A weekend of five young Berliners of a humble background. Wine salesman Wolfgang meets Christl and arranges a date with her at the Wannsee, where he also meets with his friend Erwin. Christl arrives accompanied by her friend Brigitte.

It is Saturday and the taxi driver Erwin is returning home to his wife Annie. While he reads the newspaper at the supper table, she reclines on the settee in boredom and manicures her nails. They had intended to go to the cinema together but get into a quarrel about the way in which the young woman wears her hat, causing the husband to remain at home.

His friend Wolfgang is a wine salesman who meets the model Christel at a tram stop and agrees to take her out for the day on Sunday. He attempts to reconcile the quarreling couple and invites them to come to the Wannsee too. The young woman sulks while the two friends play cards.

On Sunday morning, Erwin sets off to the rendezvous alone, for Annie cannot be persuaded to get up and sleeps through the day. Christel has brought her friend Brigitte along and the four set off to the Wannsee to swim and have a picnic in the grass. A gramophone provides the right atmosphere. Wolfgang turns to the pretty blonde when his attempt to kiss Christel is rebuffed. The two get on well together and put an end to jealous Christel's good Sunday mood. The four are reconciled as they take a trip in a boat. They agree to meet again the next weekend and go their separate ways. Suddenly the young men remember that they had intended to go to the football match. They do not know the girls' address, shrug their shoulders and forget the entire Sunday episode. They share their last cigarette and then set off to their respective homes and resume their orderly working life on Monday morning.

Parodies of petty bourgeois life are a favourite literary pastime and repeatedly turned into sarcastic scenes in films and plays. Carl Sternheim's "A bourgeois hero's life" or Heinrich Zille's sarcastic portrayals of the social classes are good examples. MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG is a charming caricature of the lower social classes and their weekend pastimes. This semi-documentary film, which was born out of young people's desire to experiment and thrives on momentary improvisation, was produced with little financial assistance and made film history as the avant garde precursor of poetic realism. The producers - Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, Eugen Schüfftan, Edgar G. Ulmer and Moritz Seeler - who met in Berlin's "Romanisches Café" to launch their first project have basically described themselves: their own dallying, lazing about, the pleasure of a free weekend in the sun and wind knowing full well that such a Sunday is nothing more than a short respite, a splash of colour in the grey everyday life that shimmers through the film and gives it its special attraction. What has remained is a lively, critical look at the world round about, a caricature of the older more settled generation and of human weaknesses.

Dsiga Wertow's "cinema eye" and his MANN MIT DER KAMERA, as well as Walter Ruttmann's BERLIN, DIE SINFONIE DER GROSSTADT undeniably served as the film's models. The film's cast of lay actors includes only one professional actress, Valeska Gert, who, like the others, poses in front of a beach photographer's camera for souvenir photographs born out of a momentary mood. the film could be set in any town, in any country and in any time if it were not unmistakably dated by the technology, the vehicles, the actors' clothing and the old undamaged Berlin in which this film was produced without any studio settings. Petty bourgeois life is the same everywhere and has changed little over the decades.

The trailer explains that "in this film, five people play the same roles as they fulfill in real life: a taxi driver, a girl who sells shoes, another who sells records, a wine salesman and a model. When the film was produced, they returned to the anonymous masses from whence they had come. Yet minute details of a major city make them stand out from the city's grandiose decor. You will recognize them again: they are simple people."

Goethe-Institut

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

1929/1930

Production Year

1930

color

b/w

Aspect Ratio

1:1,33

Type

Feature Film, Silent Film

Genre

Drama

Topic

Relationship / Family, Friendship

Available Media

DVD

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

German (de), English (en), French (fr)

Note on the Format

DVD im Einzelhandel mit diversen UT Fassungen erhältlich und lizenzrechtlich abgedeckt.