A day in the life of 1920's Berlin, Walter Ruttmann's images on screen is structured in a way showing us the great city. Ruttman toured us in the Berlin's awakening, mid-day rest, busy afternoon life, and evening leisure. A normal day in the heart of the city Berlin, but a day full of life and energy. On the whole, this sequence focuses primarily on people. Though it's true that it is not so much about the people of Berlin, although we see many of them, but it is not a film about the life of Berlin people, it is Berlin seen as a living organism.Scenes are edited and cut together based on relationships of image, motion, point of view, and content- the five reel film is divided into five acts. The first act starts the day, beginning with calm waters and a representation of a sunrise. The opening sequence with the train but it's when the train reaches the station that the main part of the movie really begins, presenting an interesting typical day in Berlin.Second act shows more how the usual morning starts, with the opening of gates, shutters, windows, doors, people busy cleaning, fruit carts, children going to school. A montage of monkeys biting one another, telephone operators, machinery, and dogs fighting is mixed into the general busy work of the office.The third act showed the busy side of the street's of the great city wherein a variety of people of different classes going about their business. There are industrial workers, construction workers, salespeople, shoppers, etc. A fight between two men breaks out briefly, but is quickly stopped by bystanders and a policeman. There are many crowds, a father and bride arriving at a wedding and a strong contrast of some flirtation on the street. Fourth is the lunch break where 12:00 is shown on a clock. Berliners start to eat and drink, and animals feed. There is a scene in the film wherein social issue was shown in symbolism form wherein during the lunch hour sequences, when we see the rich eating in fancy restaurants and the poor eating in harder conditions. Ruttmann then follows it up with the shots of a lion eating his big meal of raw flesh and a few kittens looking for food in the garbage. This is the only real significant hint but rather than seem like the portrayal of a serious social issue of Marxist ideology, that one of Marx's arguments is the difference of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. And as the camera moves among the wealthy and the less fortunate, while children play and factories roar. Words from a newspaper fly off the screen: Murder! Marriage! Money! Money! Money! A wild eyed woman throws herself from a bridge and disappears into the dark water while office workers pound the keys of their typewriters then on the lover's boat on a peaceful city lake. It shows how Ruttman has the power to shift the scenes gracefully and violently manner through each frame shown.Finally, the fifth act is the people's entertainment at night. Montage of entertainments includes hockey, indoor races, boxing and dance contests. The city starts to spin wildly, transitions into a majestic fireworks display, and thus concludes the day of the great city Berlin.This fascinating classic never loses its ability to capture the attention and imagination of its audience. The technique is creative and resourceful, and the images are significant. Everything fits together to make the idea work wonderfully well, truly a great classic and contribution to the world of cinema. Although the film seem portray the lives of the people in the city, humanity is not its focal topic rather the Berlin City itself, how it has come to life in film and how it will be remembered and visited in the time capsule Ruttmann has created for the whole world to see and appreciate.

Berlin: City Symphony is one of those early experiments in montage - early as in before sound was invented and right after Battleship Potemkin changed everything. It's not always montage, as some might believe from its recommendations (i.e. Koyannasquati), as the director Walter Ruttmann is making documentary as much as city-scape. It's about a full day and night among the dwellers and the objects of a city: the moving trains, the people shuffling by about their various concerns, and the people at jobs and things like a factory at work and phones being answered used for editing fodder.Some of this is dazzling work, cut and speed up to reflect a mood of a city that is vibrant and hectic, imaginative and crazy, and sometimes tending for the dramatic. Ruttmann also has a rather weird design with the pacing at times; a woman in one 'scene' looks over a river, and in a state of sorrow falls over. People rush over to see what has happened, and we see a shot of the water and the woman gone under... and then it cuts right away to a beauty pageant! It throws a viewer off to see Ruttmann's unconventional choices, and how images flow together like the racers (cars, horses, people, boxcars), and there develops a simple but engrossing poetry of people as "actors" in front of a camera on their daily travels or having fun like at the funshow in the auditorium. It's not always as exciting or delirious as a Russian counterpart like Man with a Movie Camera or Kino Eye, but it pays loving tribute to its city at its time and place, showing the light with the dark, the commonplace with the unusual.

An amazing work of the 'slice of life' films of the 20s, really the main and most admirable example along with Dziga vertov's Man With the Movie Camera, to this day, the film remains an effective portrayal of the great city that Berlin was even back when the film was made. In fact, as time goes by, it picks up even greater importance because of the historical value that it holds.What is truly admirable is the editing and the cinematography. Perhaps even more than the things that are contained in the framework, is the framework itself which has the first impact on the viewer. The wonderful photography, and the skilled editing that is able to go from man to machine, from trains to horses, from workmen to roller-coaster rids, are always elegant and original, even in regards to Vertov's later work mentioned above. It is, in fact, stylistically a Ruttmann work. Although the work of Vertov and Ruttmann are similar, there is a difference in the sense that while The man With the Movie Camera is aware of being a film, and plays with the process of film-making, Berlin actually lets the contents of the framework play out, and never quite interferes with it.

One can understand why this film might be important to the development of a certain film aesthetic. One can understand why it might have been interesting to view back in its day. But (much like Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera) I found it dull to watch today. Much early 20th-century fascination with large machinery, lots of shots alluding to "man as cog in the machine" Leninism, etc etc etc. And, as someone else here has noted, a number of the the "documentary" shots were clearly staged, which undercuts somewhat the life-on-the-street feeling the film is trying to convey.It is somewhat interesting to see pre-WW2 Berlin, but the editing moves so quickly that one really can't get a good sense of the city. I understand that, arguably, that was part of the point -- e.g. that all cities are the same, but being able to really look at pre-war Berlin might have made it a more intriguing film today.Overall, to me at least, it felt too much like a series of nickelodeon shorts pieced together for a false, or at least dated, effect.