Dir. Edgar Ulmer and Robert Siodmak

Best known rather sensationally as �The Movie Hitler Tried To Destroy�, People On Sunday has survived the political maelstrom of the 20th century and found itself transferred onto DVD in a new cut. The original negatives long since lost, this version was constructed using existing footage from several versions, assembled by the Netherlands Film Museum. An inspiration to the directors involved in both the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealists of the 1950s and 60s, People On Sunday is also credited with launching the careers of several cinematic luminaries including Robert Siodmak (Criss Cross, The Spiral Staircase)and Edgar Ulmer (Detour), sharing credit as director; Fred Zinneman (High Noon, The Sundowners) as camera assistant and Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot) and Curt Siodmak (I Walked With A Zombie) both taking credit for the screenplay.

What saves People On Sunday from being of interest solely as an early example of cinematic icons honing their craft is the radical style and content of the film. The film itself a breezy, character-driven depiction of everyday life in Berlin at the turn of the 30s, just before the tidal wave of economic depression swept over Europe throwing the continent into turmoil for the next 20 years. Like Jean Renoir�s Une partie de campagne (1936) was defiantly apolitical in a time of murky nationalism (and unlike his much more vicious 1939 masterpiece La regle du jeu), People On Sunday takes a similarly humanist approach to its seemingly frivolous subject. The film follows the exploits of its protagonists as they while away a summer Sunday at a lake just outside the city (presumably Lake Krumme Lanke, appropriately enough for such a joyously immoral tale, it is now better known as the unofficial nudist beach in Berlin!). Made in the same year as Man With A Movie Camera, Ulmer and Siodmak were clearly reading from the same page as Vertov in their attempts to create a kaleidoscopic view of human experience. Where the two diverge is perhaps the key to pinpointing why People On Sunday is so startling to audiences today.

Whereas Vertov�s film was essentially a montage of life in the city with an emphasis on industrial process and the movement of the urban populace, People On Sunday gives much more focus to human passions to the extent that the pursuit of sexual release becomes a narrative driving force. It is this vibrant immorality and a general sense of anarchy lurking beneath the restricting social order of the city that People On Sunday is to be applauded for. The unwillingness of the filmmakers to judge the protagonists� behaviour is a refreshing sight in an age where filmmakers feel a moral compulsion to rationalise immorality. Just as their decision to remain very much off screen (unlike the more self-reflexive Vertov) gives their characters more space to run amok without being restricted by Brechtian framing devices. The film ends with a sobering montage of the people of Berlin returning to the treadmill of the working week on Monday morning, enforcing the impression that the film is intended as a celebration of life unbound by social limits (whether political, economic or moral), that the Sabbath has ironically come to represent.

P.S. The accompanying score on the BFI release is slightly intrusive at times. Why not experiment with one of your own choosing. I recommend Miles Davies�s Kind of Blue. Nice!

David Taylor
Assistant Manager, Twentieth Century Flicks
September 2005