001 - Sunday, January 1, 2017
People On Sunday, 1930, Germany. Dir. Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer.
Imagine a group of young men sitting in a café talking about making a movie. They have no money. They have no equipment. They have no actors. They have no script. Most of them have no experience. They begin scribbling their ideas on a napkin.
They get a little money. They get a camera.
They walk around the streets filming. They find five people who have never acted before and have them "act" in their project. The "actors" use their real names and will return to their jobs when the project is finished.
Now imagine them spending the next nine months of their lives together, struggling against difficult circumstances, pushing forward when others quit, standing in the lake or in the rain, working with these untrained actors, trying to tell a story, making it up as they go along.
Then the movie is screened.
Is it a disaster? Is the money lost? Do the men move on to more practical jobs?
Imagine it is a critical success. The critics love it! Now imagine it is a financial success. The people love it! Now imagine the director is offered a job the next day with the largest film studio in the country. Now imagine that the key five filmmakers move on to America and establish themselves as being among the important filmmakers in world cinema history.
That is what happened with the film People on Sunday (Germany, 1930).
It was like forming a super group before the band members were famous, as if the Travelling Wilburys came first, before anyone had heard of George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, and Roy Orbison.
Only this group consisted of Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer, Curt Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann, and Billy Wilder.
You have not heard of all of them? That is OK. You will. World cinema fans have heard of them. And you are on a journey to becoming a world cinema fan.
This film broke ground in several ways. At a time when German films were produced at the large UFA Studios on sound stages using large budgets, high production values, and big stars, this group of young men got together in Berlin and made People On Sunday mostly in the open outdoors with only a camera and reflectors, with little money, with no professional actors, with no initial script, and with no sets.
Yet when it premiered it was an immediate critical and commercial success, launching their careers and influencing international cinema for decades to come. Its influences are felt in Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, Dogme 95, and the American independent scene.
What are those movements? We will get to all of them in the course of this year!
Here's some foreshadowing:
Italian Neoeralism - Visconti, Rossellini, De Sica
French New Wave - Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Resnais
Dogme 95 - Von Trier
Independent American - Flaherty, Fuller, Harvey, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Blank, Stillman, Lynch, Wes Anderson
We will see the films of and discuss every one of these directors, some of them multiple times.
People On Sunday is the story of five young people who go on a Sunday outing. (Four actually go; one misses out.) It showcases Berlin during the Weimar Republic, around the time of the stock market crash, just before the rise of National Socialism (NAZIs), in the calm before the storm. It is a slice of life--the life of the urbane working class young in Berlin, 1929.
People On Sunday captures small moments, minute details, little acts of behavior that real people really do. It feels strikingly contemporary. Young, single people in the city have jobs and have a little money to spend, so they get together to spend their time. They are fashionable. They are awkward. They flirt. They argue. They have fun. They grow bored. They swim. They eat. They listen to music. They hook up. They get jealous. They switch. They separate. They go on with their lives.
One working title was Young People Like Us. It may have also been called: One Weekend Day in the Lives of Some Hipsters.
Have you ever gone out with a group of people and then never seen some of them again? You think: That was pretty fun. It wasn't fabulous but it wasn't terrible. They seemed like decent people. I might have enjoyed getting to know them better. I wonder where they went.
Nearly nine decades later and across the ocean, it is still the same.
Here is a breakdown of the five filmmakers on this project.
Curt Siodmak, 26, writer, would go on to write suspense and horror novels and screenplays, and was prolific in B pictures. He wrote screenplays for The Wolf Man, I Walked with a Zombie, House of Frankenstein, Son of Dracula, and Donovan's Brain, among others.
Robert Siodmak, 28, Curt's brother and one of the directors, went on to direct many movies, including Film Noir classics such as The Killers, The Spiral Staircase, Criss Cross, and The File on Thelma Jordan. He is important to the history of Film Noir. We will see him again in The Killers.
Edgar G. Ulmer, 24, the other director, also went on to direct Film Noir, with films such as Detour, Strange Illusion, Strange Woman, and Murder Is My Beat.
If you know the style of Film Noir and wonder if it is prefigured by these two directors in People On Sunday, the answer is No! It is not. Remember, they only had a camera, sunlight, and reflectors, and most of the film is shot outdoors. It has an open, well-lit look, with little contrast and minimal shadows. Everything happens on a sunny day.
Fred Zinnemann, 22, the camera assistant, would go on to international acclaim. You know him as the director of High Noon. Or From Here to Eternity. Or A Man for All Seasons. Or Oklahoma!, The Member of the Wedding, or A Hatful of Rain. Zinnemann would be nominated for ten Academy Awards and would win four.
Billy Wilder, 23, the other writer, would go on to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, writing many movies, including Ninotchka, and writing and directing great classic films such as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, The Bishop's Wife, The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, The Emperor Waltz, A Foreign Affair, Witness for the Prosecution, The Spirit of St. Louis, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, and Some Like It Hot.
Wilder created the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate, holding her dress down as the wind blows it up. He was nominated for 21 competitive Oscars and won six times. He won a seventh when he won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
The day after the premiere Robert Siodmak was hired by UFA. Within a year or two, all of them were working professionally. The rest is film history.
Can this story repeat itself?
Can a group of young people make history again? Regardless of how much money they have or how much equipment or how much experience?
Who are the folks sitting in the coffee shop today? What are they writing on their napkins? What story will they tell this next year? How will it affect the lives of others for decades to come?
What will be the next People On Sunday?
https://www.criterion.com/films/27625-people-on-sunday
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