Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Encyclopedia
Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (German: Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt) is a 1927
German film directed by Walter Ruttmann
, co-written by Carl Mayer
and Karl Freund
.
The film is an example of the city symphony film genre. A musical score for an orchestra to accompany the silent film
was written by Edmund Meisel
. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary
style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life.
Other noted examples of the genre include Charles Sheeler
and Paul Strand
's Manhatta
(1921), Alberto Cavalcanti
's Rien que les heures
(1926), Andre Sauvage's Etudes sur Paris (1928), and Dziga Vertov
's Man With a Movie Camera
(1929).
This film represented a sort of break from Ruttmann's earlier "Absolute film
s" which were abstract. Some of Vertov's earlier films have been cited as influential on Ruttmann's approach to this film, and it seems the filmmakers mutually inspired one another, as there exist many parallels between this film and the later Man With a Movie Camera.
The film displays the filmmaker's knowledge of Soviet montage theory
. Some socialist
political sympathies, or identification with the underclass can be inferred from a few of the edits in the film, though critics have suggested that either Ruttmann avoided a strong position, or else he pursued his aesthetic interests to the extent that they diminished the potential for political content. Ruttmann's own description of the film suggests that his motives were predominantly aesthetic: "Since I began in the cinema, I had the idea of making something out of life, of creating a symphonic film out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city."
film, and does not have a story or a plot. However, the events of the film are arranged to simulate the passage of a single day (simulated from an assemblage of film shot over the period of one year). Shots and scenes are cut together based on relationships of image, motion, point of view, and thematic content. At times, a sort of non-narrative commentary can be implied, as in edits that juxtapose workers entering a factory with cattle being beaten and driven into a corral.
The five reel film is divided into five acts, and each act is announced through a title card at the beginning and end. One leitmotiv that is present in all of the acts, which largely connects them, is the theme of the train and streetcar. Much of the motion in the film, and many of the scene transitions, are built around the motion of trains and streetcars.
I Akt: The first act starts the day, beginning with calm waters and a graphic representation of a sunrise. Railroad crossing gates are lowered, a train travels through down the tracks and proceeds into the city, ending with a graphic of the "Berlin" sign approaching. The film then transitions through calm and empty streets, to the gradual process of the city waking up. At first, only objects are seen, such as a bit of paper blowing through an empty street, but soon a few people arise, then more are about, and the activity builds to crowds of workers going to work, pedestrians, busy streetcars, trains etc. A hand manipulates a lever, effectively turning on the city, and factory machinery springs to life. Glass bulbs are produced, sheets of metal are cut, molten steel is poured, smokestacks are seen against the sky, and the first act ends.
II Akt: The second act shows more of the general life of the city, beginning with the opening of gates, shutters, windows, doors, people busy cleaning, fruit carts, children going to school. Mailmen start their day, shops open. Different classes of people are seen, some mounting buses and streetcars, while wealthy men enter chauffeured private cars. The city is bustling with activity. Office workers prepare to start their day, as roll top desks open, people set out their pens, paper, open books, remove the cases from typewriters, and a bank of typists quickly erupt into activity. Keys on keyboards spiral around one another, and a montage of a spinning hypnotist's wheel, monkeys biting one another, telephone operators, machinery, and dogs fighting is mixed into the general busy work of the office, building quickly to a crescendo... phone receivers hang up. End of the second act.
III Akt: The third act shows more busy street life, and a variety of people of different classes going about their business. There are industrial workers, construction workers, salespeople, shoppers, etc. A fight between two men breaks out briefly, but is quickly stopped by bystanders and a policeman. There are many crowds, a father and bride arriving at a wedding, some flirtation between people on the street, a coffin on a hearse seen through the windows of a streetcar, a diplomat arrives at a ministry, the Reich President is saluted by police, a conservative students' organization is marching with banners, an angry protestor lectures a crowd, there are a few glimpses of racial minorities, lots of workers, and plenty of chaotic activity. Trains, trains, trains, and several newspapers held up for display, dissolving over one another, bringing us to the end of the third act.
