Theory Response: Shared Paragraph

For Film Theory Through the Senses class, my Theory Response argued that, despite their differences, Bazin and Vertov both find exciting potential in the possibilities of film and treat the medium with an awed, even spiritual, reverence.

I'm choosing to share this paragraph in which I related what Vertov's theory would think of the recent film Listen to Me Marlon (2015).

Here is the paragraph:

Another clip, which we have not seen in class but is nonetheless relevant, is one from the new documentary on Marlon Brando called Listen to Me Marlon (2015), released last year as a film which edits together countless hours of archival interviews with the actor so as to create the illusion that Marlon Brando is narrating the story of his own life while corresponding archival footage is being screened. In one particular moment in the film, Brando tells the story of how he visited an island nearby Tahiti where he was filming Mutiny on the Bounty. In this clip, much like the rest of the film, different instances of Brando talking about his experiences on the island play over the footage captured candidly of the actor. For Vertov, Listen to Me Marlon would also be a form of triumph because the filmmaker uses montage to assemble different parts of Brando’s life into a coherent narrative; Vertov praises this very idea when he says that one of the camera’s unique abilities is to allow filmmakers to be the “organisers of visible life” (262) which leads to the ability to create, through cinema and, especially, through montage, “a fresh perception of the world” (260). The ability to form a narrative from different parts of someone’s life – in essence, remixing these fragments to create a new idea - is the very idea that Vertov is describing when he discusses the cinema-eye as “a constructor” (260).

Bibliography:

Listen to Me Marlon. Dir. Stevan Riley. Perf. Marlon Brando. Cutler Productions, Passion Pictures, 2015. Film.

Vertov, Dziga. "Film Directors: A Revolution." 2011. Critical Visions in Film Theory. Ed. Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 257-62. Print.