Judith F. Rosenberg on Piano

(Vesnoy). In the same year that he served as cameraman on his brother Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, Mikhail Kaufman made his own documentary filled with very similar images, sometimes displaying the rapid cutting, dissolves, superimpositions, and split-screen effects that made Vertov famous. Kaufman's film is a lyrical celebration not only of a season but also of Soviet life and work, the promise of industrialization and progress. Its images are often monumental, artfully composed and framed. Lacking the metaphorical playfulness and serious theorizing that abound in Vertov's self-reflexive work, In Spring is nevertheless a very satisfying experience, and a prototype of the poetic social documentary of the thirties.