The Man with a Movie Camera directed by Dziga Vertov (1929) stands as one of the greatest experimental films ever made. Essentially the film is a fast-paced day in the life of a city in an age of modernisation. The movie camera itself is a participant in the film and at one point it even moves on its own. Cameramen stroll streets, climb a chimney, travel in a cable-hung box over a raging torrent, nothing is too much for the intrepid camera. The camera is the knowing eye that documents and spies on the city - Vertov felt that commercial cinema was a corrupting influence and he wanted "Life as it is" and "Life caught unawares" rather than carefully staged drama. The editing of the film was masterful and he used moving cameras, different viewpoints, overlaid images, montages and optical effects to capture the semi-chaos of a city.