You arrive by train in the early morning and spend a day in Berlin, including the evening with its entertainment. Rather than following one person's wanderings around the city, 'Berlin - Die Sinfonie der Großstadt' offers series of vignettes that show everyday life in the city: Workers arriving at the factory and later having lunch, wealthy citizens riding their horses in the Tiergarten, children playing, people on the underground or tramway and so on. Initially (in the morning) the pace of the film is slow. Then it quickens as the day gets going, and slows down again towards the evening. I watched it because I spent a large part of my life in Berlin and was wondering how much I would recognise. Sadly, apart from a few landmarks that survived the war or were reconstructed (the cathedral, the royal palace, the 'Red Townhall') almost everything is changed. Two things struck me: First, the extent to which Berlin in the 1920s was characterised by heavy industry. This has all gone, of course, but even back then it must have been an essentially political phenomenon. Berlin and the area around it do not have any natural resources (coal, iron ore etc.), and transport links are not great either. However, being in a place where you could directly access the government and lobby politicians evidently mattered, even more so in a time before modern communications technology. The other remarkable thing is how much background knowledge that directer Walter Ruttmann took for granted is nowadays gone. I constantly wanted to stop the film and ask what was going on there, but the quick cuts and changes from one scene to the next (especially in the middle part) made it impossible to find out. Do I recommend the film? Definitely if you are interested in Berlin, in Weimar Germany or in the social and economic history of the interwar period. If you are not, you may find it pretty dull.
