One of the things I thought was interesting in the discussion of Rutthman’s film Berlin: Symphony of a City were the ideas about walking in the city and being part of a crowd.
I know somebody brought up the perspective of the flaneur as being something that seemed to resonate within the film, and I really liked that point. The flaneur was typical of early nineteenth century France, and was always in the crowd but not of it. He was made possible by the dramatic change to the city wrought by the industrial revolution. So the opening up of the streets catalysed a radical change in urban existence, and the street became a confusing place, where encounters with others were transient and silent. I thought that the fragmentation and transience of the city came through particularly strongly in the Berlin Symphony.
The other idea I had was Michel de Certeau and his ideas about everyday life and how the inhabitants of a city in a sense write it through their walking. This is a quote I’ve always really liked: “the ordinary practitioners of the city live “down below,” below the thresholds at which visibility begins…They are walkers, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it. These practitioners make use of spaces that cannot be seen; their knowledge of them is as blind as that of lovers in each others arms.”
I think that part of what I liked about Berlin was that although it was chaotic and fragmented and sometimes sad, seeing the city as a whole, in a way that any Berliner would never be able to, was what made it beautiful.
During class I kept being reminded of another film, Wings of Desire, which was made in the 1980’s, but is similar to the City Symphony in that it’s about Berlin, it’s people and their everyday lives. The basic gist of Wings of Desire is that there are angels watching over the people in Berlin, and they can hear their thoughts. Eventually the main character falls in love with a trapeze artist and decides to descend from heaven. They hook up at a Nick Cave concert. You should watch it.
Wings of Desire also plays upon fragmentation and the lives of the multitudes. Maybe it’s something about Berlin that inspires that kind of introspection. You see the city from a distance, from the perspective of the angels, but you see, and hear, everything. You hear the rambling, tortured, banal and incoherent thoughts of everybody the angels pass by, and so you’re allowed into the lives of crowds, of people jammed into cars and libraries, and the people in their solitude as well. And that’s an idea I really like.
Here is a clip to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
And here is a completely gratuitous clip of the Nick Cave scene, just because I like it.
