Silent City Symphonies: Wandering Rocks & Man with a Movie Camera
Wandering Rocks, Episode 10 of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, depict distinct major and minor characters roaming Dublin streets, realistically illustrating Dublin itself while also slowly advancing the plot. (Joyce, 219-255) This episode is similar to city symphonies, a genre of early films portraying cities with minimal plot, the peak of which is the silent documentary Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov, who announced in the opening titles that it will ‘completely depart from the language of theatre and literature’ ‘without the help or a scenario… or characters’. Despite Vertov’s intention, Man with a Movie Camera shares traits with Wandering Rocks other than the genre, but they also have differences, some of which made by their distinct media.
Basic to both city symphonies is a montage structure, juxtaposing different scenes to make a whole picture. Joyce chose to divide the episode into chapters where each one is the stream of consciousness of character, narrated from third person subjective. In the stream there are all thoughts and objects of attention of the character, and the objective environment inevitably seep into the stream when the character sees, interacts with, or have an emotion toward it. A typical example is the passage in which Fr Conmee ‘smells incense on his right hand’, sees a church for ‘aged and virtuous females’, waves to them, and thinks that they can be bad-tempered. One part of Dublin - the incense-burning St Joseph’s Church and its sometimes hot-tempered attenders – is described so in this short passage. (Joyce, 221)
Furthermore, not only the objective environment is illustrated in those interactions, but also are the ‘narrating’ characters like Conmee of which the Dublin community is comprised portrayed. The stream of consciousness is powerful in the task by displaying characters’ thoughts thoroughly and faithfully. In another passage, Conmee passes a newsboard, learning about a ‘dreadful catastrophe’ that is later explained in civilians’ conversation to have killed thousands including women and children and almost wiped out German immigrants of New York. The catastrophe is hardly described or talked about in the stream of consciousness, revealing Conmee’s indifference to the lost lives, while the comment of it being ‘a perfect contrition’ for the ‘unfortunate’ people shows crazy religiousness. Thus a picture of the cold mad high priests of Dublin is drawn from an exemplary individual’s thoughts.
Man with A Movie Camera did not take a similar montage of individuals and their thoughts. Instead, it has a complex structure of narration, the first layer of which is a well-dressed audience watching a city symphony in a cinema, depicted from a third person objective perspective. It looks like a paradigmatic collective consciousness, showing few emotions or unique actions except the defining activity of a cinema audience: enter the cinema, sit, and watch. Thus more than showing how Russians entertained themselves watching films does it function as an abstract indication that the city symphony is watched, the purpose of whom will be explained by the second level of the narration. (Vertov)
The second layer of narration is the eponymous cameraperson, shown from a third person limited perspective when the audience sees what he sees but not of what he thinks. While he is an incarnation of Vertov’s idea that film cameras can be everywhere for a good depiction of reality, being on lofty buildings or in beer cups, he probably also serves as a representation of the objective, vigorous, and brave Soviet cinema risking to even stand on a speeding train for a good shot of real life, together with the ever-working editor. In other words, he is also a protagonist and a part of the Soviet cities depicted, and the film can be seen as his own stream of consciousness, but in a different way than that in which Conmee etc have their streams of consciousness in the apparent absence of inner thoughts. (Vertov)
Although thoughts and feelings are not expressed explicitly, the filming and editing techniques help convey them. For example, the fast cutting of short shots shows admiration at the hard efficient work at the factory, while a close-up on a smiling worker transporting sand may express equal happiness of the cameraman.
Notably, the audience of a film may commit emotionally more to it upon seeing familiar scenes, probably admiring and laughing with smiling and industrious workers, or feeling excitement when seeing them flowing out of a factory and into parks after working hours. The filming techniques are unique to films; even a poem can hardly achieve the same effect by short lines, repetition, or typographical tricks. As a novel, Wandering Rocks can only choose to write thoughts directly down, making them less instantly comprehensible and effective.
