1927 · documentary · german
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Directed by Walter Ruttmann1h 9m1927
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.
Our read: Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) reads as a neutral, breathless, inventive documentary · german entry — gentle in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature.
Neutral, breathless, gentle documentary / german, inventive in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, cold.
- kinetic
- gentle
- inventive
- cold
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How Berlin feels to watch.
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“You want a dazzling silent montage capturing a day in 1920s Berlin.”
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