Enthusiasm

As far as its significance is concerned, perhaps the arrival of sound in film is only comparable to the recent introduction of completely computerised animation techniques. Filmmakers were divided when it became possible to let people speak, choirs sing and locomotives screech. Now we can only smile at the purists who declared film artistically dead with the arrival of sound (and later colour and widescreen). Those who embraced the technical innovations back then should be considered members of a visionary elite that still deserves our admiration 80 years later. The Russian director Dziga Vertov was one of them. From a historical perspective, his was a shameless piece of propaganda for the inhumane Soviet regime, but this experimental film is of inestimable importance to cinema. For the first time, Vertov, the man with the "camera eye," used sound to underpin his impressive, graphic documentary images. Made in 1930, begins with the destruction of churches. Wherever a steeple falls, the red flag comes in its place. The second part is a song of praise to the economic five-year plan, which was supposed to lead to a strong industrialisation of a self-sufficient Soviet Union. Whoever goes to see should try to imagine what it was like to watch this film back in 1930.