Enthusiasm, much less well-known than Dziga Vertov's other major works Kino-Eye and The Man With a Movie Camera, is nevertheless well worth a look.
The movie is subtitled Symphonia of the Donbass and portrays the implementation of the first five year plan in the industrial regions of Ukraine. If that sounds un-exciting, don't be put off – this is an amazing movie that places sound – the sounds of pulleys and railway wagons, steel plants, the brass bands of the Young Pioneers and the Army, of tractors in the Kolkhoz – at the forefront of everything.
Framed by close-up shots of a young women (later shown to be an artist making the finishing touches to a bust of Lenin) listening to the radio via earphones, the soundtrack of the film takes on a life of its own. Its synchronization with the visual content of the film creates a highly atmospheric portrayal of work and of constant, excessive noise – not just the noise of the work itself but of the streets, with their endless parades and ubiquitous brass bands.
Made in 1931, the film includes more overtly propagandistic content than The Man With a Movie Camera, made in the marginally more liberal (or at least less rigidly controlled) Soviet Union of 1929. However, for me the propaganda element is rendered almost irrelevant by the highly original soundtrack. The ponderous narrative interventions ("Here come the enthusiasts") are ultimately subsumed in the clatter of machine hammers and coal conveyors, brass music and public announcements, simultaneously distancing you from the "enthusiasm" on display and drawing you in to a kind of hyper-real portrayal of physical life (hard work, the streets, demonstrations) that makes you suddenly aware of the un-real nature of everyday urban sound when you leave the cinema. No wonder Soviet critics hated it.
