People on Sunday
Encyclopedia
People on Sunday is a 1930 German silent drama film directed by Curt
and Robert Siodmak
from a screenplay by Billy Wilder
. It follows the lives of a group of residents of Berlin on a summer's day during the interwar period
. Hailed as a work of genius, it is a pivotal film not only in the development of German cinema but also of Hollywood. In addition to the Siodmak brothers and Wilder, the film features the talents of Edgar G. Ulmer (producer), Fred Zinnemann
(cinematography) and Eugen Schüfftan
, who had developed the Schüfftan process
for Metropolis
two years previously.
The film is subtitled "a film without actors" and was filmed over a succession of Sundays in the summer of 1929. The actors were amateurs whose day jobs were those that they portrayed in the film—the opening titles inform the audience that these actors have all returned to their normal jobs by the time of the film's release in February, 1930. They were part of a collective of young Berliners who wrote and produced the film themselves, on a shoestring budget.
People on Sunday is notable not only for its portrayal of daily life in Berlin shortly before Adolf Hitler
became Chancellor, but also as an early work by the future Hollywood writer/director Billy Wilder
before he moved to the United States to escape from Hitler's Germany. Wilder's mother, grandmother, and stepfather all died at the Auschwitz extermination camp. The film is also the directorial debut of the Siodmak Brothers. The film was produced by Seymour Nebenzal
, cousin to the Siodmaks, whose father Heinrich put up the funds to make the movie. This began a thirty-year collaborative friendship between Nebenzal and Wilder.
one Saturday morning. Its opening scenes show the bustling traffic of central Berlin.
The action of the movie centres on five central characters, and takes place over a single weekend. At the start of the movie, a handsome young man, Wolfgang (a wine dealer in real life) sees a pretty girl (Christl - a film extra) who seems to be waiting in the street for someone who has not arrived. He takes her for an ice cream, teases her about having been stood up, and invites her to come for a picnic the following day.
In the meantime, Erwin is carrying out his own day job as a taxi driver. While he is fixing the car, his depot receives a phone call from his wife, Annie (a model in the real world), who wants to know if they are going to the cinema that evening. Erwin clearly is not keen to go - he simply comments that Greta Garbo is showing until the following Tuesday. (One of the running themes of the movie is to play down the importance of the cinema in the lives of these young Berliners.) At the end of the day, Erwin returns home to find Annie moping about - she seems to spend most of her time lying on the bed in a fairly threadbare apartment. The couple start to get ready to go to the cinema, but they continually bicker with each other. The first row is over the pictures of movie stars in their bathroom - it is clear that all the actors are there for Annie's benefit, while the actresses are there for Erwin, because they punish each other by tearing up each other's photos. Another row is over whether Annie should wear the brim of her hat up or down. (Another recurrent theme of the movie is the self-centred machismo represented by Erwin and Wolfgang.) Wolfgang arrives in the middle of this argument, so Annie never gets to the cinema. Instead, Erwin and Wolfgang drink beer and plan to go to the countryside the following day.
As a result, the following morning finds the two men taking a train to Nikolassee, accompanied by Christl and her friend Brigitte (who both in the movie and in real life is a sales assistant at a record shop). Many Berliners seem to have the same idea - Nikolassee offers a beach, a lake, parkland, and a pine forest where daytrippers can spend a relaxing few hours. We see many such Berliners of all ages enjoying themselves on a Sunday at Nikolassee, including the four young people who are the focus of the film.
As the four friends have a picnic, swim in the lake, and play records on a portable gramophone, Wolfgang flirts with Brigitte, to the annoyance of Christl. At one point, after lying down with his arms round both women, Wolfgang play-chases Brigitte into the forest, where they find a secluded spot and begin to make love. (The camera trails away at this point, to reveal that there is a great deal of rusting debris nearby - presumably the remains of previous such picnics.) Afterwards, the four friends go for a boat-ride, where Erwin and Wolfgang manage to flirt with two girls who are in a rowing boat on the middle of the lake.
As they head back into Berlin, Brigitte suggests to Wolfgang that they meet again the following Sunday. He agrees, but Erwin reminds him afterwards that they had planned instead to go and watch a football match. It is not clear what they will decide to do, in fact - although it is clear that the two young men enjoy their carefree existence, without much regard for the feelings or wishes of the young women around them.
