Some critics take it for granted that Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) lacks social comment. No doubt Ruttmann’s main concern is an aesthetic or ‘musical’ veneration of movement and momentum, and visual motifs are primarily used to reinforce this.
Shots of reels and levers are sometimes taken so close-up they are abstracted as moving shapes and angles. The quickening cuts of the train/tracks build toward a crescendo while also forcing the mind to fill in the sensory gap and ‘hear’ the train. The upward tilt of the church-like windows in the train dock reflects the change to a relaxed time signature and general reverence for industrial modernity. Steam filtered through the darkness reminds me of film noir tropes, but here it's simply a neutral form. But it’s hard to believe that a montage - ‘the perfect device to produce a vision of the world more complete than the human eye could ever afford’, according to Graf (2009) – is socially or ideologically ambivalent. Ruttmann’s vision is of a near-utopian modernity, where bodies are treated interchangeably with rotating gears in rhythmic harmony. Empty sewers resemble arteries of a big organism of which active humans become the lifeblood. This unity/circulation, aside from a study of movement, reflects transhumanist, futurist, or even communist sentiments.
More substantially, Ruttmann balances an appreciation of beauty and momentum through rhythm with a slight weariness of passivity and vulnerability amidst the modern industrial maze. There are omens - e.g., the repeated and sped-up dogfight – that produce tension according to the ups and downs of the symphony. The left/right arrows denote complexity or confusion. The recurring spirals echo the actions of machines, workers and rippling water, but also suggest hypnosis and seduction. Animals and humans thus sleep and rest, but are jolted into action (or escape) with the tempo. One spiral precedes a woman’s suicide. Graf (2009) notes its connection with mannequins and jewels forewarns the ‘commodification and exploitation of women’. I’d add that the printed repetition of ‘Geld’, meaning ‘Money’, contributes to show an underlying discord that arises with when one is lost in the 'spiral' of modernity, or unquestioningly accepts the industrial ethos.
The spectator’s contrived acting here also contrasts the ‘real’ Berliners, but they too are a part of modernity (i.e., cinema). They seem to be watching the reflective water after the suicide, as we do in the opening of the film. This collective narcissistic/voyeuristic social reflection is analogous to movie going, where cultures experience themselves through art. The clash of the suicide and the social spectacle relates to the paradoxically fragmentary/connective aspects of modernity typified by the cinema experience. For instance, I was more transfixed by Manhatta (1921) in class (I haven't seen many other silent films) than Berlin alone, which I pin down to a sense of disjointed intimacy unique to the cinema/theater, which draws attention to the shared screen space (O'Hara's An Image of Leda captures this experience well).
Another factor in attention is music (I watched some scenes with the ‘original’ score), which works with the visual symphony to unite the film as an emotional or sublime experience, whereas in silence my thoughts tend to be more verbal and tangential, and each scenic or rhythmic shift slightly disintegrated, bringing social ideology forward at the slight expense of aesthetics.
