‘People on Sunday’: A Haunting Snapshot of the Weimar Era

It may be tough to imagine, but in less than a quarter of a century ago, the world faced two of the most violent wars in recorded history. The entire planet became a battlefield, and more than 70 million people lost their lives in both wars combined. Germany often found itself at the center of conflict, and during the interwar period (which lasted roughly 20 years), from it emerged one of the most significant symbols of this era: the Weimar Republic.

During these years, Germany went through a political shift (from an imperial government to one ruled by the parliament) and underwent a period of cultural blossoming, giving us things like the Bauhaus School of Design, Metropolis, and Marlene Dietrich. Out of Weimar also came figures with names like Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmark, Fred Zinneman, Edgar G. Ulmer, and Eugen Schüfftan, all of whom would make careers in Hollywood after escaping from Nazi Germany.

If the individual names aren’t enough to impress you, consider that once they all worked together on a little movie called People on Sunday. Advertised as a “film experiment” and “a film without actors”, this film can be seen as a predecessor of reality entertainment, an exquisite docudrama, and, overall, a spooky time capsule that showed us a period of peace the film industry hasn’t really preoccupied itself with.

People on Sunday is essentially a chronicle that follows two couples during a weekend trip to the recreational zone of Nikolassee, outside Berlin. These people are wine dealer Wolfgang (Wolfgang von Waltershausen), his friend Erwin (Erwin Splettstößer), model Christl (Christl Ehlers) and her friend Brigitte (Brigitte Borchert) a record salesgirl.

Wolfgang meets Christl and asks her to come with him to a picnic the next day, and she brings Brigitte. Erwin, on the other hand, has a girlfriend at home (Annie Schreyer), but after a lovers’ quarrel, she ends up staying home, leaving him and Wolfgang to have a bachelor’s weekend.

People on Sunday follows their mini-trip from Berlin to the country and back again, a time during which the filmmakers indulge in capturing the reactions from their amateur performances while mixing them with footage from other vacationers’ adventures. “These five people never appeared in front of a camera before”, reads a title card that appears when the film begins; however, in an informative documentary included among the DVD extras, we learn that after shooting the film, most of them tried to make it in the movies. Trivia like this makes People on Sunday even more fascinating because their need to squeeze their 15 minutes of fame predates American media’s current need to make a star out of everyone, and heck, it even predates Andy Warhol’s concept of “15 minutes of fame”.

As if watching “real life” people putting up a show where they play versions of themselves wasn’t strange enough, the documentary also helps us learn that People on Sunday was meant to be a sci-fi film at one point! Curt Siodmark, the film’s writer and director Robert’s brother, reveals that his original story was about the city, as an entity, visiting the country and then showing its return. After wondering about how to represent this, and most likely after realizing that a project of this scope would require more than their tiny production team could deliver, they decided to rely on good old-fashioned metonymy to deliver what we ultimately see.

However, you can still feel the way in which the filmmakers tried to remind us of the unnatural routine that becomes living in a city. When People on Sunday begins, we are bombarded with Eisenstenian cuts that seem almost mechanical, and as the action moves to the country, the film tries to go for a more pastoral feel, giving us longer tracking shots, pans, and even a marvelous tilt that deftly makes a sex scene seem less inadequate and almost heavenly.

People on Sunday is a beauty to behold, and most of it is owed to cinematographer Schüfftan, the man responsible for conveying the special effects in Metropolis (which in return inspired every single sci-fi movie that came after it). Schüfftan is able to capture the luminosity of the countryside in all its glory but, through framing and composition, reminds us that we are basically watching an invasion.

He seems to take special interest in juxtaposing foreign elements that divide the screen, reminding us that we are watching a disruption of “normal” continuity. A row slashes across the peacefulness of a lake, human figures interrupt the flow of moving grass… all of these elements are specifically highlighted and serve as reminders that soon these elements would be gone.

As simple and ethereal as People on Sunday can feel, its influences on further films are more than evident, especially when considering the individual work the people involved created afterward. “No one foresees their international future success” reminds us of the behind-the-scenes documentary, but looking back, we can identify key aspects we might remember from Fred Zinneman’s 1953 drama, From Here to Eternity, for example.

People on Sunday is remarkable not only because of its own formal achievement but because of what it symbolizes as a snapshot of Weimar-era Germany. If you thought Bob Fosse was on to something when he shot the disturbing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in Cabaret, this little film’s innocent intentions and the eventual realization of the hell that followed it are deeply haunting.