IV Akt: The fourth act starts with a lunch break. 12:00 is shown on a clock, and the spinning wheels of a factory slow to a stop. A variety of workers leave their workplaces. People start to eat and drink, and animals feed. Some poignant transitions intercut a wealthy diner with a lion feeding on meat from a bone, and hungry street kids embracing their mother clothed in rags sitting out on the steps. Many types of people eat, and some rest. Some poor folk sleep on benches or wall ledges, while activity goes on around them. Animals are seen resting, as an elephant lays down, a work dog tethered to a cart lies on the pavement, various zoo animals loll about. Idle kids play. Finally, a demanding diner in a cafe taps his spoon on a sugar bowl, and it awakens the city again, as the animals rise, then factory machinery starts up, and workers return to work. A paper press churns out newspapers, and a man reads a paper which is held up for our view... words leap up prominently from the page, first "Krise" (crisis), then "Mord" (murder), Börse (markets), "Heirat" (marriage), and then six times "Geld... Geld...Geld" (money, money, money). A storm of sorts arises, with the montage of revolving doors, wind, roller coasters and trains, rain, cyclones of leaves, a woman peering frantically over a rail into water, cut against P.O.V.s of roller coasters, churning water, a crowd looking down, a splash, eyes, fighting dogs, etc. The chaos eventually subsides, and the day winds down, as workers finish their day, and recreation begins. Children play in a lake, boats come out to race, and many kinds of races and games are displayed, finally concluding with a few romantic couples on park benches and the fall of night.
V Akt: The fifth and final act is devoted to the people's entertainment at night. House lights come on, then many advertising signs are lit, and people go out to the theater. Curtains open on a variety of performances, including showgirl burlesques, trapeze artists, jugglers, singers and dancers. Audiences gather in a movie theater, and a brief glimpse is seen of Chaplin's distinctive feet and cane at the bottom of a movie screen. As people leave a theater show, some sexuality is implied by a man's hand caressing a woman's bare arm as they enter a taxi, and her bare calf and frilly skirt are displayed. They pull away, ignoring a child beggar, and a lit up hotel sign is next displayed. Another montage of entertainments includes ice shows and hockey, skiers, sledders, indoor races, boxing and dance contests. The leitmotiv of streetcars continues, and rail workers continue to work through the night. People drink, flirt, and dance in beer halls and cocktail lounges, while card games and roulette are played. The city starts to spin wildly, transitions into a firework display, and thus ends the final act and the film.
In 2007, a restored version of the film was shown with the fully reconstructed original score by Edmund Meisel. The premiere of this version took place at Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast on September 24, 2007, with live orchestral accompaniment by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
The Berlin-based electronic duo Tronthaim have performed their new audio dubbing to the film at numerous European cultural festivals, including "Notti d’Estate" in Florence and at the "Salon du livre" in Paris.
A score by Timothy Brock
was made for the film in 1993.
The film was re-scored by DJ Spooky
at The Tate Modern
in 2006 as one of the first performances of the museum to focus on live, large scale experimental cinema using the Turbine Hall.
Spanish composer Alberto Novoa Rodriguez recorded an electro-symphonic soundtrack for this film in 2009. He performed at the Babylon Cinema in Berlin with 15 musicians from a young musical group (Agrupación Musical da Limia. Xinzo de Limia). The album was recorded by members of the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia.
1927 in film
-Events:*January 10 - Fritz Lang's science-fiction fantasy Metropolis premieres in Germany.*April 7 - Abel Gance's Napoleon often considered his best known and greatest masterpiece, premiers at the Paris Opéra and would demonstrate techniques and equipment that would not be used for years to...
German film directed by Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann was a German film director and along with Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling was an early German practitioner of experimental film....
, co-written by Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer
Carl Mayer was an Austrian screenplay writer who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Haunted Castle , Der Letzte Mann , Tartuffe , Sunrise and 4 Devils , the last five being films directed by F. W...
and Karl Freund
Karl Freund
Karl W. Freund, A.S.C. was a cinematographer and film director most noted for photographing Metropolis , Dracula , and television's I Love Lucy .-Early life:...
.
The film is an example of the city symphony film genre. A musical score for an orchestra to accompany the silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
was written by Edmund Meisel
Edmund Meisel
Edmund Meisel was an Austrian-born composer. He wrote the score to Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis , The Battleship Potemkin , and other films of Sergei Eisenstein. Meisel was one of the more important and pioneering figures in film music...
. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
style, without the narrative content of more mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a kind of loose theme or impression of the city's daily life.
