Germany, 1929
Directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer
With Erwin Splettstößer (himself, a taxi driver), Wolfgang von Waltershausen (himself, a wine seller), Brigitte Borchert (herself, a record seller), Christl Ehlers (herself, a movie extra), Annie Schreyer (herself, a model)
A man, name: Wolfgang won Waltershausen, flirts with a woman, name: Annie Schreyer, and invites her at a café; they get along and after he walks her back to her home she accepts to give spend the next day with him. Later on that Saturday afternoon, a taxi driver, name: Erwin Splettstößer, also comes home after his shift to meet his bored and grumpy young wife, name: Christl Ehlers. The two end up arguing but their next-door neighbor, Wolfgang von Waltershausen, knocks at the door. Both men soon sit at a table to play cards.
Sunday has come and Christl Ehlers sleeps in quietly. But Erwin Splettstößer is keen to get up and move out: it turns out he has been, along with his wife, expected by Wolfgang who wished them as companions for the countryside trip he planned for Annie Schreyer. Annie arrives soon, with a friend of hers, name: Brigitte Borchert, and the four leaves Berlin’s dusty streets. They would fool around most of the day, both on solid ground and then on the river, with Wolfgang getting increasingly attracted by Brigitte. A love affair begins in earnest and Annie is forced to go home a lonely woman while Erwin is doomed to argue again with Christl.
The screenplay is written by Billy Wilder on the basis of a reportage by Curt Siodmak – the film purports just to depict the life of ordinary people in Berlin in 1929 and shoots a non-professional cast; actually the titles emphatically explain this is a film without actors and the first minutes are devoted to introducing the real folks who are going to play a part in the simple, linear, unaffected narrative. Cast as an experiment, the film seems to be a fresh take on naturalism applied to filmmaking, loosely associated to a new visual art school, the Neue Sachlichkeit, aiming to inject the reality of the modern life without resorting to a neorealist style favored by authorities and putting aside the hyper-sensitivity of the Expressionism.
Summing up the narrative cannot exhaust the contents of the film. The story in fact allows the camera to stroll through Berlin. The effort to capture the energy and routine of the city easily brings to mind Walter Ruttmann’s pioneering 1927 feature, “Berlin: Die Symphonie der Großstadt – Berlin: the Symphony of a Metropolis”. But as the four characters frolic, fuss, and flirt the film suddenly takes the French leave from the story and even from the portrayal of a town to focus on ordinary people; at one point the film camera works as a photo camera and the montage is a series of various faces that add up to look like Berlin’s human face. The experimental aspect of “Menschen an Sonntag – People on Sunday” – a pleasantly inaccurate title as it deals intensely with women’s faces and desires, shows kids and old folks and unfold over two days – yields a spontaneous and vivid picture of freewheeling life inside a happy and vibrant social community.
The film does not ignore more contrived tools and a more artistic vision of life: careful attention on light and shades on the faces, taken in close-ups, subtly convey, in a slightly but obvious Expressionist way, the feelings of love while the lack of harmony between Erwin and Christl is heralded by disquieting details (the tap that leaks, the wardrobe’s door that fails to stay shut, the screen isolating the sink that wobbles). Made by two young directors, it is a stunning description of what life was at that time and in that place, just as an economic crisis was looming, ready to upturn that life for the worst. Cinema seems like a hasty, zesty sketch by carefree kids playing hooky, eager to show and tell, glad to observe folks and places so thrilling and so alive. Film about the weekend, celebrating the weekend, it is a pause from more dramatic and ambitious productions – and still a wonderful kind of reportage.