Menschen am Sonntag

A group of young men, who would all go on to achieve great things in Hollywood after emigrating, invented the Nouvelle Vague avant la lettre, so to speak, with the last “great” (but actually deliberately very small) German silent film. Four young people on a Sunday outing to Lake Wannsee, full of lyrical and comical details. The individual destinies emerge in their simple beauty from the symphony of the big city, from the rhythm of the masses. People on Sunday, captivatingly photographed by Eugen Schüfftan, is a film that advertises its spontaneity (“a film without actors,” the first title proudly boasts, when it really just means amateur actors) and proves itself right with its unpretentious charm: it is enough for it to celebrate, with the warmth of a sunbeam tickling the skin, that banal miracle commonly called life. (C.H.)

At the piano: Elaine Brennan