The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Silent drama

DIRECTORS

Robert Siodmark, Curt Siodmark

WRITERS

Curt Siodmark, Robert Siodmark, Edgar G. Ulmer, Billy Wilder

STARS

Erwin Splettstößer, Annie Schreyer, Wolfgang von Waltershausen, Christl Ehlers, Brigitte Borchert

BEFORE

1927 Walther Ruttmann’s silent documentary Berlin: Symphony of a Great City chronicles one day in Berlin to an orchestral score.

AFTER

1948 Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, a key Italian neorealist movie, tells an everyday story shot entirely on location.

German cinema in the 1920s and 30s was noted for its style and technical expertise. But People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) is pioneering in a very different way, creating a fluid, freewheeling movie aimed at realism.

Filmmakers Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, then both novices, would later carve out a career in Hollywood making tense thrillers, but People on Sunday is the polar opposite. It is also very different from the later works of its screenwriter Billy Wilder, who developed its documentary style from reportage by Siodmak’s brother Curt, soon to write many of Universal Studios’ horror pictures.

"We’d sit at a nearby table while they’d decide what to do that day. It was completely improvised."

Brigitte Borchert

A movie experiment

The movie’s subtitle was “a film without actors.” It follows 24 hours in the lives of five Berliners, played by nonactors in roles based on their real lives. Wine merchant Wolfgang flirts with movie extra Christl. They arrange to meet in the lake resort of Nikolassee. Later that day Wolfgang visits Erwin, a cabdriver, and his wife Annie, a model. He invites them to the lake, but, after an argument, Erwin leaves Annie behind to join Wolfgang, Christl, and Brigitte, a salesclerk.

In retrospect, the artlessness of what happens next in the film is truly affecting, given that the movie’s makers would all be forced into exile before the decade was out. There is no cynicism, only the pathos of its characters’ optimistic faith in the often-repeated word “tomorrow.”

What else to watch: The Bicycle Thief (1948) ✵ À bout de souffle (1960) ✵ Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)