Perception of Music and Musical Instruments in Dziga Vertov's Silent Films of the 1920s

Abstract

The author focuses on the perception of music and musicmaking practices in Dziga Vertov's silent films Kino-eye (1924) and A Sixth Part of the World (1926). The art of music, virtuoso or simple and sometimes unsophisticated practices of playing various instruments — be it bugle, tambourine, accordion or piano, as well as their being in a state of quiescence —often determine the director's special poetic style. The analysis of shots does not so much demonstrate the avant-garde qualities of films, but reveals the constructs by means of which the director interacted with immediate reality, transforming it into a mythopoetic artistic canvas.
In A Sixth Part of the World (1926) Dionysian exhilaration with foxtrot rhythms is contrasted with the measured movement of machines. The constructivist geometry of huge mechanisms rhymes with an orderly, thorough, extremely serious interpretation of the emerging new world. Shots showing representatives of the elite class equal “post-impressionist” colors, so to speak, the depravity of the obsolete world order. This peculiarly literal denial of the “old” art and glorification of the “new” one suggest the outline of Dziga Vertov's film manifesto and his emerging unique poetics.
In Kino-Eye the director uses the musical metaphor in a visual-verbal way. Vertov contrasts the rural Dionysian musical practices (performance, listening, ecstatic dances) with the marching rhythms of bugles and drums of pioneers and maintains that the clear-cut structure of the march is a step towards the sublime.
In Vertov's films, music virtuoso playing or simple music-making directly within the space of the frame create that complicated poetic counterpoint, which was clearly perceived by the Soviet audience, who had difficulty in interpreting it. Through the metaphorical use of musical instruments and playing them Vertov introduces motifs that directly or by their reversal paint the image of a new man, a new world.