Berlin: Symphony of a Great City [Blu-ray]

Timothy Brock Director: Walter Ruttmann Walter Ruttmann

Overview

This classic German documentary is a valentine to the "new" Berlin of the late 1920s, enjoying a renaissance after the dregs of the Depression. Director Walter Ruttman's five-reel symphony begins at dawn and ends at midnight, showing Berliners at hard work by day and enjoying the city's boisterous nightlife. Essentially a feature-length montage--one shot of pedestrians is followed by a brief clip of a cow herd--the film was heavily influenced by the earlier works of Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertov, and was itself very influential in fostering the "city symphony" or "opus" genre (excellent examples of which included Holland's 1929 Rain and Sweden's 1947 Stockholm: Rhythm of a City). There is also a large degree of poignancy in recording the everyday affairs of a city so far from and yet so near to the Nazi nightmare. Though many current prints of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City carry a musical track, this silent documentary creates its own music by virtue of its rhythmic editing.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/04/2018
UPC:	0810162037246
Original Release:	1927
Rating:	NR
Source:	Flicker Alley
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:02:00
Sales rank:	27,549

Special Features

Commentary track by filmmaker Alex Barrett, Director of London Symphony

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Technical Credits

Karl Freund

Carl Mayer

Walter Ruttmann	Director
Karl Freund	Screenwriter
Carl Mayer	Screenwriter

Editorial Reviews

Poised between the devastating years immediately following World War I and the beginning of the Third Reich, Berlin appears here to be a thriving, bustling metropolis with few problems. There is one shot of man picking up a discarded cigarette from the street, another of a woman and boy picking through a trash heap, but that's the extent of any suggestions of poverty or need in this film. Director Walter Ruttmann is out to celebrate the varieties of urban experience and architecture by combining sound (music only) with image, but the film is abstract, more of an artistic experiment than a historical document. Ruttmann concentrates more on the generic aspects of Berlin that could exist nearly anywhere: wires, bridge girders, crowds of people (at one point interspersed with a shot of a herd of cattle). Individual faces and human interaction are almost non-existent, and the film suggests that Berlin's citizens are cogs in the giant machine that is a modern industrial city. This is a film about the possibilities of film more than about the specifics of Berlin, although, for example, lunchtime shots of restaurant patrons wolfing down sausages and sauerkraut do offer some identifying marks. It's also mostly a film about exteriors and street scenes rather than intimate interiors that wouldn't fit the grand accompanying music. Ruttmann has been correctly lauded for his rhythmic editing, but for an abstract film that celebrates inanimate objects as well as movement, it's hard to top Dziga Vertov's The Man With a Movie Camera, released two years after this film.

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener