Research - Barbara Mennel (Cities and Cinema)

Introduction - The founding myth of cinema, or the "train effect"- Lumiere Brothers.

• Karl Grune's 'The Street' (1923
• Freidrich Wilhelm Murnau's 'The Last Laugh' (1924)
• G.W. Pabst's 'Joyless Street' (1925)
• Fritz Lang's  'Metropolis' (1927)
• Walter Ruttmann's 'Berlin: Symphony of a great city' (1927)
• Robert and Curt Siodmak's 'People on Sunday' (1928)
• Joe May's 'Asphalt' (1929)
• Fritz Lang's 'M' (1931)

'The Street' - Documentary style, Urban Motifs
Films around a city - Utopias and Dystopias, Urbanity?
Mainly shot in Berlin, but not all of these films were shot there.
"understanding the dangers and pleasures of modern urban life: crime, anonymity, a loosening of morality, unemployment"- dystopia.
David Frisby "abstraction, circulation and movement and monumentality"- characteristics of modernity.
"interconnected topics regarding cinema and urbanism"
Many films portray the setting for social problems such as 'M' and 'The Last Laugh'.
'The Street', 'Joyless Street' and 'Asphalt' portray streets developed between 1923 and 1925.
Class conflict is defined through urban metropolis in the early 20th century.
'Metropolis' (Fritz Lang) was created using highly artificial set.- dystopian vision of urban modernity.

Theories of modernity and urbanity.

• Murnau's 'Sunrise-A song of Two Humans' shows how people can represent where they are from by the clothing they wear and by the way they act towards other people (Country and City)- opposites.
• 'The metropolis is defined by Simmel as a place of money economy'