. His flexible scale represents the flexibility and accessibility of the cinema itself – the filmic medium has a privileged access into the visuals of private and public spaces, and interior and exterior spaces.
The language of cinema is employed in a similar way in Piccadilly – it is used to show the audience a space in a particular way. The image at the opening of the film of the ladies’ powder rooms uses so many mirrors that a kaleidoscopic effect is produced, and it becomes difficult to quantify how many people are there. While the film uses some expressionist techniques to dictate the peculiar skills of the filmic medium, the interiors of Piccadilly exist in an even more significant manner. It is the precise setting of different scenes that creates the power dynamics between the characters. When Shosho is about to view her contract from Thomas, she uses her body to gently lean against the door and push Jim away. He has no power in this scene, and is literally pushed out of the interior space onscreen so that Shosho commands total status and power in the dynamics of the scene. Contrasted to the first time that Shosho appears in Thomas’ office, there is a deliberately different use of the interior space. When she first appears in his office, Shosho sits, looking shy, pulling her skirt over her torn stockings. Thomas sits at his desk, glancing up occasionally to appraise Shosho. He has the power in this scene, as she appears unsure and apprehensive as to what is about to take place.
The power dynamics change again when we are taken to a completely different interior space – that of the Chinese costume shop. Here, Thomas is an outsider – he has become the foreigner. Shosho determines which costume she will wear, and insists on deciding the shop from where it is to be purchased. Thomas is made to pay the price set by Shosho. She has complete power in this scene, and while their statuses as characters have not changed, the interior space that they occupy has, and this had made all the difference. Following this scene, Thomas insists that Shosho tries on the costume, and she refuses, instead making Jim (her secret lover) try it on. This is an instance where the sexual and ethnic dynamic is the most ambiguous. Jim has been emasculated, both by the situation and the particular mise-en-scène. He appears dwarfed in front of the white people, and the willowy Shosho. As Zen observes, “While Shosho clearly asserts her dominance over both men here, Jim’s emasculation through cross-dressing, thereby unwittingly disavowing his intimate relationship with her, seems to pave the way for Valentine’s advances toward Shosho.”[14]
Finally, it is worth acknowledging the particular use of exterior space as a fascinating contrast to the use of interior space in the films. Man with a Movie Camera is in part a ‘city symphony’, although the urban landscape that it presents is actually a synthesis of various cities - Moscow (the opening cityscape), Odessa (the windswept coast) and Kiev (the cinema).[15] Most importantly, as Roberts observes, Vertov’s film is not a study of a city. It is a study of the city.[16] This is in direct contrast to a filmmaker such as Ruttman, who focused on portraying a single city. Similarly, Piccadilly uses the different suburbs of London in order to communicate ideas about social and class dynamics. The Piccadilly club is for the bourgeoisie. Shosho must catch a bus from the East End (Limehouse) to the West End in order to attend work. The exterior shots at the opening and closing of the film romanticise the lights and glamour of the West End, while at times the film moves from such upscale decadence to the lower-class Limehouse district.
