Toronto Silent Film Festival

Berlin:Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt Germany 1927

At once an invaluable photographic record of life in Weimar Berlin and a timeless demonstration of the cinema's ability to enthrall on a purely visceral level, Berlin, Symphony of a Great City offers a kaleidoscopic view of a single day in the life of the bustling metropolis.
The concept for the film came from Carl Mayer (writer for Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Sunrise, Last Laugh), who was influenced by the naturalistic Kammerspiel movement. He envisioned "a melody of pictures" springing from daily reality instead of the stylized artificiality of the studio-bound expressionist film. Following Mayer's rough outline, photographer Karl Freund deployed a team of cameramen to explore the avenues, alleyways and factories of Berlin and secure hidden camera glimpses of the people and machinery that provide the city with its constant motion. He captured the fortitude and resiliency of the people underneath the controlled surface of chaos and grim mechanized modernity.
The many hours of footage were then edited into a series of five acts, like movements of a symphony, by Walter Ruttmann (Adventures of Prince Achmed) as a continuation of his experiments with abstract motion. Ruttmann had made several previous abstract films and he references them right at the beginning with abstract horizontal lines dissolving to railway tracks. Although we see real people and situations, the brilliant editing constantly keeps this "realistic" film abstract: the situation and the people in a shot are not as important, as the combination of shots to one another. It is through this method that the interpretive abstract film crosses over into a style that suggests musical rhythm.
This film defined the formula of the "city symphony" film and, according to John Grierson -the filmmaker/critic who coined the term "documentary"-"No film has been more influential, more imitated."

Thanks to: Film Preservation Associates, David Shepard