Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (1927)
Director: Walter Ruttmann
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A textbook classic to which the years have not been kind. The portrait of a city dawn-to-dusk may not have been a hackneyed project in 1927, but it would soon become so. The unsophisticated structure, the mundane content of the images, the exclusion of overt human or social significance were all presumably deliberate, the better to centre attention on the montage, which is indeed dynamic and possibly 'symphonic', for those able to concentrate on editing rhythms for any length of time. Today it's the hidden camera banalities that hold the real interest, while the turbulent cutting ironically becomes a hindrance to actually engaging with these fragments of long ago and far away. Reissued in the '30s with an added score by Edmund Meisel.Author: BBa
Most popular on this site
Features
A lion in winter
Frank Langella hits the sweet spot in Starting Out in the Evening.
Dog day evening
Back with a taut new crime film, Sidney Lumet has plenty more to give.
Kiss of death
Goran Dukic proves that romance never dies in Wristcutters: A Love Story.
Monster in law
Jacques Vergès, infamous defender of Nazis and bombers, takes the stand in Terror’s Advocate.
Optic nerve
The eyes have it in “Views from the Avant-Garde.”
King of New York
TONY finds much to crow about at the 45th New York Film Festival.




What do you think?
Post your review now