Reviews & Ratings for
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City More at IMDbPro »Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (original title)

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17 reviews in total

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23 out of 24 people found the following review useful:
A Beautiful and haunting film, 25 February 2002
Author: Bobs-9 from Chicago, Illinois, USA

`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.

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20 out of 21 people found the following review useful:
SPLENDID EXAMPLE OF FILMIC FUNCTIONALISM, 18 June 1999

Author: jan onderwater from Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Classic and splendid film that is still fascinating to watch. Walter Ruttmann did not make a documentary about Berlin, although 75 after date it certainly can be considered a document about a Berlin that is no more, he composed a film that tries to catch the essence of the atmosphere of a big city. The film is a good example of the art style Neue Sachlichkeit (functionalism): it is a cross-section of Berlin's life in which every element is equally important, shown without comment and in its totality it is the expression of the joy of Berlin's life. It is not a film about the life of Berliners, it is Berlin seen as a living mechanism.

The subtitle referring to Großstadt (big city) is the key, it could have been any other city. The idea as such is not the makers' prerogative. Elsewhere the fascination with the hustle and bustle of the big city was also present as was the idea to catch this on this film and in music: e.g. Cavalcanti in France made a film about Paris and the US Ferde Grofé composed his musical suite Metropolis (1927) with New York in his mind. The irony of all these endeavours is that the film or music is abstract, but that the result is a romanticizing view.

Ruttmann made several abstract film and he refers to them in the beginning with abstract horizontal lines dissolving to rail way tracks. In my view the rest of the film is also abstract. Although we see real people and situations the brilliant editing constantly keeps the film abstract: the situation and the people in a shot are not important, important is the juxtaposition to other shots: is the composition varied enough?. Thus we see a filmic composition (in stead of a musical one) and the subtitle Symphony is just. As with every composition the theme has to be modulated to keep it interesting and it is here where the weakness of the film is. The building up from the start and elaboration up to the beginning of the afternoon is splendid, precise and exiting; but from that point it bogs down for a while: we see another shop, another street etc. without adding much to what already was. It may be that Ruttmann was aware of this, note how quickly he finishes the afternoon to continue with the night-life and then immediately all the excitement and filmic fun is back.

In an 1939 interview cameraman Karl Freund said that everything possible was filmed using only candid cameras. I have my doubts. Let's take for example the sequence of the drowning lady: how could he make an extreme close-up with a hidden camera in such a brilliant angle? (By the way: if she really tried to commit suicide, was Freund himself not only one of the gaping bystanders without doing anything to save her?) How could he foresee the right angle to film the prostitute picking up her client near the cornered shop window? Not that it matters for the quality of the film, but it proofs the old adagium: filming is deceiving.

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15 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
A Fascinating Classic, 11 February 2005
Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio

This fascinating classic never loses its ability to capture the attention and stimulate the imagination of its viewers. The technique is creative and resourceful, the photography is beautiful, and the images are memorable. Everything fits together to make the idea work wonderfully well.

The opening sequence with the train is an exciting and well-conceived way to start the movie. As the pace picks up, the rush of images creates an abstract but very realistic sensation, and this train 'ride' is so enjoyable that you almost don't want it to stop.

But it's when the train reaches the station that the main part of the movie begins, presenting a very interesting stylized portrait of a typical day in Berlin, through a carefully-chosen variety of scenes and sights. It's interesting to see how the train imagery keeps coming back from time to time, and this, along with the obvious passage of time as the day progresses, gives it a coherence that makes it much more than just a collage of interesting images and scenes.

There are many interesting individual sequences, but what makes it such a gem is the way that everything fits together. The overall effect is remarkable, and it really has to be seen to be appreciated.

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10 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
the idea and the visualization, 15 December 2004

Author: whiteass1953 (whiteass1953@mail.com) from Moscow, Russia

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.

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9 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
Not a wasted frame., 7 November 1998

Author: Michael Miley from New Orleans, LA

Ruttman's film is a spellbinding tour-de-force in photography, managing to dazzle the viewer with each shot. Not a frame is wasted in this, the most photographically influential film ever.

