Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

Walter Ruttmann's portrait of one day in Berlin, from the morning trains arriving at an empty city through work, meals, nightlife, and back to the factories at dawn. There is no story and no characters — the city itself is the subject, organized in five "acts" that move through the rhythms of modern urban life. Edited like a piece of music with a commissioned score meant to be performed live, it established the "city symphony" genre and directly inspired Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera two years later. The film is in the public domain in the United States.