De stad die nooit rust or The City That Never Rests is a film about Rotterdam and its port. Alternating between promotional film, documentary, and city symphony, it portrays a vibrant city with busy streets, bridges, canals, and markets, before moving gradually from the smaller inner harbors to the enormous outer seaport. With its descriptive intertitles and animated maps, which emphasize spatial orientation and architectural and geographical specificity, the film shows Rotterdam as a unique and particular urban place, as opposed to the abstract evocations of urban modernity found in some other city symphonies. A unique picture of pre-World War II Rotterdam, The City That Never Rests portrays a city that was almost completely destroyed 12 years later.
The film was made by the German baron Friedrich von Maydell (1899–1938), who in 1927 established the Rotterdam-based film production company Transfilma, and Hungarian photographer and cameraman Andor von Barsy (1899–1964), who later worked with Leni Riefenstahl on Olympia (1938) and was awarded prizes for best cinematography at the film festivals of Venice and Berlin. In 1929, Von Barsy made Hoogstraat, an avant-garde short about Rotterdam’s main shopping street. Although Von Maydell was officially credited as director of The City That Never Rests, the film can be attributed to Von Barsy and his outstanding cinematography. Before shooting this feature-length city film, he and Transfilma had already made several other films for Rotterdam companies and the municipality. In fact, The City That Never Rests turned into a commissioned work as well, as, during production, Transfilma approached the municipality for sponsorship.
An early working title was Rotterdam: Symphonie van den Arbeid or Rotterdam: Symphony of Labor, which according to contemporaneous reviews underlined Transfilma’s ambitious plan to make “a dignified equivalent” to Ruttmann’s Berlin (1927). Dutch newspapers also wrote that Ruttmann’s film had inspired Von Maydell and Von Barsy to compose “a little sister” of the Berlin portrait, a “Rotterdamsche filmsymphonie.” During its production, Van Maydell stated that no shot was to be longer than five meters, thus exceeding the already brisk tempo of Ruttmann’s Berlin. In the end, however, The City That Never Rests displays a dynamic editing style, but one that is much more calm, even, and flowing than Van Maydell had originally intended.
The film premiered as From Fishing Village to World Port City, a title later replaced by The City That Never Rests. Immediately after, the film underwent numerous changes, resulting in various shortened release versions, often no longer than half the length of the original version, cutting out the sequences of the city center. English, German, and French versions were made, and international screenings have been documented in Germany, Belgium, and the Dutch colonies. Due to the film’s multiple versions, the original version became completely inaccessible for decades. In 2010–11, EYE, in cooperation with the Rotterdam City Archives, restored the original version of this city symphony, which had remained unseen for over 80 years.
Eva Hielscher
further reading
Hielscher, Eva, “Symphonic Rotterdam or the Flowing City: Von Barsy’s and Von Maydell’s ‘The City That Never Rests’,” Eselsohren 2, 1+2 (2014): 159–282.
Hogenkamp, Bert, De Nederlandse documentaire film, 1920–1940 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep and Stichting Film en Wetenschap, 1988).
Paalman, Floris, Cinematic Rotterdam: The Times and Tides of a Modern City (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2011).
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