Berlin Symphony (2002) User Reviews

A cosmic zoom-in über post-modern Berlin

[jgcorrea · 7/10 · 8 October 2002]

Like its predecessor, Ruttmann's 'Berlin, Symphony of a Great City,' which it pays homage to, this is a film about the city itself as a huge living, breathing organism. Again, it violates the main principles of the documentary school by showing rather beautiful b&w images than important things. Its documentary value seems evident, though. This is a symphonic cascade of documentary images, in the manner of 'Koyaanisqatsi,' 'Manniskor i stad' and so forth. It is fascinating just to see what the people, clothing, uniforms, vehicles, streets, parks, restaurants, shops, theaters, nightclubs, and factories look like in this post-modern age of ours. The brutal, Stockhausen-like musical score is vitally important to bring this film to life. Visually, quite an experience.

Abstraction and discontent

[arnemyklestad · 8/10 · 9 April 2007]

Upon seeing Berlin: die Sinfonie der Großstadt, architect, writer, film theorist and cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer is said to have felt great discontent towards its absence of a conventional narrative, claiming that its superficial interest in the aesthetics of the metropolis failed to establish a connection among the portrayed phenomena by neither embroidering on the human element or presenting Berlin objectively detailed and geographically accurate. Looking at Ruttman's earlier work in Opus I-IV, his interest for turning abstract material into delightful, optical compositions are more obvious. It is in a similar way the metropolitan life is treated as a strictly aesthetic phenomenon in the symphony of Berlin. And by working with representational images, the film proved to have a wider appeal while still sharing the passive and static camera-work essential in his previous films. Personally, I feel that this quasi-documentary contains a highly present narrative that, through subjective angles and montage editing that don not compromise its objective cinematography, tells a story so clear it would put any Morgan Freeman voice-over to shame.

Urban Symphony

[EdgarST · 10/10 · 24 April 2007]

An architect and "avant-garde" painter who was involved as cinematographer in Fritz Lang's 1927 masterpiece "Metropolis", and as creator of the opening sequence of Leni Riefenstahl's controversial classic "Triumph of the Will", Ruttman made this famous "urban symphony" under the influence of the naturalistic approach of the Kammerspiel, although not completely free from the Expressionistic formulas. Ruttman starts with abstract forms that give way to his fascination with speed and train lines, but upon arriving in Berlin, he uses the landscape of the city to create a "melody of images" of people, objects, animals and daily routine.