Wordiezett
So much average
BelSports
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
Derrick Gibbons
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
FerdinandVonGalitzien
Many times the most exciting trip is right around the corner; you don't need to go to some distant place as this Herr Graf often does ( of course common people can't afford it anyway ) or travel to exotic countries to discover and enjoy new landscapes and the different customs and accents of their people. A perfect example can be found in the film "Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt" (1927) wherein its director, Herr Walter Ruttmann, our avant-garde and eccentric cicerone, takes the audience on a special and experimental trip around the city of Berlin.It's certainly very complicated for a conservative German count, accustomed to simple classic film narrative, to describe this film but basically it is a modern, audacious, poetic, suggestive and unique portrait of a city that no longer exists. It is an historical picture of Weimar Berlin enriched by brilliant editing (that sometimes gives the viewer a sense of vertigo) and dazzling images. The film depicts the daily lives of the citizens of Berlin: young and old, rich and poor, people going about routine jobs in factory or office and the thrilling night life. Trains, machines and architecture are all part of a symphony of frenzied activity orchestrated by Herr Ruttmann in a superb and imaginative homage to the German capital city and its inhabitants.And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must wander through the empty Berlin Weimar streets.Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com
MisterWhiplash
Berlin: City Symphony is one of those early experiments in montage - early as in before sound was invented and right after Battleship Potemkin changed everything. It's not always montage, as some might believe from its recommendations (i.e. Koyannasquati), as the director Walter Ruttmann is making documentary as much as city-scape. It's about a full day and night among the dwellers and the objects of a city: the moving trains, the people shuffling by about their various concerns, and the people at jobs and things like a factory at work and phones being answered used for editing fodder.Some of this is dazzling work, cut and speed up to reflect a mood of a city that is vibrant and hectic, imaginative and crazy, and sometimes tending for the dramatic. Ruttmann also has a rather weird design with the pacing at times; a woman in one 'scene' looks over a river, and in a state of sorrow falls over. People rush over to see what has happened, and we see a shot of the water and the woman gone under... and then it cuts right away to a beauty pageant! It throws a viewer off to see Ruttmann's unconventional choices, and how images flow together like the racers (cars, horses, people, boxcars), and there develops a simple but engrossing poetry of people as "actors" in front of a camera on their daily travels or having fun like at the funshow in the auditorium. It's not always as exciting or delirious as a Russian counterpart like Man with a Movie Camera or Kino Eye, but it pays loving tribute to its city at its time and place, showing the light with the dark, the commonplace with the unusual.
whiteass1953
It's like Koyaanisqatsi of 20s! It's miraculous! Awesome! It's all about the idea of a great city moving forward up-tempo but still having quite common problems of Germany's twenties – poverty and exacerbation, nevertheless Berlin being one of the most fashionable cities of Europe of that particular time. But it's not the movie's main account. Its atmosphere was created by excellent cameraman work. The frame when a train moves right into you and then suddenly turns away is quite impressive. Never seen that advanced cameraman till Citizen Kane. I'd also definitely recommend watching Ruttmann's 'Lichtspiel Opus I ', an avant-garde animated movie created in 1921.
Bobs-9
`Berlin, Symphony of a Great City' is a film I've watched over and over with fascination. I think it's true that it is not so much about the people of Berlin, although we see many of them, but the city itself as a huge living, breathing organism. Back in the 1930s filmmaker John Grierson apparently wrote that this film `created nothing,' and that it violated the first principles of documentary by showing us nothing of importance but beautiful images. Looking at it more than 70 years after its creation, however, its documentary value seems evident to me, at least. I find it fascinating just to see what the people, clothing, uniforms, vehicles, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, theaters, nightclubs, and factories looked like in that distant time and place. It's amazing to contemplate how soon this complex, sophisticated society would be consumed in the most primitive debauchery. Do these people really look that much different from those we see on our streets every day? It makes me wonder what we're all potentially capable of.Some slight differences do seem apparent, however. When a fight breaks out in a public place today, people usually try to ignore it, or even duck their heads and run for cover. But in a scene where two men argue violently in the street, the Berliners of the 1920s crowd in close around the combatants, and even try to separate them and arbitrate the dispute, before a policeman moves in. Whether this was typically European at that time, or just typical of its era, I really can't say, but it seems strange to me today.Although I think the majority of this film was shot in a candid manner, and looks it, it's obvious that not quite all of it was un-staged, as a previous commentator has pointed out. For example, look at the argument scene just mentioned. Considering one of the camera angles (probably from a 2nd floor window), the argument must have been staged at the exact spot where this camera could catch it, and the crowd's reaction, from above. In addition, a second camera was in place at street level to move in close, which hardly suggests a serendipitous event.A good musical score is vitally important to bring this film to life. It's too bad the original score has been lost. It would be fascinating to know what it was like. But I think the one written by Timothy Brock for the Kino edition is superb in that it captures its changing moods and rhythms. If, as one internet reviewer commented, it seems a bit melancholy, that may be apropos considering that this beautiful city, and a great many of its inhabitants, would be consumed in fire less than 20 years later.
