Menschen am Sonntag
Germany 1929, Robert Siodmak, 74′
Originally, I was planning to go home to sleep after listening to Neil Brand’s “lecture”. He was talking about silent films in general, how he got to became a silent film pianist and what it means to him. It was an incredibly fun lecture, and a perfect advertisement for “Menschen am Sonntag”. He played a scene and started asking questions such as “Do you think they’re going to kiss now?” to give us a feeling how difficult it is to play to a film that you have never seen before. This guy’s quite a genius and I thoroughly enjoyed both his lecture and his music.
After “Menschen am Sonntag”, I am glad that I stilled my curiosity for this film, but I wouldn’t say that it’s that great. I see its merits and love how it’s even more “verismo” than everything British or Italian that I have seen so far, it was indeed what Neil Brand called the Ken Loach approach (I laughed when he mentioned that!), except that Ken Loach came after Italien realism and quite a few decades after “Menschen am Sonntag”. I don’t know much about the “Neue Sachlichkeit” and don’t know whether I would really like it or not. Something about the concept intrigues me as much as realism itself, but it depends on whether the execution would tend towards Russian realism (good) or French realism (bad).
As for the story in the film itself, I was mildly bored yet immensely intrigued by it. More than anything else, the relationships in the film are painfully realistic. It’s also interesting how the whole film is all about infidelity (since his girlfriend is not there, Erwin flirts with literally every girl around the globe; originally Wolfgang asks out girl no.1 and but ends up having a relationship with the girl no.2 plus he flirts with others), but the film never actually shows anybody committing ‘adultery’. Erwin doesn’t actually do anything in the end, and even though Wolfgang seems to plan to drop the girls right afterwards, he did not betray any of them in the first place. That’s the painful realism there, making the film both good and somewhat dreadful to watch at the same time. It was worse than “La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc”.
Afterthoughts
For every film you see, there will be 5 more films you want to see. This is especially the case for me and silent films. Just like with operas, I am pampered with live music screenings, and seriously I cannot imagine anything else. Perhaps I will wait my whole life to be able to see these films, perhaps it’s never going to happen, perhaps I will build my own personal cinema and engage some people to play… I can dream, right?
Both Pixelmatsch and 6451 have been completely overwhelmed by this film and probably can’t stand it anymore. As for myself, I rather completely different. On the one hand, I still hate the Babylon and can’t stand seeing it from the inside anymore; on the other hand, I now want to see more and more films. After watching “His Girl Friday” yesterday, I started picking up “Up” and “Everyone says I love you”. Just like Paris made me want to travel even more, the festival makes me wish I could continue watching movies like this. About 20 films in a week might sound like a lot, but how much is it compared to the myriads of things out there?
I must admit that my desire to watch silent films has become smaller right now though. As I mentioned, after the luxury of watching so many of them with live music, anything without live feels incredibly bland.
First of all, there are the films I have not been able to see due to stupid scheduling and other reasons:
– Maciste all’inferno
– Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed
– Greed
– Foolish Wives
– Die Büchse der Pandora
– Häxan
Then there are other Stroheims (now I want to see all of them?):
– Foolish Wives
– Merry-Go-Round
– Greed
– The Merry Widow
– Hello Sister!
And of course my love for Buster Keaton has strengthened. His other silents might not be as good as
– The Cameraman
– The Saphead
– Three Ages
– Our Hospitality
– Sherlock Jr.
– The Navigator
– Seven Chances
– Go West
– Battling Butler
– College
– Steamboat Bill Jr.
It is of note that this film festival didn’t show much by Lang and Murnau… in fact, non-German silents definitely dominated it, which is curious enough since all previous screenings were mostly German. (Perhaps Bothmer is just a nationalist like that, hrr hrr.) Silent films I want to see are indeed mostly German, but I also know that the young film industry in other countries except your usual suspects USA, Germany, France, Italy must be absolutely fascinating. It’s just difficult to say when I ever will see them. So these are a few other films I still want to see:
– Abwege (Pabst)
– Anna Boleyn (Lubitsch)
– Sunrise
– Wozzeck
– The Black Pirate (a film Neil Brand mentioned)
– Tartüff (Murnau)
– So this is Paris (Lubitsch)
– Die Puppe (Lubitsch)
– Die Spinnen (Lang)
– Spione (Lang)
– The Mabuse films
– À propos de Nice (Vigo!)
… This doesn’t even do justice to what I would want to see at all, there are too many films.
Ranking
And finally, every posting like this needs a ranking. I’d say 1-12 were really great, 13-18 were good and the last four were okayish to outright horrible. It was indeed a very good film festival where the majority of the films were great classics, and indeed all of them were very worth seeing:
1. Berlin, Sinfonie einer Großstadt
2. 3 Bad Men
3. The General
4. Queen Kelly
5. The Crowd
6. La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc
7. Die Bergkatze
8. Menschen am Sonntag
9. Blind Husbands
10. Battleship Potemkin
11. The Lodger
12. Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
13. Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
14. Intolerance
15. Die freudlose Gasse
16. A Page of Madness
17. Blackmail
18. Straight Shooting
19. The Unknown
20. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
21. Schastye
22. J’accuse