The final scene returns to shots of the streets of Berlin. The closing series of intertitle
s announces: "And then on Monday...it is back to work... back to the every day... back to the daily grind... Four... million... wait for... the next Sunday. The end."
Contemporary critics regarded the movie as an accurate and laconic portrayal of the Berlin they knew and saw the closing intertitles as an accurate claim that these characters represent ordinary real life Berliners. However, these closing words have also acquired an ironic poignancy today, since we are aware that it is not a carefree Sunday but the tragedy of Nazism that awaits the inhabitants of Berlin (and the film-makers themselves) in their very near future.
In 2005, the Netherlands Film Institute released an updated DVD of the film, restoring some missing scenes and commissioning a new score from Elena Kats-Chernin
. This is the version used by the British Film Institute as the basis for its own DVD entitled People on Sunday, released 25 April 2005.
The Criterion Collection released their edition of Menschen am Sonntagon Blu-ray and DVD in the United States on June 28, 2011, with both the Trio Bravo+ and Elena Kats-Chernin
scores as optional soundtracks.
Curt Siodmak
Curt Siodmak was a novelist and screenwriter. He made a name for himself in Hollywood with horror and science fiction films, most notably The Wolf Man and Donovan's Brain...
and Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak
Robert Siodmak was a German born American film director. He is best remembered as a thriller specialist and for the series of Hollywood film noirs he made in the 1940s.-Early life:...
from a screenplay by Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
. It follows the lives of a group of residents of Berlin on a summer's day during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
. Hailed as a work of genius, it is a pivotal film not only in the development of German cinema but also of Hollywood. In addition to the Siodmak brothers and Wilder, the film features the talents of Edgar G. Ulmer (producer), Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed films like High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.-Life and career:...
(cinematography) and Eugen Schüfftan
Eugen Schüfftan
Eugen Schüfftan was a cinematographer.He invented the Schüfftan process, a special effects technique that employed mirrors to insert actors into miniature sets. One of the first uses of the process was for Metropolis , directed by Fritz Lang...
, who had developed the Schüfftan process
Schüfftan process
The Schüfftan process is a movie special effect named after its inventor, Eugen Schüfftan . It was widely used in the first half of the 20th century before being almost completely replaced by the travelling matte and bluescreen effects....
for Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
two years previously.
The film is subtitled "a film without actors" and was filmed over a succession of Sundays in the summer of 1929. The actors were amateurs whose day jobs were those that they portrayed in the film—the opening titles inform the audience that these actors have all returned to their normal jobs by the time of the film's release in February, 1930. They were part of a collective of young Berliners who wrote and produced the film themselves, on a shoestring budget.
People on Sunday is notable not only for its portrayal of daily life in Berlin shortly before Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
became Chancellor, but also as an early work by the future Hollywood writer/director Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
before he moved to the United States to escape from Hitler's Germany. Wilder's mother, grandmother, and stepfather all died at the Auschwitz extermination camp. The film is also the directorial debut of the Siodmak Brothers. The film was produced by Seymour Nebenzal
Seymour Nebenzal
Seymour Nebenzal was a German film producer. He produced 46 films between 1927 and 1961.He got into film production through his father Heinrich Nebenzahl who in the early 1920s worked with German action star Harry Piel. In 1926 Heinrich Nebenzahl and director-producer Richard Oswald founded the...
, cousin to the Siodmaks, whose father Heinrich put up the funds to make the movie. This began a thirty-year collaborative friendship between Nebenzal and Wilder.
Plot
The film opens at Bahnhof Zoo train stationBerlin Zoologischer Garten railway station
Berlin Zoologischer Garten station was the central transport facility in West Berlin during the division of the city, and thereafter for the western central area of Berlin until opening of the new Berlin Central Station on 28 May 2006...
one Saturday morning. Its opening scenes show the bustling traffic of central Berlin.
The action of the movie centres on five central characters, and takes place over a single weekend. At the start of the movie, a handsome young man, Wolfgang (a wine dealer in real life) sees a pretty girl (Christl - a film extra) who seems to be waiting in the street for someone who has not arrived. He takes her for an ice cream, teases her about having been stood up, and invites her to come for a picnic the following day.
