Movie: Enthusiasm

You would think a film celebrating the Five-Year Plan, industrialization, and the defeat of religion (there’s a stunning sequence where the sounds of church bells are literally replaced by factory whistles) would be a propaganda hero. But Stalin’s cultural gatekeepers called it "noise" and "formalism." They wanted heroic portraits. Vertov gave them the grinding, chaotic, sweaty truth of labor.

If you search for “enthusiasm movie” today, you might expect a forgotten 80s comedy or a feel-good indie. Instead, you find one of the most radical, abrasive, and brilliant films ever made. This is not a movie about enthusiasm. It is a movie that is enthusiasm—the violent, industrial, revolutionary kind. By 1931, Vertov was already famous for Man with a Movie Camera (1929), a silent film so energetic it seemed to vibrate off the screen. But Enthusiasm was his first talkie. And he hated how other talkies worked.

We throw the word “enthusiasm” around a lot. It’s the pop of a dopamine hit, the clap of a studio audience, the caffeine jolt of a morning meeting. But what if Enthusiasm was a monster? What if it was a raw, grinding, sonic assault that got you fired up not by making you feel good, but by forcing you to hear the world differently? enthusiasm movie

The result is a 67-minute fever dream of Socialist Realism on acid. Here is the irony that makes this film fascinating today: The Soviet authorities hated it.

So he went to the Donbas coal and steel region. He didn't record orchestras. He recorded drills, hammers, locomotives, and the chaotic prayers of drunken priests. He then took those sounds—the screech of metal, the hiss of steam, the rumble of conveyor belts—and edited them like musical notes. You would think a film celebrating the Five-Year

Early sound films were static. People stood next to potted plants and spoke. Vertov saw sound not as a tool for dialogue, but as a raw material. He believed the microphone could capture the "unheard music of the factory."

But if you have ever found yourself staring at a construction site, hypnotized by the repetitive fall of a pile driver... if you have ever turned up the volume on a washing machine because the spin cycle had a good beat... if you suspect that true passion is often ugly and loud rather than pretty and quiet—then you owe it to yourself to watch Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm . If you search for “enthusiasm movie” today, you

Welcome to Dziga Vertov’s 1931 masterpiece (and headache), Enthusiasm: Symphony of the Donbas .