Menschen am Sonntag (1930) - film review

One Saturday evening, a young Berliner, Wolfgang, meets an attractive young woman, Christi, and invites her to spend Sunday with him by the lake.  He then calls on his friend Erwin and asks if he would care to come along.  The next morning, Erwin’s wife Annie hasn’t forgiven him the argument they had the night before, so Erwin goes off alone to join up with Wolfgang.   Christi has brought along her friend Brigitte, an attractive blonde to whom Wolfgang is immediately attracted.  The four young people spend the day laughing and fighting, happily forgetting the week of drudgery that the next morning will herald...

One of the most important and distinctive German films of the silent era, Menschen am Sonntag is also an invaluable historical record of how ordinary German people lived in the politically and economically turbulent period between the First and Second World Wars.   What is most surprising about this film is its realism and apparent modernity.  The majority of silent films tended to be elaborate, highly stylised works of art, particularly German films of the 1920s which bore the heavy imprint of expressionism.  Menschen am Sonntag is the complete antithesis of this – shot in the manner of a documentary, mostly out-of-doors in real locations, in a strikingly naturalistic way, without professional actors.  It is a style of filmmaking that is more redolent of the French New Wave of the early 1960s, spontaneous, unfussy and utterly charming – although its nearest cinematic equivalent is probably Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne (1936).  What is also remarkable about this film is its list of credits, which includes some of the most distinguished names in cinema history – Robert Siodmak, Edgar Ulme, Eugen Schüfftan, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.   This was Siodmak’s first directing job – he took over from Rochus Gliese shortly after work on the film began, assisted by his younger brother Curt, who co-financed the film from his earnings as a writer.

© James Travers 2007

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