Menschen am Sonntag

The working population get together for a Sunday outing. Even without sound, the film is full of music: a portable gramophone opens and closes the bathing trip. What we see is a series of spirited portraits linked to the culture of listening to music and taking photos out in the open.  On the one hand, there is the power of the record playing music that gets bodies moving; on the other the act of photography that captures a movement from life in motion as a pose. Following a script by Billy Wilder, this late example of the New Objectivity shows the life of young Berlin workers at the end of 1920s, which its makers referred to as a reportage, while the press spoke of an “experimental film”.