MENSCHEN AM SONNTAG
Sog.: Kurt Siodmak. Scen.: Billie Wilder. F.: Eugen Schüfftan. Ass. op.: Fred Zinnemann. Scgf.: Moritz Seeler. Int.: Erwin Splettstosser (Erwin), Wolfgang von Walterschausen (Wolfgang), Brigitte Borchert (Brigitte), Christl Ehlers (Christl), Annie Schreyer (Annie). Prod.: Moritz Seeler per Filmstudio 1929 35mm. L.: 1837 m. D.: 67’. Bn
Film Notes
My friend Robert Siodmak who at the time was working for “Neue Revue” as advertising agent, one day stormed into Romanische Café enthusiastically announcing that he wanted to make a film as an uncle had given him five thousand marks. Kurt Siodmak, Robert’s brother, had then the brilliant idea of shooting a film with ordinary people – a stroke of genius as our five thousand marks would not be enough to pay for professional actors. Also the fact that the film was shot on Sundays had its good reasons: during the week we had to work and Sunday was the only free day we had.
More or less we were all amateurs: Fred Zinnemann worked as assistant cameraman, Edgar G. Ulmer as assistant director for Siodmak, and Moritz Seeler, a scholar who compensated his technical ignorance with his great flair for cinema, was our producer. The only professional was cameraman Eugen Schüfftan (in America he changed his name in Schufftan and in 1961 he was awarded the Oscar for best photography for the film with Paul Newman, The Hustler)”.
Billy Wilder, in Hellmuth Karasek, Billy Wilder: un viennese a Hollywood, Mondadori, Milano 1993
Menschen am Sonntag has truly and effectively contributed to the invention of man, on Sunday.
Or better still, to the invention of homo cinematographicus on Sundays, and in more than one aspect. First of all, in its most obvious meaning: the five ordinary characters who are the protagonists of the plot are all real or potential viewers.[…] But there is also homo cinematographicus in a more visual and therefore anthropological meaning. It is perhaps here that we may find the strongest and the least explored fascination of Menschen am Sonntag. And here we discover its paradox, because it is in this meaning that the city of Berlin, here presented as a true character (its Name is introduced in one intertitle, after the ones each presenting the five protagonists), works less as a character than as backdrop.
Starting from the prologue opening on Saturday evening, the film continues through Sunday, which is divided up in almost equal parts by the plot and its developments, according to an editing structured like a game of domino”.
Elena Dagrada, Invention of Man, on Sunday. Postcards from “Menschen am Sonntag”, in “Cinegrafie”, n. 11, Transeuropa, Ancona 1998