Menschen am Sonntag is the result of the collaborative effort of some individuals a number of filmmakers who would go on to play important roles in Hollywood cinema: Robert Siodmak (1900–73) and Edgar G. Ulmer (1904–72) directed the film based on a screenplay written by Robert Siodmak in collaboration with Billy Wilder (1906–2002) and Curt Siodmak (1902–2000), while Eugen Schüfftan (1893–1977) and Fred Zinnemann (1907–97) were responsible for the cinematography.
The film follows the lives of a group of young people in Berlin: Edwin, a taxi driver, who lives with Annie, a model; Wolfgang, a wine merchant, and his new girlfriend Christl, a film extra; and a record shop sales girl Brigitte, who is Christl’s best friend. As Lutz Koepnick noted, their professions and identities are inherently connected to urban modernity—to the notion of social upward mobility, the rise of the culture industries, and the circulation of commodities. During the weekend, they leave their jobs and apartments for one of the lakes and woods near Berlin to walk, bathe, picnic, go for a boat ride, play hide and seek, and listen to gramophone music. While they are relaxing, swimming, sunbathing, or playing games, the film draws attention to their flirtations, rivalries, and jealousies. Juxtaposing the excitement of the city to the leisure of a country-side lake, the film touches upon the fact that, in the late 1920s, leisure and holidays became in reach of the working classes and lower middle-classes for the first time—the institutionalization of leisure is, of course, closely connected to urban modernity and its reliance on the mechanization of time and Taylorization.
A low-budget production, the film is a remarkable blend of documentary and feature film using characters impersonated by non-professional actors who actually worked at the jobs depicted in the film. Since they all had weekday jobs, the film was shot over a number of Sundays in the summer and fall of 1929. Showing authentic scenes with ordinary people, the film is marked by a documentary tone as the vague plot does not imply any character development or highlights in the drama. With a sketchy storyline emerging from the interplay of accidental circumstances and unforeseen encounters, the film privileges atmospheric detail over narrative progression. At the end, life seems to go back to where it started as the closing intertitle states: “And then on Monday … it is back to work … back to the everyday … back to the daily grind… . Four … million … wait for … the next Sunday.” This loosely-knit narration tallies perfectly with the film’s camerawork. With many unstable hand-held camera shots, Schüfftan and Zinnemann explore the textures of metropolitan life, creating a patchwork of fleeting sights, shifting angles and perspectives. Evoking the gaze of a roaming flâneur, Menschen am Sonntag often gives the impression that the camera is actively scanning the cityscape in search of something worth our attention.
Steven Jacobs
further reading
Bellour, Raymond, Les Hommes, le dimanche, de Robert Siodmak et Edgar G. Ulmer (Yellow Now, 2009).
Koepnick, Lutz, “The Bearable Lightness of Being: ‘People on Sunday’ (1930),” in Noah Isenberg (ed.), Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009), 237–54.
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