Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (1927)
Directed by Walter Ruttmann

Film Review

Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures (1926), a documentary portrait of Paris, inspired the experimental German filmmaker Walter Ruttmann to make a similar 'city symphony' about Berlin, and he even requested Cavalcanti's help in making what was to be his most celebrated film.  Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (a.k.a. Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt) is interesting as a work of film art in its own right but it also has immense historical significance as its shows us a city that no longer exists.  The Berlin of the 1920s that is so graphically evoked in Ruttmann's film was largely destroyed by Allied bombing in WWII and was altered beyond all recognition in the years of reconstruction that followed.  The film is effectively a time capsule showing us one of Europe's great metropolises in its heyday between the two major conflagrations of the 20th century.

For Ruttmann, the film was a radical departure from his previous work, which had consisted primarily of abstract films concerned with exploring new avenues of cinematic expression.  Cavalcanti's film was not the only influence (although a comparison of the two films makes it clear that it was the most significant).  French impressionism and Soviet ideas about montage, in particular the early work of the Soviet film pioneer Dziga Vertov, also impinged greatly on Ruttmann's vision of the film, allowing him to construct a startlingly coherent piece from a spectacular assembly of diverse images filmed in the course of a year.  The film consists of five 'acts' which together represent the life in a single day of Berlin.  In common with other city symphonies, it takes an objective standpoint as it establishes a relationship between the city and its inhabitants.

Although Ruttmann had no political axe to grind, his film does make use of dialectic montage to draw our attention to the social inequalities and absurdities of life that abound in the teeming metropolis.  At the start of the film, armies of people from all social classes are seen walking, almost sleepwalking, to work like mindless automata (it's hard not to make the connection with the mall marauding zombies in George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978)).  These images are humorously intercut with shots of cattle bring driven through the streets to the abattoir.  A later sequence showing the better-off dining in various restaurants includes a fleeting shot of a homeless woman being embraced by her presumably starving children.  The purchase of an expensive item of jewellery is immediately followed by the shot of an old beggar woman gratefully accepting a few Reichspfennigs.  Inequality and misery are part and parcel of life in the big city and Ruttmann presents these as such without labouring the point as Cavalcanti does in his film, which has a far more overt anti-bourgeois slant.

The film's main achievement is its skilful appropriation of modern theories of montage.  The pace of the editing effectively matches the natural rhythms of life in the great city, making this a visual symphony worthy of its name.  Long static shots create an impression of deathly calm as the city still slumbers in the early hours of the morning.  Then, gradually, the pace of editing picks up as the urban dynamo kicks into life, and before we know it there is a vertiginous spate of activity, building to a wild crescendo just before the midday pause.  As the day winds down, the pace slows once again and the happier side of life in the city is revealed to us.  Gone is the toil and drudgery of today's self-imposed slavery.  By early evening, people are enjoying themselves with their leisure pursuits, basking in the brief space of Heaven that urban life allows them before they turn in for the night and start the whole cycle over again the next day.

Film Synopsis

At the dawn of a typical weekday, a train pulls into a station in the still sleeping city of Berlin.  Over the next few hours, the city gradually awakens as the daily grind gets underway.  The streets are soon swarming with pedestrians heading blindly to their place of work and by mid-morning the entire metropolis is bustling with life.  Streets, factories, shops and offices seethe with activity, the components of one enormous complex engine.  This turmoil ceases at midday as the workers take a break for lunch.  The infernal toil then resumes until late afternoon, when the day slowly winds down and all, rich and poor alike, put their workday behind them to enjoy the distractions of the evening that lies ahead...