Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City


I viewed Berlin: Symphony of a Great City a 1927 silent film by Walter Ruttmann encapsulating 24 hours in the day of a city. I can enjoy the rhythms and the images, but to study the film I would want to take another look at Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera or Strand's Manhatta.


A few things were prominent for me on this viewing. It proves again that there is poetry in every day life. And that the mind likes the construction of thematic montage making those connections. Because one is locked into the structure of symphonic movements and a day in the city,so you go along for the ride. In the early acts, there is a stress on the mechanical and the industrial and later the rhythms of the machine become the rhythm of the people within the machine. One could say that the Berliners become the machine. But this is not without a kind of beauty and poetry.

And one can't be charmed by looking at these scenes with historical wonder three quarters of a century later. Berlin of the mid-twenties still had livestock next to the automobiles, streetcars and buses. Men wore hats and shop windows tried to wonder and delight. Ruttman shows a city in full throttle in a prime full of contrasts, not to stress either poverty and suffering or wealth and conspicuous consumption except in a kind of balance. It seems that rather than spend too much time considering if the film is superficial or not, let's be thankful for a document of the time, and celebrate its poetic tendencies and solid, if not revolutionary combination of imagery.

A couple of notes on the current DVD release: Timothy Brock's 1993 score serves the film well overall. It gets a bit bombastic but will bring the modern viewer further into the rhythms of this motion picture symphony. It also includes one of Ruttman's
abstract films Opus I full ofgrowing spheres and flowing paper like and other shapes of muted color which reminds me that I could seriously enjoy and explore the similar films of Oskar Fischinger someday.
posted by well-executed buffet at 10:45 PM
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