In the meantime, Erwin is carrying out his own day job as a taxi driver. While he is fixing the car, his depot receives a phone call from his wife, Annie (a model in the real world), who wants to know if they are going to the cinema that evening. Erwin clearly is not keen to go - he simply comments that Greta Garbo is showing until the following Tuesday. (One of the running themes of the movie is to play down the importance of the cinema in the lives of these young Berliners.) At the end of the day, Erwin returns home to find Annie moping about - she seems to spend most of her time lying on the bed in a fairly threadbare apartment. The couple start to get ready to go to the cinema, but they continually bicker with each other. The first row is over the pictures of movie stars in their bathroom - it is clear that all the actors are there for Annie's benefit, while the actresses are there for Erwin, because they punish each other by tearing up each other's photos. Another row is over whether Annie should wear the brim of her hat up or down. (Another recurrent theme of the movie is the self-centred machismo represented by Erwin and Wolfgang.) Wolfgang arrives in the middle of this argument, so Annie never gets to the cinema. Instead, Erwin and Wolfgang drink beer and plan to go to the countryside the following day.
As a result, the following morning finds the two men taking a train to Nikolassee, accompanied by Christl and her friend Brigitte (who both in the movie and in real life is a sales assistant at a record shop). Many Berliners seem to have the same idea - Nikolassee offers a beach, a lake, parkland, and a pine forest where daytrippers can spend a relaxing few hours. We see many such Berliners of all ages enjoying themselves on a Sunday at Nikolassee, including the four young people who are the focus of the film.
As the four friends have a picnic, swim in the lake, and play records on a portable gramophone, Wolfgang flirts with Brigitte, to the annoyance of Christl. At one point, after lying down with his arms round both women, Wolfgang play-chases Brigitte into the forest, where they find a secluded spot and begin to make love. (The camera trails away at this point, to reveal that there is a great deal of rusting debris nearby - presumably the remains of previous such picnics.) Afterwards, the four friends go for a boat-ride, where Erwin and Wolfgang manage to flirt with two girls who are in a rowing boat on the middle of the lake.
As they head back into Berlin, Brigitte suggests to Wolfgang that they meet again the following Sunday. He agrees, but Erwin reminds him afterwards that they had planned instead to go and watch a football match. It is not clear what they will decide to do, in fact - although it is clear that the two young men enjoy their carefree existence, without much regard for the feelings or wishes of the young women around them.
The final scene returns to shots of the streets of Berlin. The closing series of intertitle
Intertitle
In motion pictures, an intertitle is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of the photographed action, at various points, generally to convey character dialogue, or descriptive narrative material related to, but not necessarily covered by, the material photographed.Intertitles...
s announces: "And then on Monday...it is back to work... back to the every day... back to the daily grind... Four... million... wait for... the next Sunday. The end."
Contemporary critics regarded the movie as an accurate and laconic portrayal of the Berlin they knew and saw the closing intertitles as an accurate claim that these characters represent ordinary real life Berliners. However, these closing words have also acquired an ironic poignancy today, since we are aware that it is not a carefree Sunday but the tragedy of Nazism that awaits the inhabitants of Berlin (and the film-makers themselves) in their very near future.
Revivals
In the autumn of 2002, Menschen am Sonntag was presented at one of Berlin's popular Jewish Culture Days. The Berlin-based Eastern European group Trio Bravo+ was commissioned to produce a new silent movie score for the film, which proved highly successful and was subsequently released as a standalone soundtrack CD.In 2005, the Netherlands Film Institute released an updated DVD of the film, restoring some missing scenes and commissioning a new score from Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin is an Australian composer.Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent , and migrated to Australia in 1975.-Europe:...
. This is the version used by the British Film Institute as the basis for its own DVD entitled People on Sunday, released 25 April 2005.
The Criterion Collection released their edition of Menschen am Sonntagon Blu-ray and DVD in the United States on June 28, 2011, with both the Trio Bravo+ and Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin
Elena Kats-Chernin is an Australian composer.Elena Kats-Chernin was born in Tashkent , and migrated to Australia in 1975.-Europe:...
scores as optional soundtracks.
External links
- Contemporary criticism
- People on Sunday at German Films