People on Sunday

Marvellous late German silent that anticipates the Italian neo-realists, although I note some claim that this is not realistic at all and may even be showing struggling Berlin through rose tinted glasses. I'm not sure; those fantastic city sequences seem real enough and perhaps the regularly intoned opinion that Hitler was lurking in the shadows of a dispirited people, is itself a little fanciful. In any event this is a great little film filled with fantastic shots, moving street shots of and from moving trams, poetic close-ups of the young folk and a great sense of landscape at the lakeside. As usual with me and silent movies, I seem to get captions I don't need because the action is so obvious and whole sequences of back and forth dialogue left untitled. But just to watch the imagery is good enough and the little trysts, arguments, upsets and loving looks need no titles at all.

One of the surprising things about this film is the very acute, naturalistic and fundamentally humorous performances from an amateur cast, lacking all the usual strange, exaggerated mannerisms of silent cinema. The other impressive aspect of the film is the beauty of the photography, always playful and probing: the scene where an old man responds to the pompous nationalistic statues in the park is brilliant and affecting, if rather ambiguous. The modern score that was provided in the version I saw was effective and fitting: to be recommended. I agree that it all seems rather unreal, given that it takes place in 1929- yet it strikes me as not so much realistic, as naturalistic: perhaps striving to depict normality in difficult times. A very good and fundamentally humane film, lacking any real plot or suspense, but full of really interesting moments.

A German silent curio heralds several future magnates of the film industry in Hollywood, PEOPLE ON Sunday is the debut feature for both its directors Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer, with a script from a tender-age Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann in the camera branch. It is a bracing urban symphony of Berlin during the interwar times, confining its time-frame within a weekend, convenes a cast of five non-professional young actors (who are essentially playing themselves) and blithely breaking the boundary of studio lot and taking the story onto the streets of the metropolis, from a rush-hour Behnhof Zoo train station near the beginning to the movie's main course, a Sunday outing in Wannasee.

The quintet are Erwin, a taxi driver, his model wife Annie, and his friend Wolfgang, a wine dealer, then Christl, a film extra Wolfgang accosts in the said train station and Brigitte, her friend, who works in a record shop. Throughout its simple plot structure, the narrative heartily proceeds with a bifurcating stratagem, a plump, honest-looking Erwin's squabble-plagued marital life with a languorous Annie in their pokey bedsit, contrasting with a louche Wolfgang's pat oscillation in wooing either Christl or Brigitte, furthermore, a tangible rift is wondrously evinced between the two flappers, Christl is the prim and proper type, who naturally spurns Wolfgang's advances in the well-orchestrated lake-swimming sequences, but when she notices that Wolfgang takes his offensive towards a more skittish Brigitte and the two become lovey-dovey, she can barely contain her pique, not only to Wolfgang, but also to her girlfriend.

Yet, what leaves the most piquant tang is a thoroughgoing embodiment of machismo by the two male creatures, Erwin is the off-limits married man, both girls give him a decent berth, humbled by a comparatively more good-looking and athletic Wolfgang, he knows his role very well, a sausage juggler for laughter, a cavalier company, completely forgets about Annie's absence when there are new girls around, but also seemingly attests that, when sex is off the table, girls are just girls, no further communication is worth his effort. Wolfgang is more or less more readable, cops a feel whenever he can find a chance but will not get his feet wet into a stable relationship, and if a girl becomes too pushy, there is always a Sunday football match he can attend with his buddy Erwin.

A lilting juvenilia robustly interpolates expressionistic portraiture and vignettes (there are some very impressive close-ups both in still and in motion should be attributed to the young but ingenious film crew) in all the larking and perambulating, PEOPLE ON Sunday can still turn heads not just as a chirpy comedy, but also, a counter-time escapist prose because unfortunately we cannot blot out the fact that something egregiously sinister was incubating in that touchy era and that particular country.

In France ,Marcel Carné released his first film ,a short ,at about the same time:it was called "Nogent ou l'Eldorado du Dimanche" and it depicted the Parisians' life ,leaving the city for the banks of the Marne river ,spending a wonderful sunny day,then waiting for the next Sunday...

Carné's work was only a short (15 min) whereas Siodmak/Ulmer's film is about one hour and a quarter long.But the subject is the same.The main difference lies in the fact that,being much longer,the script writers could introduce characters .As an user has already pointed out,its games of love and jealousy in the sun ,the picnic and the pedal boat predate Jean Renoir's "Une Partie de Campagne" by six years.But Maupassant's short story was then and "Menschen am Sonntag" is now.Its documentary side is absorbing and should appeal to historians.

With "Menschen" ,a great director,too often forgotten or overlooked,Siodmak was born.Almost everything the man directed -not only the mind-boggling film noirs of the forties but the French ones ("Mister Flow" "Mollenard" "Pièges" ) and the German ones (this one,"Stürme der Leidenschaft" "Brennendes Geheimnis") as well- demands to be watched.

This silent semi-documentary boasts quite a remarkable roster of young talent behind the camera: Billy Wilder, writing his first screenplay; Curt and Robert Siodmak at the helm, aided by contributions from Edgar G. Ulmer and Fred Zinnemann – all of them still in their twenties, all at the beginning of notable careers. The most interesting aspect in front of the camera is the shots of everyday life in Berlin immediately before Adolf Hitler's meteoric rise to power. Many of the people you see going about their ordinary, everyday lives – including possibly the young leads – will have participated in the war into which Hitler would plunge their country in nine short years – or been consigned to concentration camps from which they'd never emerge.

The plot is virtually non-existent: a couple of young men take a couple of young girls to the park for a little frolicking in the lake (and something a little more intense for one couple). The characters are curiously remote, making it difficult for the audience to get to know – or like – them. They are no heroes or villains as such – although there is an air of callousness about the men – so perhaps in a way, this apparent decision to keep at the audience at arm's length can be seen as one of the film's strengths – a reflection of people the way they are (the leads were all non-actors, plucked from obscurity for their brief moment of film stardom before returning back to lives of anonymity). This sense of emotional detachment persists even when the film reaches its most sensuous moments, possibly because Wilder et al fail to decide whether they are telling us a story about people as a group or people as individuals and thus devote inadequate time and attention to both.