It is important to note that the opening shots and concluding shots are almost identical. In Piccadilly, the opening suggests the promise and possibilities offered by the West End, while the ending shots – an almost identical series of lights and theatres – conveys the sense that this is a world for a privileged few, which will continue to prosper in spite of whatever tragedy occurs in an individual’s life. This is humorously conveyed towards the end of the film, where a man reading a paper with a headline announcing Shosho’s death flicks to the back pages and exclaims, “Great! I won a fiver on the three thirty race!” The world of Piccadilly is a rolling city that ceases for no one. Contrastingly, in Man with a Movie Camera, the film ends after the literal splitting of the cinematic still of the Bolshoi Theatre is completed. The concluding shots of traffic and pedestrians are shown in accelerated motion. This foreshadows the end of the film (speeding to a conclusion), and the opening montage sequence of the woman’s eyes are repeated briefly. These are interspersed with close-ups of the film spectators sitting in the movie theatre. While the ending of Piccadilly draws attention to the exterior landscape as an entity that will persist despite what happens in the interior, the final shots of the cinema’s interior in Man with a Movie Camera relocate the focal point back to the filmic medium itself. As Petric states,
Thus, the notion of temporal progression, symbolising the dynamism of the revolutionary era (as opposed to the stagnancy of bourgeois art), culminates in the film’s final montage crescendo where representational shots merge into a semiabstract kinesthetic and symphonic vision characteristic of pure cinema.[17]
In conclusion, the use of interior space throughout the films Piccadilly and Man with a Movie Camera have incredible repercussions for the film’s dynamic itself. The filmic medium insists on its own language, and its own peculiarities about setting and camerawork. Each film uses this language to adapt the settings to enhance their meanings, whether it is the power relationships between characters, or the voyeuristic nature of spectatorship. The interior space of people’s homes and workplaces gives interior space an exceptional status in Man with a Movie Camera, as it draws attention to performance and the cinematic medium. Similarly, the interior space of the backstage drama of Piccadilly is far from a simple place in which to situate the narrative. The particular filming of the interior spaces of the Piccadilly nightclub, and of London itself ensures that the setting is not merely an unchanging entity, but a fluid backdrop. It is this use of interior space that elucidates not only a psychological investment in a romantic narrative, but also the ability to create sexual, ethnic, and power relations onscreen.
Endnotes:
[1] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. viii
[2] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, p. 155
[3] J. Hoberman, “Piccadily”, The Village Voice, October 1-7, 2003.
[4] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. vii
[5] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 62
[6] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 81
[7] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 83-85
[8] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 50
[9] Mikhail Kaufman, “Interview with Mikhail Kaufman,” October, no. 11, (Winter 1979)
[10] Karen J. Leong, The China Mystique, London: University of California Press, 2005, p. 64
[11] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 70
[12] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, p. 154
[13] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 91
[14] Zhang Zen, “Putting her Signature on the Screen: Anna May Wong and Piccadilly,” DVD notes, 2005.
[15] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 52
[16] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 93
[17] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 91
Bibliography:
Hoberman, J., “Piccadily”, The Village Voice, October 1-7, 2003.
Kaufman, Mikhail, “Interview with Mikhail Kaufman,” October, no. 11, (Winter 1979)
Leong, Karen J., The China Mystique, London: University of California Press, 2005
Dziga Vertov’s Modernist film Man with a Movie Camera (1928) and E.A. Dupont’s film Piccadilly (1929) both use interior space as more than a mere setting. Man with a Movie Camera attempts to capture ‘life as it is,’ employing a partial documentary aesthetic as it films the everyday urban experience. Contrastingly, Piccadilly is set in the backstage areas of the Piccadilly Nightclub. This private setting of the nightclub is a space from which most people are typically restricted. Other sequences in the film show areas other than the cabaret, including offices, the kitchen and the scullery. The audience gains insight into interior spaces that are usually not accessible. In Man with a Movie Camera, we see the ‘everyday’, and yet the experimentalist and sometimes intrusive aesthetic dictates that this everyday is just as fascinating as the backstage drama of Piccadilly. In some ways, the interior spaces of Man with a Movie Camera are more fascinating, as the people are presumed unaware of the camera’s presence, and a curious voyeuristic element becomes involved. Ironically, it is as though Man with a Movie Camera shows us these private spaces in crafting a ‘backstage of life’ – how people act when they are unaware of being watched or filmed. It is this cinematic language that affects the dynamics of the interior space in Piccadilly as well. Not only is the interior space of the nightclub very different, but the other settings of the film actually directly influence the power dynamics of the characters, and we therefore see the way in which the interior spaces of both films become much more than a fixed entity in which one works or lives, but a dynamic, malleable and fluid space.
