Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt) is a short 1927 silent film directed by Walter Ruttmann and gives viewers a look at an average day of Germany’s capital city during the interwar years. The first half of the film (Reel 1) opens with a shot of dark water, followed by footage of a train racing along a track and passing telephone poles, farm houses, moving over a bridge, and passing a small town (03:24). The train moves past a factory on the outskirts of Berlin. Viewers see various neighborhoods of Berlin from the perspective of the train (04:06), before the train arrives at the city’s central train station (04:55). The film shows a bird’s-eye-view of downtown Berlin (05:15), featuring the train station, what appears to be a government building, a cathedral, and a clock tower. Viewers see several quiet, deserted streets, a shot of a sewer tunnel (06:52), the front edifice of a large building, inside a factory, and a storefront window with mannequins. A man walks his German Shepherd on the street (08:30). A cat moves along the sidewalk in front of stores. A man walks across a street and hangs a poster (09:23). Two policemen walk on patrol. Train workers open large doors to the engine house (roundhouse), and locomotives move out, including one that services Potsdam (10:10). Men walk to work. A trolley car stops on a street (12:14). Footage shows the city coming to life, as people walk around, board trolley cars, and head to what appears to be the central train station (12:43). People flood the train station, walking to different platforms to catch trains. Cattle are herded on a cobblestone street. Soldiers march down another street (13:52). People walk toward what appears to be a bridge (14:03). A man plays what appears to be a street organ (14:12). Viewers see a large factory with four large smokestacks—signage reads “Gebr, Heyl, &Co” (14:28). Inside a changing room, men dress in work overalls (15:05). Heavy machines start up, and viewers see some factory production in action: lightbulbs are produced, metal is machined, glass bottles are filled with milk. Steel is smelted and poured into molds (17:17). Viewers see store fronts start to open, and people open the shutters on their homes and hang things to air out. A man pulls a produce cart onto the street. Maids clean in front of a large home (18:34). A man drives a horse-drawn carriage. Young girls walk to school (19:10); the film also shows boys walking to school. Several men ride horses out of a stable and down a dirt path (21:05). Footage shows people cleaning or beating rugs, street-sweeping cars (21:45), and people pushing water into a gutter. There are good shots of people walking down various streets, climbing onto double-decker buses, and riding in trolley cars. A well-to-do man climbs into the back of his chauffeured car (22:42). At the train station, people board trains, and then footage from the POV of a locomotive shows the train going through a tunnel and entering a station, concluding the first reel of the film.
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film. He also worked with sound alone (Wochenende, 1930).
Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis is an example of the ‘city symphony’ film genre. 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. This film represented a sort of break from Ruttmann’s earlier “Absolute films” 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.
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