Berlin: Symphony of a Great City From The Art and Popular
Culture Encyclopedia Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (German:
Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt), is a 1927 German silent
film directed by Walter Ruttmann, is a prominent example of the
city symphony genre. As a "city symphony" film, it portrays the
life of a city, mainly through visual impressions in a semi-
documentary style, without the narrative content of more
mainstream films, though the sequencing of events can imply a
kind of "narrative" of the city's daily life. Other noted
examples of the genre include Sheeler and Strand's 1921 film
Manhatta, Vertov's 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, and the
1929 Dutch film Regen directed by Mannus Franken and Joris
Ivens. This film represented a sort of break from Ruttman's
earlier "Absolute" films which were abstracts. Some of Vertov's
earlier films have been cited as influential on Ruttmann's
approach to this film, and it seems the filmmakers mutually
inspired one another, as there exist many parallels