Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City is a landmark avant-garde documentary that essentially invented the 'city symphony' genre. Walter Ruttmann's cinematography is genuinely exceptional — the rhythmic montage editing, the formal compositions of industrial machinery, crowds, and urban life are visually stunning even by modern standards. Novelty earns a 4 as this film defined an entirely new mode of documentary filmmaking, influencing countless works after it. There is no conventional acting since it is a documentary observing real city life, so Acting scores a 1 by necessity. The plot is impressionistic rather than narrative — a dawn-to-night structural arc that is engaging but not dramatically complex, earning a solid 3. The ending, while thematically resonant with its nocturnal energy and light imagery, is a somewhat abrupt conclusion to the day's rhythms rather than a truly memorable payoff, earning a 3.