Berlin: Symphony of a City

Director: Walter Ruttmann
Year Released: 1927
Rating: 3.0

More accurately, it's an examination of movement and motion and the energy of living in a Metropolis. When I say movement, Ruttmann covers it all: there are trains, buses, planes, trolleys, bicycles, wagons, motorcycles and boats and when people aren't shifting from one locale to another there are machines that are in constant motion (to wash dishes, to make lightbulbs, to print newspapers). As a time capsule, it's a well-composed glimpse into the past if not even close to being as fevered and imaginative as Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera - it also, aside from one suicide, gives a rather utopian (shallow?) view of the German capital.