Multimedia Collection
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
DVD
72 min
1927
PN1995.9 .C513 B47 1999 DVD
Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema's ability on a purely visceral level, BERLIN, SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (Berlin, die Symphonie der Grossstadt) offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of the bustling metropolis.
Carl Mayer (The Last Laugh), influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement, envisioned "a melody of pictures" sprung from daily reality instead of the stylized artificiality of the studio-bound expressionist film. Following Mayer's rough outline, photoprapher Karl Freund deployed a team of cameramen to explore the avenues, alleyways and factories of Berlin and secure hidden-camera glimpses of the people and machinery that provide the city with its constant motion. The many hours of footage were then edited into a series of five acts, like movements of a symphony, by Walther Ruttmann as a continuation of his experiments with abstract motion (see OPUS 1).
BERLIN defined the formula of the "city symphony" film and, according to John Grierson - the filmmaker/critic who coined the term "documentary" - "No film has been more influential, more imitated.
Opus 1
A rare example of the German avant-garde cinema known as absoluter Film, Walther Ruttmann's hand-colored OPUS 1 is an exploration of the geometry of movement within the frame and the sensory effect these abstract shapes evoke as they swell, streak and swim across the screen. Viewed alongside BERLIN, OPUS 1 seems a thumbnail sketch for the sweeping slice-of-life documentary, revealing the degree to which Ruttmann's 1923 film was more a spectacle of raw motion than a documentary portrait of Berlin's daily routines. OPUS 1 is accompanied by Max Butting's 1922 score, adapted and conducted by Timothy Brock.
Introductory titles in German ; no dialogue or narration ; with added orchestral accompaniment.
Distributed by Image Entertainment.
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