The last layer of the narration is the Soviet cities, the main protagonist of the film, similar to Dublin in Wandering Rocks. However, instead of focusing on different individuals, Man with a Movie Camera engages with the collective consciousness, in which characters, though of distinct classes and types, act similarly almost simultaneously in a same episode. Basically, from tramps, machines and manual labourers to white collar workers and artists, or even women giving birth, every part of the city sleeps in episode 1, starts up in Ep. 2, works in Ep.3, leave their duties in Ep.4, and enjoy themselves in Ep.5. (Vertov)
Although the audience does not know what any individual thinks, emotions are shown by montaging faces with similar expressions. A typical instance is the scene in Ep. 5 where happy faces appear between shots of performing athletes and children playing in an amusement park. (Vertov) Not only does the visual stimulation hit the audience directly than the novel Wandering Rocks does, as aforementioned, but the montage itself also has a profound effect. Just as film theorist pointed out, different scenes preceding a same calm face can make the audience feel automatically as if there are distinct expressions on the face corresponding to the scene and even sympathise with the face. (Kuleshov. 47-48) The montage in Man with a Movie Camera utilises this Kuleshov Effect to make the audience sympathise with the characters and immerse itself into the cities. That is something novels like Wandering Rocks can hardly imitate except by using in-text illustrations, but as books are hardly read with specific music while films are, Man with a Movie Camera would still win with its accompanying music played live.
Apart from the level of ‘visibility’ and ‘audibility’, the reason why the two works choose to depict the city differently goes beyond the ideological differences between the humanist Joyce thinking a city as a collection of its residents and the Marxist Vertov who regard cities as a growing organism comprised of its dwellers, buildings, and machines. Another main reason is the nature of consumption of the media of literature and films. Traditionally, books can be long and are usually read in discrete time periods over from a day to years. On the other hand, in the 1920s when TV was hardly invented and TV series was non-existent, most films were expected to be watched through continuous hours that do not surpass the attention limit of the audience who are usually humans. Therefore, the number of characters having their own streams of consciousness rather than simple emotions can only be one in this hour-long film, else it would be too long for the audience to focus on it. Thus is part of the depiction of a city – the complex thoughts and feelings of its components - lost in Man with a Movie Camera, but not in the novel Wandering Rocks.
Despite the city symphony genre and the overall montage, the two works share one further trait – the usage of motifs. The same street conjunctures and machines are shown in almost every episode of Man with a Movie Camera, beacons making the whole film cohesive and easy to navigate in. (Vertov) In contrast, Wandering Rocks’ motifs are multiple but recurring usually no more than twice, one of which is the aforementioned catastrophe read about by Conmee and discussed by civilians. They mostly serve as mere ‘beacons’ helping readers find their way in the somewhat chaotic collage, but some of them like the catastrophe shows general characteristics of Dubliners like indifference to foreign affairs, while others depict the recurring actions of the same character (like selfish Mr Dedalus) to illustrate his/her nature. (Joyce, 221, 237-239)
Though Vertov tried to deviate norms of literature, he could not help making the documentary Man with a Movie Camera similar in montage and motif techniques to the other city symphony, the novel Wandering Rocks. However, the difference in medium in the way of consumption determines that the depiction techniques and their effects, albeit comparable, are distinct.
Works Cited
Joyce, James. ‘Wandering Rocks’. Ulysses. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. E-book. 219-255. 11 Aug. 2016.
Vertov, Dziga et al. Man with a Movie Camera. Vertov, Dziga, 1929. Web. 7 Aug. 2016.
< https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Man_With_A_Movie_Camera_(Dziga_Vertov,_1929).webm >
Vertov, Dziga. On Kinopravda. ‘1924, and The Man with the Movie Camera. 1928’. Kino-Eye : The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Oakland: University of California Press, 1995. Print. 12 Aug 2016.
Kuleshov, Lev. Kuleshov on Film: Writings. Oakland: Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. 47–48. Print. 12 Aug 2016.
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