Vertov’s film, Man with a Movie Camera, is a difficult film to categorise. In some sense, it is a documentary, an extended montage film, and it also absorbs tenets of the 'city symphony genre'. The film is essentially unstaged, as the opening credits specify: it is “an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events, executed without the aid of intertitles, without a script, without theatre, without sets and actors.” The film utilises numerous innovative stylistic techniques that challenge conventional narrative modes in traditional filmmaking. [1] Man with a Movie Camera is self-reflexive and experimental, as Michelson observes, “If one of the film’s goals was to acquaint people with the grammar of cinematic means, then to hide that grammar would have been strange.”[2] The ‘interior’ in this film is thus crafted in a very peculiar way. Rather than being a domestic or privatised setting that is shown for the purpose of the narrative, the interior settings are shown as a way of drawing attention to the filmic product itself – the voyeuristic nature of viewing private settings.
Piccadilly is a backstage drama, where the majority of the action takes place in the private interior spaces of the backstage of the nightclub, as well as in characters’ homes and offices. Piccadilly was composed at the threshold between silent and sound cinema. Curiously, though it is a silent film, it is preoccupied with noise – the music of the dancers and performers, and the bustling of the nightclub. The audience is shown both the performance side of the nightclub as well as the backstage politics. We also gain insight into the interior workings of the club, witnessing a butterfly effect after a customer complains about a dirty plate. This complaint leads us from the restaurant to the scullery, as the Maitre d’ explains “The restaurant is the restaurant, the kitchen is the kitchen.” Similarly, the kitchen’s response is that “The kitchen is the kitchen. The scullery is the scullery.” It is in the scullery that we are first introduced to Shosho, who is entertaining her fellow scullions with a dreamily sensuous tabletop dance.[3] This performance was pivotal for actress Anna May Wong, who, despite third billing, commands every scene she is in with presence and charisma.
In Man with a Movie Camera, it is not the backstage that we see, but ‘real life’. Ironically, this ‘real life’ is something that we see everyday, and yet it is the medium of film that draws attention to the particular qualities of the urban experience. Vertov considered the camera to be the “instrument an artist could use to penetrate the essence of external reality.”[4] Interestingly, in penetrating this reality, Vertov consequently creates a new reality – the one upon the film screen. The camera itself automatically and inevitably makes images subjective. The frame of the cinema screen is a finite space, and the cinematographers and director must make the choice as to what is to be included in the mise-en-scène of the shot. In attempting to film ‘life as it is’, Vertov and his cameraman Kaufman were well aware of how difficult this was, and they attempted different techniques to try and avoid the problem of people’s reactions to filming, for example, the use of telephoto lens.[5] However, the response of the people within the film plays a substantial part developing the film’s self-referentiality, and provides an interesting comment on the role of performance and acting in general.
For the majority of the film, the people being filmed are so immersed in their work or activity that they pay no attention to the camera, or they remain unaware of its presence. However, there are several exceptions to this. The instance where we see female workers in the mill is one such occurrence. The workers indirectly express their awareness, and even pleasure, of being photographed. Although they appear absorbed in their activity, their facial expressions and physical gestures acknowledge the presence of the camera.[6] The sense of ‘life as it is’ that is presented by the film thus results in a significant distinction – life as it is, as seen through the eye of a movie camera is in opposition with life as it is as seen by the imperfect human eye.[7] By contrasting these two distinctions, the audience becomes aware of the nature of performance, as well as the role of the spectator. This is seen from the outset of the film, as we witness what Roberts terms, “an exercise in voyeurism.”[8] The camera zooms and tracks through an open curtained window, and we see a woman in bed. In this shot, the camera uses a slight irising technique on the woman’s arm. Subsequent shots show different parts of the woman’s body – a close-up of her in bed focuses on the woman’s neckline, another on her ring. Even the cameraman in the film acknowledges that Man with a Movie Camera is “terribly overloaded with events which were, from my point of view, very intrusive.”[9]
Curiously, in Piccadilly, there are several instances whereby the viewer is playing the role of the voyeur, watching a character in a private, domestic setting. During many of Shosho’s scenes, we are watching what are typically ‘unobserved’ moments - she cleans her nails, and grooms herself before the camera, as though it is not there. Similarly, the very first time that we see Shosho, the camera focuses on her long and languid body as she dances in the scullery.[10] The camera focuses on Shosho’s legs and the pair of torn stockings that she wears (a metonymic reference for Shosho’s current socioeconomic status). The camera then tilts up past a short skirt and a blouse to reveal Anna May Wong. The camera eroticises her body, and gives us an ‘up close and personal’ rendition of her movements, through the focussing of the camera. Another instance of this occurs in Piccadilly when Shosho signs her contract. This is a business deal between two parties, and yet we are privy to the contract’s stipulations and both their signatures.
