People on Sunday
| People on Sunday | |
|---|---|
German film poster
|
|
| Directed by |
Robert Siodmak Edgar G. Ulmer |
| Produced by |
Edgar G. Ulmer Seymour Nebenzal |
| Written by |
Billy Wilder Robert Siodmak Curt Siodmak (story) |
| Starring | Erwin Splettstößer Brigitte Borchert Wolfgang von Waltershausen Christl Ehlers Annie Schreyer |
| Cinematography | Eugen Schüfftan |
|
Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek/Berlin (Germany) BFI (DVD) |
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Release date
|
4 February 1930 |
|
Running time
|
73 minutes |
| Country | Weimar Republic |
| Language |
silent film German intertitles |
People on Sunday (German: Menschen am Sonntag) is a 1930 German silent drama film directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer from a screenplay by Billy Wilder. The film follows the lives of a group of residents of Berlin on a summer's day during the interwar period. Hailed as a work of genius, it is a pivotal film not only in the development of German cinema but also of Hollywood. In addition to the directors and Wilder, the film features the talents of Curt Siodmak (story), Fred Zinnemann (cinematography) and Eugen Schüfftan, who had developed the Schüfftan process for Metropolis three years earlier.
The film is subtitled "a film without actors" and was filmed over a succession of Sundays in the summer of 1929. The actors were amateurs whose day jobs were those that they portrayed in the film—the opening titles inform the audience that these actors have all returned to their normal jobs by the time of the film's release in February 1930. They were part of a collective of young Berliners who wrote and produced the film themselves on a shoestring budget. This lightly scripted, loosely observational work of New Objectivity became a surprise hit.
People on Sunday is notable not only for its portrayal of daily life in Berlin shortly before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor, but also as an early work by the future Hollywood writer/director Billy Wilder before he moved to the United States to escape from Hitler's Germany.
The film is also the directorial debut of the Siodmak Brothers. The film was produced by Seymour Nebenzal, cousin to the Siodmaks, whose father Heinrich put up the funds to make the movie. This began a thirty-year collaborative friendship between Nebenzal and Wilder.
The film opens at Bahnhof Zoo train station one Saturday morning. Its opening scenes show the bustling traffic of central Berlin.
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Wikipedia