Amazon.com video review:
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 Axmaker
