People in the City (film)

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Movie
German title People in the city
Original title Männniskor i stad
Country of production Sweden
original language Sweden , English
Publishing year 1947
length 18 minutes
Rod
Director Arne Sucksdorff
script Arne Sucksdorff
production Edmund Reek
music Stig Rybrant
camera Arne Sucksdorff
cut Arne Sucksdorff
occupation

People in the City (original title Människor i stad ) is a Swedish short film by Arne Sucksdorff from 1947 . In a documentary-like style, it shows black and white impressions of the city of Stockholm .

action

The film first shows Stockholm from a bird's eye view and then turns to details of road traffic and people at work.

A scene follows with a young man at the center. Like other passers-by, he first suffers from the heat before a thunderstorm breaks out. He saves himself from the rain in a doorway, where, among other things, a young woman is waiting for better weather. They exchange interested looks. When the rain subsides and the woman leaves the shelter, the man follows her and helps her carry the shopping net.

The second scene shows children playing who were previously briefly seen in the film. A boy grabs someone else's ball and fled with it - together with two other companions - into an almost deserted church. While they look around and admire the works of art, they are watched by the sexton collecting Bibles. When the youngest boy pulls a sack of marbles out of the older one, the marbles spread out on the church floor and the children begin to pick them up. The sexton approaches them with a gloomy expression on his face, but calms down at the sight of the toddler and helps pick up the marbles.

In the third scene, passers-by watch a horse parade. In the river bordering the road there are fishing boats. The couple and children from the previous episodes look down at them from a bridge. There is also a painter who is painting a working fisherman. This distracts him, releases a crank to comb his beard and loses his net with three caught fish. A boy exchanges a fishing rod and three fish for his bag of marbles from another child. When fishing, the fish are snatched away unnoticed by seagulls while a train rushes by. The boy catches a fish and notices the loss. Then he discovers a Pacoast fruit poster floating in the water.

At the end of the film it slowly gets dark. The boy fishing beforehand and the fisherman walk excitedly across a place. A blind man is looking for his stick and the boy helps him with it. The blind man plays his violin while the other two leave the place. A few last pictures show the city at night.

The film is underlaid with music and noises that match the plot, but has no dialogues.

background

After a few documentary films that focused on nature, Sucksdorff took up the new subject of city life with people in the city . He chose his hometown Stockholm as the setting. Other filmmakers had previously created similar impressionistic compilations of short city scenes ( City Symphonies ), beginning with Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien Que les Heures (1926), Walter Ruttmann's Berlin - The Symphony of the Big City (1927) and Regen by Joris Ivens (1929).

People in the City was produced by the Swedish film company AB Svensk Filmindustri . It was a commissioned work for the Stockholm Tourist Association and the Svenska institute . The film caused quite a stir because it was about Stockholm, but focused on the people instead of the city's sights and architecture.

The premiere took place on August 15, 1947 at the Skandia Theater in Stockholm.

1949 was people in the city as the first Swedish film with an Oscar Award (category Best Short Film ).

reception

Film theorist Siegfried Kracauer criticized the fact that the individual stories gave the film color, but remained in a kind of puppet stage and did not develop any further. They are only suggestions for stories that do not materialize, which means that the viewer is not entirely satisfied.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Betsy A. McLane: A New History of Documentary Film. A&C Black, New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4411-2457-9 , p. 63.
  2. ^ Hans-Jürgen Hube: Film in Sweden. Henschelverlag, 1985, p. 69.
  3. ↑ Människor i stad sfi.se. Retrieved January 16, 2015.
  4. ^ Mariah Larsson, Anders Marklund: Swedish Film: An Introduction and Reader. Nordic Academic Press, Lund 2010, ISBN 978-91-85509-36-2 , p. 171.
  5. ^ Siegfried Kracauer: Embryonic Patterns. In: Johannes Von Moltke, Kristy Rawson (Eds.): Siegfried Kracauer's American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture. Volume 45, University of California Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-520-27182-1 , p. 219.