Film screening People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag)

Robert Siodmak, Edgar G Ulmer/ Germany 1930 / 1h14min / Silent
Cast: Erwin Splettstösser, Wolfgang von Waltershausen, Christel Ehlers, Brigitte Borchert, Annie Schreyer

One of the earliest movies to renounce stars, drama and other paraphernalia of commercial cinema in favour of a non-professional cast and an unmomentous, everyday storyline. Most of it centres around a Sunday excursion from the bustle of Berlin to a countryside lake, where a bachelor and his married friend drift in and out of flirtations with two young women. Hardly anything happens, but the play of gazes, emotions and counterpoints becomes deeply engrossing. You end up not only learning a lot about life in 1929, but also realizing how little sexual mores have changed.
 

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