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2 out of 2 people found the following review useful:
A Priceless Time Capsule of Germany's Weimar Period, 10 September 2009

Author: (flakmagnet15@gmail.com) from United States

This is a very straightforward and pleasant silent picture that delivers exactly what it promises. Namely: footage of Berlin, its residents, and the whole spectrum of city activities during an ordinary day in 1927. If you have any interest in seeing real life in Weimar Germany, this film is an excellent rental. It opens with an Eisensteinian-style montage sequence, as a train approaches the city. Upon its arrival in Berlin's Union Station, the city is remarkably desolate. As the film progresses, the city begins to wake up, and you are shown residents at work (mostly in factories) and leisure. You will see shopkeepers, businessmen, restauranteurs, policemen, soldiers, politicians; children at play and even some vagrants. The acts become gradually more harsh as the film progresses, with mildly unpleasant imagery beginning to creep in (e.g. shots of dogs fighting, footage of beggars, litter, an arrest, etc.), only to gracefully recede as the film reaches its closing. The final act shows Berlin's night life, which is as lavish and swinging as anything in our own "Roaring 20's." This is an impeccable time capsule and it has something to offer both film and history buffs. Berlin was truly a world city at this time, and it was extremely interesting to see everything in the Weimar's Golden period, before Hitler and the destruction that followed. Technically speaking, it is a very well made and restored film; the footage is crisp and the music was never overwhelming. This is a really easy film to appreciate and it is definitely worthwhile, particularly for history buffs. Highly recommended. ---|--- Reviews by Flak Magnet

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Seattle International Film Festival, David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com, 15 June 2007
Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

eine Postkarte von Berlin

Friday June 15, 7:00 & 9:30 p.m., The Triple Door

Beginning with the pre-dawn ferocity of a locomotive roaring into the city, Walther Ruttmann's cinematic tone poem Berlin: Symphony of a City (1927) hurls through a day in the life of grim Weimar fortitude and resilient humanity lurking beneath the controlled chaos of mechanized modernity.

Challenging himself as an art student to reach beyond traditional methods, Ruttmann sought to make his images move by literally painting on glass in his earliest films (Opus I – IV). As an interpretive abstraction, Symphony of a City represents a departure from conventional documentary film-making. Ruttmann assaults his audience with an organic visualization of the city in five acts, as his camera moves through the day, into steel mills and city parks, among the wealthy and the impoverished, while children play and factories roar. Words from a newspaper fly off the screen: Murder! Marriage! Money! Money! Money! A wild eyed woman throws herself from a bridge and disappears into the dark water while office workers feverishly pound their typewriters, lovers boat on a peaceful city lake, businessmen fight in the street and nightclubs reverberate in a jazz infused alcoholic frenzy.

First performed on September 23, 1927 at Berlin's Tauentzien-Palast with a score written and conducted by Edmund Meisel, Symphony of a City, was a kinetic alliance of music and images. As a theatrical experience, the unfathomable depth of subject matter and brilliance of editing fully retain the cacophonic impact of Ruttmann's intimate and unsettling urban postcard.

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Not as politically motivated as the Soviet documentaries, but an interesting document, 6 April 2012
Author: tomgillespie2002 from United Kingdom

Walter Ruttmann's documentary love letter to the German capital, shows the city from the morning proletariat on their way to work, to the decadent bourgeois night of Wiemar Republic, 1920's high living opulence. It shows the shops and market stalls opening, the streets filling, industry moving. The almost constantly static camera captures both the poverty and the affluence. Along with the single shots of the surroundings, there are the occasional flourish of the avant-garde; kaleidoscopic, spinning images similar in experimental joy as Al Bricks Looney Lens series (Split Skyscrapers, Tenth Avenue, NYC (both 1924)), often using split screens and other such optical effects to create hall- of-mirror comparisons.

The films style also often reflects the influence of Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov's Soviet montage, a style that suggested sub-textual meaning using a series of juxtaposing images. At the start of Berlin... the working classes, walking to their factories, moving uniformly, then images of cattle, and soldiers are sliced, creating the metaphor. Whilst not as politically motivated as the Soviet's, this is still an interesting document of a city living in stark contrasts, in a country still ravaged by the failures of WWI. But watching it now, you become reflective of the changes to this important city. It's history since the making of this film (events that the director would never see, due to his death in 1941), which is devastated by war, and divided by a wall. It's always fascinating to see visual "objects" of the past. Whilst this doesn't have the interesting longevity of the more political Soviet films, this is an important piece of silent-era documentary, and would go on to influence the British documentary movements of the 1930's and 40's.

www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

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Imaginative Homage To The German Capital City And Its Inhabitants, 2 December 2011

Author: FerdinandVonGalitzien (FerdinandVonGalitzien@gmail.com) from Galiza

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

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more interesting as history than film-making, but it has its moments, 3 November 2009

Author: MisterWhiplash from United States

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.

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