Other noted examples of the genre include Charles Sheeler
Charles Sheeler
Charles Rettew Sheeler, Jr. was an American artist. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.-Early life and career:...
and Paul Strand
Paul Strand
Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century...
's Manhatta
Manhatta
Manhatta is a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand.-Production background:Manhatta documents the look of early-20th-century Manhattan...
(1921), Alberto Cavalcanti
Alberto Cavalcanti
Alberto de Almeida Cavalcanti was a Brazilian-born film director and producer.-Early life:Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a...
's Rien que les heures
Rien que les heures
Rien que les heures is a 1926 experimental silent film by Brazilian director Alberto Cavalcanti showing the life of Paris through one day in 45 minutes...
(1926), Andre Sauvage's Etudes sur Paris (1928), and Dziga Vertov
Dziga Vertov
David Abelevich Kaufman , better known by his pseudonym Dziga Vertov , was a Soviet pioneer documentary film, newsreel director and cinema theorist...
's Man With a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera
Man with a Movie Camera , sometimes called The Man with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The Man With the Kinocamera, or Living Russia is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors, by Russian director Dziga Vertov, edited by his wife Elizaveta...
(1929).
This film represented a sort of break from Ruttmann's earlier "Absolute film
Absolute film
Absolute film is a film movement begun by a group of visionary painters in Germany in the 1920s: Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, Oskar Fischinger and the Swede Viking Eggeling....
s" which were abstract. Some of Vertov's earlier films have been cited as influential on Ruttmann's approach to this film, and it seems the filmmakers mutually inspired one another, as there exist many parallels between this film and the later Man With a Movie Camera.
The film displays the filmmaker's knowledge of Soviet montage theory
Soviet montage theory
Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing...
. Some socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
political sympathies, or identification with the underclass can be inferred from a few of the edits in the film, though critics have suggested that either Ruttmann avoided a strong position, or else he pursued his aesthetic interests to the extent that they diminished the potential for political content. Ruttmann's own description of the film suggests that his motives were predominantly aesthetic: "Since I began in the cinema, I had the idea of making something out of life, of creating a symphonic film out of the millions of energies that comprise the life of a big city."
Synopsis
Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis is largely an avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
film, and does not have a story or a plot. However, the events of the film are arranged to simulate the passage of a single day (simulated from an assemblage of film shot over the period of one year). Shots and scenes are cut together based on relationships of image, motion, point of view, and thematic content. At times, a sort of non-narrative commentary can be implied, as in edits that juxtapose workers entering a factory with cattle being beaten and driven into a corral.
The five reel film is divided into five acts, and each act is announced through a title card at the beginning and end. One leitmotiv that is present in all of the acts, which largely connects them, is the theme of the train and streetcar. Much of the motion in the film, and many of the scene transitions, are built around the motion of trains and streetcars.
I Akt: The first act starts the day, beginning with calm waters and a graphic representation of a sunrise. Railroad crossing gates are lowered, a train travels through down the tracks and proceeds into the city, ending with a graphic of the "Berlin" sign approaching. The film then transitions through calm and empty streets, to the gradual process of the city waking up. At first, only objects are seen, such as a bit of paper blowing through an empty street, but soon a few people arise, then more are about, and the activity builds to crowds of workers going to work, pedestrians, busy streetcars, trains etc. A hand manipulates a lever, effectively turning on the city, and factory machinery springs to life. Glass bulbs are produced, sheets of metal are cut, molten steel is poured, smokestacks are seen against the sky, and the first act ends.
II Akt: The second act shows more of the general life of the city, beginning with the opening of gates, shutters, windows, doors, people busy cleaning, fruit carts, children going to school. Mailmen start their day, shops open. Different classes of people are seen, some mounting buses and streetcars, while wealthy men enter chauffeured private cars. The city is bustling with activity. Office workers prepare to start their day, as roll top desks open, people set out their pens, paper, open books, remove the cases from typewriters, and a bank of typists quickly erupt into activity. Keys on keyboards spiral around one another, and a montage of a spinning hypnotist's wheel, monkeys biting one another, telephone operators, machinery, and dogs fighting is mixed into the general busy work of the office, building quickly to a crescendo... phone receivers hang up. End of the second act.
