Matter and Anti-Matter: Flaherty versus Vertov
Documentary film is a bizarre and interesting subject to tackle. A documentary is easy to notice when placed on the screen. Certain conventions tell us that we, the audience, are watching a documentary. Yet, when trying to define what exactly makes up a documentary we discover that it is not so easy. The conventions that help our eyes tell us that what we are watching is a documentary have been driven into our heads for years. The works of Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov helped to create those conventions.
Flaherty and Vertov are seen as two of the fathers of documentary film. They, however, had drastically different views on how to film, what to document, and why to document what they did. These two filmmakers could not be farther apart in their ideas and opinions on their films.
Robert Flaherty is most famous for his film Nanook of the North (1922). The film explores the harsh world of the Eskimos and their ever-constant search for food. The film is not unlike the rest of Flaherty’s body of work. He was obsessed with the past and past cultures that he felt were beginning to get lost in the ever-growing modern world. Man against nature was a common theme and he portrayed a very romantic view it.
In order to “document” the “story” he wanted, Flaherty took on narrative filmmaking forms. His films were cast and staged. Not only that, but the worlds that Flaherty were capturing were that of generations ago. The real life of Nanook was nothing like that seen within the film. The walrus hunt seen in the film was not done in that fashion for years, especially since the invent of firearms. Likewise, the shark hunt in Man of Aran (1934) was not done in nearly 100 years at the time Flaherty filmed it. The images of life that Flaherty thought were dying out had in fact already done so. In doing so the audience is given a false impression of the subject.
Flaherty’s films were very commercial. His works played in large movie houses. He got financing from studios as well as large companies. The films were hits because no one had seen anything like them before. The audience had no reason to think that what they were seeing was not all real. Watching the films today it is easy to see how things had to be staged and how smooth everything fits together. However, Flaherty was never out to capture the present truth. He basically wanted to make a film for himself. A Flaherty film is the romantic vision of how life was as Flaherty saw it.
Dziga Vertov took a different approach to filmmaking. At a very early age Vertov saw how effect film could be as a political tool. He believed that film was so powerful it had an obligation to have a social element. Vertov was also strong in his beliefs of Communism and Lenin, which were reflected in his films.
Vertov’s film Man With A Movie Camera (1929) is often seen as a day in the life of Moscow. Vertov uses almost experimental techniques to compare Communism to Capitalism. Vertov’s vision was that of the future of Communist Russia, if not the world. He filmed things the way he thought they would be if the world followed Lenin.
Dziga Vertov hated the conventions of narrative films. He went as far to call them the “opium of the masses,” referencing Marx. Vertov uses experimental methods in the works. They are very self-reflective. In Man With A Movie Camera, the audience sees footage being shot, the film being edited and at the end an audience watches the film itself. Vertov thought using this style was the way of the people. The techniques, however, alienated Vertov’s audience. To the general public the images seemed simply thrown together and made no sense. His vision of the future was lost in the complexity of the work.
Filmmaking was not as easy for Vertov as it was for Flaherty. Vertov got the money to make his films from the Soviet government. That gave him very little freedom to work as he pleased, especially under the rule of Stalin. For the most part Vertov and his films were exported from Russia to spread the work of Communism. He was seen as a tool for propaganda.
Flaherty and Vertov were vastly different from each other in nearly everyway. One of the only things that seem to connect the two is that they both had no interest in the present world. Flaherty thought only of how the present was erasing the past that he so admired. Vertov saw the future as the key to the world. The present was only a stepping-stone. The styles and theories of the two were total opposites. Yet, the works of both were also mistaken as the documentation of the present. Both men falsely lead the audience, willingly or unwillingly, with their films.
After considering this perhaps it is not so easy to recognize a documentary when one is being shown. Maybe the classifications of narrative, documentary and experimental film are too vague in the first place; the films of Dusan Makavejev are a testament to that. Even classifying the films by way of fiction and nonfiction does not work. Flaherty and Vertov’s films, in reality, are not really any more nonfiction than they are fictitious. This is an interesting statement about the two men who have influenced filmmakers from Frederick Wiseman and the Maysles to Michael Moore. Neither man was interested in how the world appeared. They were much more interested with their own vision and how to present that to an unknowing audience.
Written by David Bohnert
Copyright 2004.