In all of these instances, Shosho is both aware and unaware of the camera simultaneously. As an actress, she is aware that she is performing, while as a character, she understands herself to be alone. This is a classic trope of narrative film – ensuring that the fourth wall is not broken. Interestingly, these voyeuristic moments are more prevalent in conventional narrative film, as we bear witness to all aspects of the narrative, public and private. However, there is something very different occurring here than in Man with a Movie Camera. As a conventional film, we as an audience expect a certain amount of ‘privileged access’ to the stars onscreen, to both the private and public settings of the narrative. In Man with a Movie Camera, these people are not stars – they have not ‘chosen’ to be presented onscreen in such a way, and there is instead something uncomfortable and unsettling in Vertov’s film for the audience - perhaps the people onscreen should retain their privacy, and avoid our act of looking. In Piccadilly, everything is a spectacle, from the dance onstage to combing one’s hair. It is in Vertov’s avant-garde conceptualisation that a sense of unease is created, through the knowledge that we are watching these individuals go about their daily life, unaware of the camera’s gaze. Thus, it is not the actual act of watching that creates a disconcerting experience, but the awareness that we are doing so.
It was Vertov’s objective to create a new kind of cinematic language. His goal was to break the literary and theatrical conventions that had permeated filmmaking, in order to attain an autonomous film language based solely on specific visual devices unique to the film medium.[11] As Vertov himself states,
When The Man with a Movie Camera was made, we looked upon the project in this way… why don’t we make a film on film-language, the first film without words, which does not require translation into another language, an international film? And why, on the other hand, don’t we try, using that language, to speak of the behaviour of the ‘living person,’ the actions, in various situations, of a man with a movie camera? We felt that in doing so we would kill two birds with one stone: we would raise the film-alphabet to the level of an international film-language and also show a person, an ordinary person, not just in snatches, but keep him on the screen throughout the entire film.[12]
It is therefore necessary for us to ask how this cinematic language is at play in terms of the interior spaces of the film’s diegesis. If we contrast the filmic medium to that of the theatre or the novel, for example, we gain insight into the particular ability of the camera’s gaze. In a novel, it is not always necessary to explicitly mention every detail about the character’s surroundings, while in a film, it is unavoidable. While the theatre must also unavoidably present a setting, the constraints of the practicalities of the stage often dictates that a more simplistic and workable stage be presented. Anything too complex and it is too difficult to orchestrate. Film avoids these issues, but in doing so, raises many problems of its own. Film settings should theoretically flow with some sense of continuity, but the way in which Man with a Movie Camera is composed forestalls this continuity. For example, the initial shots of the cameraman carrying his camera and entering the movie theatre suggest that we are about to follow the film’s ‘protagonist’ throughout different stages of his daily work. However, this does not proceed in a linear fashion – when the cameraman appears again towards the end of the film, this time he is not among the spectators, but rather as the object of their perception – on the screen-within-the-screen.[13] Similarly, the first shot of the movie plays with the perception of filmic scale. A cameraman climbs on top of a camera, which pedagogically demonstrates both the experimental aspects of the film, and also sets up the cameraman as a flexible character who is flexible enough to access all spaces. The cameraman of the film becomes a metaphor. His flexible scale represents the flexibility and accessibility of the cinema itself – the filmic medium has a privileged access into the visuals of private and public spaces, and interior and exterior spaces.
The language of cinema is employed in a similar way in Piccadilly – it is used to show the audience a space in a particular way. The image at the opening of the film of the ladies’ powder rooms uses so many mirrors that a kaleidoscopic effect is produced, and it becomes difficult to quantify how many people are there. While the film uses some expressionist techniques to dictate the peculiar skills of the filmic medium, the interiors of Piccadilly exist in an even more significant manner. It is the precise setting of different scenes that creates the power dynamics between the characters. When Shosho is about to view her contract from Thomas, she uses her body to gently lean against the door and push Jim away. He has no power in this scene, and is literally pushed out of the interior space onscreen so that Shosho commands total status and power in the dynamics of the scene. Contrasted to the first time that Shosho appears in Thomas’ office, there is a deliberately different use of the interior space. When she first appears in his office, Shosho sits, looking shy, pulling her skirt over her torn stockings. Thomas sits at his desk, glancing up occasionally to appraise Shosho. He has the power in this scene, as she appears unsure and apprehensive as to what is about to take place.
The power dynamics change again when we are taken to a completely different interior space – that of the Chinese costume shop. Here, Thomas is an outsider – he has become the foreigner. Shosho determines which costume she will wear, and insists on deciding the shop from where it is to be purchased. Thomas is made to pay the price set by Shosho. She has complete power in this scene, and while their statuses as characters have not changed, the interior space that they occupy has, and this had made all the difference. Following this scene, Thomas insists that Shosho tries on the costume, and she refuses, instead making Jim (her secret lover) try it on. This is an instance where the sexual and ethnic dynamic is the most ambiguous. Jim has been emasculated, both by the situation and the particular mise-en-scène. He appears dwarfed in front of the white people, and the willowy Shosho. As Zen observes, “While Shosho clearly asserts her dominance over both men here, Jim’s emasculation through cross-dressing, thereby unwittingly disavowing his intimate relationship with her, seems to pave the way for Valentine’s advances toward Shosho.”[14]
Finally, it is worth acknowledging the particular use of exterior space as a fascinating contrast to the use of interior space in the films. Man with a Movie Camera is in part a ‘city symphony’, although the urban landscape that it presents is actually a synthesis of various cities - Moscow (the opening cityscape), Odessa (the windswept coast) and Kiev (the cinema).[15] Most importantly, as Roberts observes, Vertov’s film is not a study of a city. It is a study of the city.[16] This is in direct contrast to a filmmaker such as Ruttman, who focused on portraying a single city. Similarly, Piccadilly uses the different suburbs of London in order to communicate ideas about social and class dynamics. The Piccadilly club is for the bourgeoisie. Shosho must catch a bus from the East End (Limehouse) to the West End in order to attend work. The exterior shots at the opening and closing of the film romanticise the lights and glamour of the West End, while at times the film moves from such upscale decadence to the lower-class Limehouse district.
