In 1935, the same year Ruttmann (1887–1941) was working on his Düsseldorf film, he also made another commissioned city film about Stuttgart. Presented as an “Ufa-Ton-Kulturfilm” in the opening credits, Stuttgart: die Großstadt zwischen Wald und Reben combines a number of motifs and montage ideas reminiscent of his 1927 Berlin with characteristics of a more traditional form of scenics and an emphatically nationalist tone. Unlike Berlin, the Stuttgart film relies heavily on a narrative vignette, in which a Swabian man’s brother returns to Germany after 22 years in America to admire the revitalization Stuttgart has undergone under National Socialism. Ruttmann’s montage is at pains to wed modernity and tradition, for instance shots of new factories and hospitals are combined with familiar images of alpine landscapes, castles, medieval houses, and the graves of famous poets. The narrative of the brother’s return also serves as a pretext for the film to advertise Stuttgart’s newfound identity as the “City of Germans Abroad” and home of the Deutsches Auslands-Institute (German Foreign Institute), a project visible in the frequent use of maps and images of radio waves spreading into the world.
Eva Hielscher and Michael Cowan
further reading
Cowan, Michael, Walter Ruttmann and the Cinema of Multiplicity: Avant-Garde, Advertising, Modernity (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 134–5.
Goergen, Jeanpaul (ed.), Walther Ruttmann: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, 1990).
_________________________