Menschen am Sonntag (1930)
Genre: Documentary / Drama
Duration: 74 minuten
Alternative titles: People on Sunday / Mensen op Zondag
Country:
Germany
Directed by: Curt Siodmak, Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer and Fred Zinnemann
Stars: Erwin Splettstößer, Brigitte Borchert and Wolfgang von Waltershausen
IMDb score:
7,2 (3.932)
Releasedate: 4 February 1930
This movie is not available on US streaming services.
Menschen am Sonntag plot
Silent semi-documentary about four random people, two men and two women, who lazily spend their Sundays by a lake in Berlin. They don't know each other. Not much seems to happen until the four make contact.
Actors and actresses
Taxifahrer Erwin
Plattenverkäuferin Brigitte
Weinverkäufer Wolfgang
Christl
Annie
Kurt
Valeska
Heinrich
Ernö
Photo Subject at Beach
Reviews & comments
Movsin
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- 8286 messages
- 8441 votes
The crisis seems to be over and Hitler doesn't seem to be there yet in this semi-documentary with a lot of attention for a Sunday Berlin - what other city in 1930? - and a story about five characters, with first encounters. A bit naughty but witty how the players who had never stood in front of a camera before, portray human feelings which the meager intertexts allow.
Five well-known filmmakers worked on the direction, with Billie Wilder also responsible for the "screenplay".
Appropriate in length, I would say, interesting as a picture of the times and pleasant to follow.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Fisico
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- 10039 messages
- 5398 votes
In this documentary/production Menschen am Sonntag sketches an average Sunday in the bustling Berlin of the early 1930s. Even before power was transferred to Hitler, you experience a free and loose morality in and around Berlin. On a beautiful summer day, you see people enjoying themselves, meeting each other and just "living". A big difference with what awaits them a few years later. Nothing (or almost nothing) that resembles National Socialism.
Stylistically very well made. But I especially found the soundtrack very catchy. Nice tunes, but also nicely atmospheric for the visual images. For a production without a plot and sound reasonably entertaining although I expect a bit more in principle.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Fransman
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- 3028 messages
- 2273 votes
An absolute gem of pre-war film art, which I watched with pleasure and admiration. Not for a moment was it bothered that this was a 'silent' film, the few texts do the trick. Although I actually did not understand much of the mutual relationships between those two boys/men and those two girls. Who knew who? But that does not matter so much. They are having a nice time at the beach, where the underlying tensions regularly surface.
But what makes this film so special? That it is still so fresh and recognizable after almost a hundred years. Because even now families, friends, couples go to the beach, to a lake or to the woods on a beautiful Sunday. Recreation. But that was not so common then. It is the image of the big city, the hustle and bustle of traffic, the bustle in the shops, people on their way to their destination. But not depressing, rather cheerful. And on Sundays it was time for a diversion.
What also makes the film fascinating, we see pre-war Berlin in all its glory: the shopping streets, the U-Bahn, the stations, the clothes of the people, Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, and even a glimpse of the Reichstag. Everything breathes optimism, cheerfulness, progress. The economic crisis of the thirties had not yet struck and Germany was still a democracy. That must have been how it was and there are not many images of that left. Beautiful how these atmospheric images are interwoven with the lives of ordinary people.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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