FREE ON YOUTUBE Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt

The comparison falls short and of course it is also a bit unfair. The comparison of Vertov's Man_With_A_Movie_Camera and Ruttmann's Berlin: The Symphony of the Big City. Especially since Ruttmann's film was shown in cinemas! Nevertheless, most of you probably prefer the revolutionary Soviet cinema. Ruttmann himself belonged to a similar school; that of the absolute filmmaker and in this sense Berlin can be considered an avant-garde city symphony. In contrast to the Russian variant, Ruttmann works with a traditional structure. He performs a whole day, strictly linear. The document of a capitalist society, a world of work. Ruttmann staged his pseudo-documentary half a decade before Germany (and he himself) fell into fascism. Of course, one wonders how many of the good workers and children in the picture will plunder Jewish businesses just a few years later and help the mass murderers? Could that happen to us today? Ruttmann shows us this legendary state of the Weimar Republic, whose decadence was to lead to Hitler. However, politics is largely ignored. Just once soldiers march past us and we can take a look at Hindenburg. Was he actually president then? Then Ruttmann captures the legendary nightlife, the better society, the age of jazz. Of course, this seems to be more baroque in Germany of the 1920s than in other "western" countries!(...)