III Akt: The third act shows more busy street life, and a variety of people of different classes going about their business. There are industrial workers, construction workers, salespeople, shoppers, etc. A fight between two men breaks out briefly, but is quickly stopped by bystanders and a policeman. There are many crowds, a father and bride arriving at a wedding, some flirtation between people on the street, a coffin on a hearse seen through the windows of a streetcar, a diplomat arrives at a ministry, the Reich President is saluted by police, a conservative students' organization is marching with banners, an angry protestor lectures a crowd, there are a few glimpses of racial minorities, lots of workers, and plenty of chaotic activity. Trains, trains, trains, and several newspapers held up for display, dissolving over one another, bringing us to the end of the third act.
IV Akt: The fourth act starts with a lunch break. 12:00 is shown on a clock, and the spinning wheels of a factory slow to a stop. A variety of workers leave their workplaces. People start to eat and drink, and animals feed. Some poignant transitions intercut a wealthy diner with a lion feeding on meat from a bone, and hungry street kids embracing their mother clothed in rags sitting out on the steps. Many types of people eat, and some rest. Some poor folk sleep on benches or wall ledges, while activity goes on around them. Animals are seen resting, as an elephant lays down, a work dog tethered to a cart lies on the pavement, various zoo animals loll about. Idle kids play. Finally, a demanding diner in a cafe taps his spoon on a sugar bowl, and it awakens the city again, as the animals rise, then factory machinery starts up, and workers return to work. A paper press churns out newspapers, and a man reads a paper which is held up for our view... words leap up prominently from the page, first "Krise" (crisis), then "Mord" (murder), Börse (markets), "Heirat" (marriage), and then six times "Geld... Geld...Geld" (money, money, money). A storm of sorts arises, with the montage of revolving doors, wind, roller coasters and trains, rain, cyclones of leaves, a woman peering frantically over a rail into water, cut against P.O.V.s of roller coasters, churning water, a crowd looking down, a splash, eyes, fighting dogs, etc. The chaos eventually subsides, and the day winds down, as workers finish their day, and recreation begins. Children play in a lake, boats come out to race, and many kinds of races and games are displayed, finally concluding with a few romantic couples on park benches and the fall of night.
V Akt: The fifth and final act is devoted to the people's entertainment at night. House lights come on, then many advertising signs are lit, and people go out to the theater. Curtains open on a variety of performances, including showgirl burlesques, trapeze artists, jugglers, singers and dancers. Audiences gather in a movie theater, and a brief glimpse is seen of Chaplin's distinctive feet and cane at the bottom of a movie screen. As people leave a theater show, some sexuality is implied by a man's hand caressing a woman's bare arm as they enter a taxi, and her bare calf and frilly skirt are displayed. They pull away, ignoring a child beggar, and a lit up hotel sign is next displayed. Another montage of entertainments includes ice shows and hockey, skiers, sledders, indoor races, boxing and dance contests. The leitmotiv of streetcars continues, and rail workers continue to work through the night. People drink, flirt, and dance in beer halls and cocktail lounges, while card games and roulette are played. The city starts to spin wildly, transitions into a firework display, and thus ends the final act and the film.
Production background
According to Ruttman, a "hypersensitive film stock" was developed for use in this film, to solve lighting difficulties during night scenes.In 2007, a restored version of the film was shown with the fully reconstructed original score by Edmund Meisel. The premiere of this version took place at Berlin's Friedrichstadtpalast on September 24, 2007, with live orchestral accompaniment by the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.
The Berlin-based electronic duo Tronthaim have performed their new audio dubbing to the film at numerous European cultural festivals, including "Notti d’Estate" in Florence and at the "Salon du livre" in Paris.
A score by Timothy Brock
Timothy Brock
Timothy Brock is an American composer and conductor specializing in concert works of the early 20th century and silent film. His works include Nine Ball Suite , Requiem for the Old St...
was made for the film in 1993.
The film was re-scored by DJ Spooky
DJ Spooky
Paul D. Miller , known by his stage name DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is a Washington DC-born electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics or his fans as "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntablist, a producer, a philosopher, and an author...
at The Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
in 2006 as one of the first performances of the museum to focus on live, large scale experimental cinema using the Turbine Hall.
Spanish composer Alberto Novoa Rodriguez recorded an electro-symphonic soundtrack for this film in 2009. He performed at the Babylon Cinema in Berlin with 15 musicians from a young musical group (Agrupación Musical da Limia. Xinzo de Limia). The album was recorded by members of the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia.