In the 1929 German silent film Berlin: Die Symphonie der Großstadt (directed by Walter Ruttman), humans and animals co-exist to a point such that they overlap one another in affect and nature. The first living creatures filmed are a policeman and a dog walking side by side – both creatures are protectors and prosecutors of humanity. ‘I Akt’ (Act 1) opens in the early morning, where the stark, empty streets of Berlin are immediately contrasted with litter-strewn gutters. I interpreted this as symbolic of the social order both at the “dawn” of time and now: though it is fundamentally difficult to occupy a position of uncontaminated, civilised humanity, the lowest, dirtiest, most animalistic areas of existence are always well-populated. The only word recognisable (in English) from the signs is “hotel”, universally acknowledged as a place in which people stay temporarily or live indefinitely, and so epitomises what the earth is for all living creatures: a permanent temporary living space.
Siegfried Kracauer wrote that “at the time of its emergence the mass, this giant animal, was a new and upsetting experience.” Indeed, the masses were so new and upsetting that they flocked to the movie halls to watch themselves in Berlin: the giant animal, the urban crowd, facilitating the giant animal, the urban crowd. In the movie, Ruttman echoes this en masse movement by juxtaposing a shot of men’s brightly-polished-shoe-clad feet moving in droves with a shot of the trotting hooves of a herd of cattle. Furthermore, machinery is filmed manufacturing light bulbs, bottles of milk, bread, and building materials in huge quantities: all basic survival necessities, reminding the audience of man’s most primal need for light/heat, mother’s milk and shelter.
At the end of II Akt, shots of screeching monkeys and savagely fighting dogs directly precede those of phone receivers being replaced decisively on the hook. Though we are as capable of scathing brutality as animals are, technology has given us a new and convenient mode of expressing our aggression: we simply hang up and cut off all communication.
In III Akt, Ruttman shows caged doves being ogled by young boys. This reminds us of the naive hope (inherent in all people, but particularly in pre-war Berlin) that we can acquire peace; and it is poignant indeed to watch these symbols of peace beating their wings against the oppression of the cage. This is shortly followed by a shot of a carriage-horse lying on the ground, collapsed from exhaustion, prior to being helped (or forced, depending on one’s perspective) up by a man: beasts of burden are no longer able to bear the load, and we are left no choice but to motivate one another to keep on keeping on.
IV Akt is the heaviest on animal imagery. Horses appear once
more, this time eating grain from feed bags – this is juxtaposed with an image
of human hands cutting up sausages on a plate. The effect here is such that the
audience watches its own hands carving the flesh of another animal and dipping
it into sauce to please the palate, where moments ago herbivorous creatures
were innocently consuming plant life to keep themselves alive. We are not mere
survivors, then, but rather creatures of leisure and pleasure, for the next
animal onscreen is a lion (generally a virtual parasite) devouring a hunk of raw meat behind bars. The
cage gives the impression that despite our efforts to restrain our base nature,
it cannot be denied. Our barbarism is emphasised by the shots of heaped platters
of lobster and shellfish and an animal carcass being hacked up. Our brutish
essence, forged at a young age, is further propagated through shots of children:
kids eating, then monkeys eating; a young girl pulling lion cubs towards her by
their tails; girls and boys playing in the gutter, graffitiing walls, and harassing
one another.
Finally, the camera itself acts as a flâneur – a desultory, wandering creature – and so is like an animal itself, roaming Berlin’s streets without purpose. The prowling camera is privy to the city’s secrets, which are in fact public, yet hidden to all but those strays who have the aim (or rather, the lack of aim) to watch closely.
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