Enthusiasm

Commissioned to extol the efforts of the Ukranian Don basin miners for fulfilling their coal quota a year early, Dziga Vertov's paean to the Five-Year Plan is tantamount to an industrial symphony. All of the visual dynamism that informed his silent masterpiece, Man with a Movie Camera (1928), is again evident - although the assaults on religion and drink and the eulogising of the labour force are more blatantly propagandist. But Vertov's experiments with sound montages are even more impressive, as he not only succeeds in capturing the cacophony of the workplace, but he also gives his naturalistic sounds an avant-garde intrigue. The film was acclaimed across Europe, but Soviet authorities disapproved of his formalism and Vertov was prevented from making another film for three years.