Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
by Walter Ruttmann
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VHS Tape Cover Information
Actor: Paul von HindenburgDirector: Walter Ruttmann
Cinematographer: Karl Freund
Writer: Karl Freund
Cinematographer: L?szl? Sch?ffer
Cinematographer: Reimar Kuntze
Cinematographer: Robert Baberske
Editor: Walter Ruttmann
Writer: Walter Ruttmann
Writer: Carl Mayer
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 65 minutes
Release Date: 1998-11-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Kino Video
Studio: Kino Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
Movie Review: A day in the life of a great city
Summary: 4 Stars
An experimental film in its day, and still today, BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY is presented as one day in the life of the city--Berlin, in 1929. In fact, the footage was taken over a longer period of time, and evidence of every season of the year is seen in the film's "movements." Less interested in story-telling than in matching shapes and shades to create a unified portrait of the city, Walter Ruttman assembles his images according to the rhythms of the day, beginning with a train arrival in Berlin, following with dawn and the start of the work day, the midday break, afternoon work, after-work recreation, and nightlife. The film is characterized by occasional social comment and ironic juxtapositions, some of which are all the more poignant to modern viewers, who know what Berlin would become in the years that followed. Absorbing viewing--a frozen moment in time, and a portrait of a relatively calm Germany in the lull between two catastrophic storms.
Summary of Berlin, Symphony of a Great City
The title says it all: this is a visual symphony in five movements celebrating the Berlin of 1927: the people, the place, the everyday details of life on the streets. Director Walter Ruttman, an experimental filmmaker, approached cinema in similar ways to his Russian contemporary Dziga Vertoz, mixing documentary, abstract, and expressionist modes for a nonnarrative style that captured the life of his countrymen. But where Vertov mixed his observations with examples of the communist dream in action, Ruttman re-creates documentary as, in his own words, "a melody of pictures." Within the loose structure of a day in the life of the city (with a prologue that travels from the country into the city on a barreling train), the film takes us from dawn to dusk, observing the silent city as it awakens with a bustle of activity, then the action builds and calms until the city settles back into sleep. But the city is as much the architecture, the streets, and the machinery of industry as it is people, and Ruttman weaves all these elements together to create a portrait in montage, the poetic document of a great European city captured in action. Held together by rhythm, movement, and theme, Ruttman creates a documentary that is both involving and beautiful to behold. The original score by Timothy Brock is lyrical and dramatically involving, complementing the mood and movement marvelously. Also included is the avant-garde short Opus 1, an abstract study in animated shapes and movement. --Sean AxmakerArt House & International VHS Video
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