It is important to note that the opening shots and concluding shots are almost identical. In Piccadilly, the opening suggests the promise and possibilities offered by the West End, while the ending shots – an almost identical series of lights and theatres – conveys the sense that this is a world for a privileged few, which will continue to prosper in spite of whatever tragedy occurs in an individual’s life. This is humorously conveyed towards the end of the film, where a man reading a paper with a headline announcing Shosho’s death flicks to the back pages and exclaims, “Great! I won a fiver on the three thirty race!” The world of Piccadilly is a rolling city that ceases for no one. Contrastingly, in Man with a Movie Camera, the film ends after the literal splitting of the cinematic still of the Bolshoi Theatre is completed. The concluding shots of traffic and pedestrians are shown in accelerated motion. This foreshadows the end of the film (speeding to a conclusion), and the opening montage sequence of the woman’s eyes are repeated briefly. These are interspersed with close-ups of the film spectators sitting in the movie theatre. While the ending of Piccadilly draws attention to the exterior landscape as an entity that will persist despite what happens in the interior, the final shots of the cinema’s interior in Man with a Movie Camera relocate the focal point back to the filmic medium itself. As Petric states,
Thus, the notion of temporal progression, symbolising the dynamism of the revolutionary era (as opposed to the stagnancy of bourgeois art), culminates in the film’s final montage crescendo where representational shots merge into a semiabstract kinesthetic and symphonic vision characteristic of pure cinema.[17]
In conclusion, the use of interior space throughout the films Piccadilly and Man with a Movie Camera have incredible repercussions for the film’s dynamic itself. The filmic medium insists on its own language, and its own peculiarities about setting and camerawork. Each film uses this language to adapt the settings to enhance their meanings, whether it is the power relationships between characters, or the voyeuristic nature of spectatorship. The interior space of people’s homes and workplaces gives interior space an exceptional status in Man with a Movie Camera, as it draws attention to performance and the cinematic medium. Similarly, the interior space of the backstage drama of Piccadilly is far from a simple place in which to situate the narrative. The particular filming of the interior spaces of the Piccadilly nightclub, and of London itself ensures that the setting is not merely an unchanging entity, but a fluid backdrop. It is this use of interior space that elucidates not only a psychological investment in a romantic narrative, but also the ability to create sexual, ethnic, and power relations onscreen.
Endnotes:
[1] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. viii
[2] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, p. 155
[3] J. Hoberman, “Piccadily”, The Village Voice, October 1-7, 2003.
[4] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. vii
[5] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 62
[6] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 81
[7] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, pp. 83-85
[8] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 50
[9] Mikhail Kaufman, “Interview with Mikhail Kaufman,” October, no. 11, (Winter 1979)
[10] Karen J. Leong, The China Mystique, London: University of California Press, 2005, p. 64
[11] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 70
[12] Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984, p. 154
[13] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 91
[14] Zhang Zen, “Putting her Signature on the Screen: Anna May Wong and Piccadilly,” DVD notes, 2005.
[15] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 52
[16] Graham Roberts, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000, p. 93
[17] Vlada Petric, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 91
Bibliography:
Hoberman, J., “Piccadily”, The Village Voice, October 1-7, 2003.
Kaufman, Mikhail, “Interview with Mikhail Kaufman,” October, no. 11, (Winter 1979)
Leong, Karen J., The China Mystique, London: University of California Press, 2005
Lloyd, Ann (ed.), Movies of the Silent Years, London: Orbis Publishing, 1984.
Michelson, Annette (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.
Page, Janice, “A Second Chance to see a First Rate Star,” Boston Globe, 19th March, 2004.
Petric, Vlada, Constructivism in Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Roberts, Graham, The Man with the Movie Camera, London: I.B. Tauris and Co, 2000.
Tsivian, Yuri, “Man with a Movie Camera – Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties,” appearing in Ted Perry (ed.), Masterpieces of Modernist Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Wood, Michael, “Modernism and Film”, appearing in Michael Levenson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Zen, Zhang, “Putting her Signature on the Screen: Anna May Wong and Piccadilly,” DVD notes, 2005.
In the opening of Contact, we slowly move away from the earth, into the galaxy and the solar system. The soundtrack alternates between silence, and snippets from broadcasts from history. The anachronistic sections of audio that we hear emphasise the viewer’s distance from the earth, as the tracking shot is juxtaposed with radio emissions that were produced some years or decades ago. Close to earth, modern-day sound clips are hears, whereas the further we drift out, the clips become less recent, including Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963). Finally, the images coalesce into the single close-up of a young girl’s eye. For me, this is the most striking similarity to Powers of Ten, not in its imagery, but its signification. The world in Contact is vast and unknowable, but culminates in this girl’s eye. It suggests that the world may not be that unknowable or distant, but in fact a part of us. In terms of its filmic meaning, this has become quite a normalised signifier – indeed, consider the opening of Chicago where Roxie’s eye become the centre of the title. 