Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
| 23 September 1927 (USA)
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A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Reviews
Claysaba

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

AutCuddly

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

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Bluebell Alcock

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

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Janis

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

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MartinHafer

"Berlin: Symphony of a Great City" is an art film that is pretty dull. However, it certainly does have a lot of historical importance. After all, the film shows a typical day in this city circa 1927--and by the end of WWII, most of it had been destroyed. In other words, it allows the viewer and historians to look back to a city and way of life that are gone.As for the movie, though, I just can't see why it has a current high rating of 7.9. This is very high--especially when it's a film with no real plot and which many viewers will become bored with after a while. After all, it consists of hundreds of clips all strung together to tell a tale of the city during a day--and that is all. It's competently made and of passing interest only.I like art films and documentaries--but this is a case of too much.

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chaos-rampant

Place: Berlin. Span: one day in the life of the city circa 1927 captured by the camera. We enter by train.One way to watch this, the most obvious I guess, is as a historic document, a snapshot of life as it was once. The old world just barely impregnated with faint traces of an archaic modernity; street cars, neon signs, busy streets, things we have now but were then just beginning to greet people. So with this mindset, as a museum piece that depicts an old version of our world.This is fine, but I urge you to engage it differently if you can. What if instead of merely observing exhibits from behind a glass panel, we get out from the museum into actual life? Instead of settling in for this as a historic - meaning dead, embalmed, academic - glimpse, we invigorate it with life that we know, with sunlight, texture, sound, breath that was then as real as it is now? How would it be in absolute stillness to feel present in the middle of a modern life?This is how the film was intended after all, it's plainly revealed this way. Not a fossil for generations of curious tourists from the future, but a celebration of life 'now', modern, busy life out the window.So no longer an old world that faintly reminds us of our own, but a new world, exciting, alluring, mysterious, alive with myriad possibilities. New things everywhere, novel pathways to travel, environments to experience. What I mean is, try to see the city as though you just got off the train and were visiting for the first time. It ends with the camera spinning around a flashing neon sign cut to match with fireworks erupting in the night sky.I urge you to inhabit this, settle for nothing less. Let its neon flowers blossom in you.

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rdjeffers

eine Postkarte von BerlinFriday June 15, 7:00 & 9:30 p.m., The Triple DoorBeginning 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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Ron in LA

A day in the life of 1920's Berlin, with arty mechanical shots, and a variety of urban experiences united by their time of day. This is painfully dull to watch, and has no continuity in terms of story line or characters. Its nice to have an authentic look at the past, and some of the mechanical shots, the whimsical statue-figure shots, and the evening entertainment shots are interesting, but overall it is a massive chore to sit through. It could be the overbearing score that pounds home the urban theme with a punishing tone that detracts from the film, and a kindler and gentler score could mitigate the films lack of entertainment value. Score or not, the overrating on this site of this film is beyond comprehension. People who claim to like this film deserve to watch Man With A Camera, the Russian version of the same thing, which is equally tedious.

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