The German silent film People on Sunday is the DVD that accompanies the most recent Film Issue of The Believer. As a fan of both German cinema and lost/restored films, I was very excited to see People on Sunday show up in my mailbox last week, especially considering Criterion isn’t releasing their edition of the restored film until late June. Although People on Sunday is certainly an interesting and innovative film (it’s essentially neo-realism a decade before neo-realism), it doesn’t hold up well when compared to the other films of the era.
What makes People on Sunday so historically interesting is the number of future greats that worked on the film. Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, Robert Sidomak, and Fred Zinneman all had a hand in the making of the film. It’s interesting that a film billed as “A Film Without Actors” would feature a quartet of filmmakers that would later go on to great individual success. Actually, I suppose having amateur actors has nothing to do with the quality of the crew who made the film. I should probably say that it’s trivial that a film billed as “A Film Without Actors” would feature a quartet of filmmakers that would later go on to great individual success. But it is an interesting bit of trivia.
Despite having a trio of future noir masters, People on Sunday disappoints in terms of visual style. Although it is not a documentary, it is shot as one, making the film completely devoid of the chiaroscuro lighting and oblique angles that many silent films of Weimar Germany are known for. There is some snappy editing that’s pretty impressive, but not as impressive as the editing of films coming out of the Soviet Union at the time.
As for the drama of the film, there really isn’t all that much. The characters (played by non-professional actors) go on dates and whatnot, but there’s not much of a plot to speak of. And there’s certainly nothing approaching what a director like Charlie Chaplin and was doing with plot and character in his films of the era.
Essentially, all that People on Sunday has going for it is the trivial aspects of its production. Using non-professional actors, location shooting, and focusing on the aspects of ordinary life would eventually become aspects of the Italian neo-realist movement. And, as previously mentioned, four people associated with the making of the film would eventually become successful directors, with two of them winning Oscars. Aside from those nuggets of film history trivia, there’s not much to People on Sunday. It doesn’t compare to the German silent films of the day, and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City did a much better job capturing the daily life in a German city.
There is a quick scene of a man throwing a child into the air that’s pretty cool (there is far too little throwing of children in cinema), but other than that, People on Sunday pales in comparison to other works of the same time period. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give People on Sunday two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.
