6 - "Berlin: Symphony Of a Great City", "Window Water Baby Moving" and Sound

By: Mehwish, Robert and Jacob

Here lie the three most interesting films ever made! This blog features an analysis
of the two films viewed in class Window Water Baby Moving and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City , as well as a presentation of the additional film Night and Fog. We will see how each documentary effectively toys with our perception and the key role played by sound.

The symphony and silence in films

The documentary film Window Water Baby Moving (run time 13 minutes) is filmed in the United States, and is directed by Stan Brakhage, demonstrating the beauty in the natural process of childbirth. It shows the woman throughout the many stages of her pregnancy and climaxing with her giving birth. The viewer sees a series of montages in different sequences. For instance, the mother's pregnant stomach in different stages of development, the pregnant woman bathing, and then giving birth in another montage of random order. What makes this film so special is that it lets the men and women experience this intimacy. This was something that was never captured before on the silver screen. The film portrays the intimacy that the mother shares with her child while the infant is in the womb making the movie spectacular and definitely an eye opening experience. The movie really captured the rawness of child birth for instance, all the fluid and exposure of the woman's insides creating a truly captivating experience. In addition, what alters our experience completely is that it is a film without any sound. Sounds contribute to the realism of film and also helps to create a particular atmosphere. With it being so important, our entire perception and reading of this film was altered since there was no sound to guide our understanding of the film. Imagination became the central source of sound with the images being powerful enough on their own.



The film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City directed by Walter Ruttmann (run time 65 minutes) is a film that is shown in 5 parts. Our professor played his own music while the film was being played muting the original sound track. The film portrays the city and the people of Berlin as a large metropolis and films the streets of Berlin showing what a full 24 hours is like in Berlin. We watched part one with no sound, so the viewer can truly feel the intimacy of the images on the screen. The film shows Berlin in early morning form showing the quiet streets and closed shops and restaurants. Then as early morning progresses the film shows men going to work, walking on the streets, and using public transportation. In part two, the film shows off mid early morning in Berlin with classical music being played, and it is as if the sound is coming from the film itself. It is clear that sound is pervasive and omnidirectional. Later on in the film, the streets begin to fill up, all the men are arriving at work, shops and restaurants begin to open, and elementary children and high school teens are on their way to school. It's twelve in Berlin, and men and woman are socializing on the streets. All restaurants and shops are open, workers are on their lunch break, and the day is officially in full effect. Part 4 has exotic music playing for the film is portraying the city of Berlin as a jungle when the work day is officially over. The men are punching out their time clocks, school is over, and the streets are overloaded with children, teens, men and woman. The city is chaotic once again. Public transport is being used for people to commute back home. Men and teenagers are participating in sports and work and children are in the park playing. Romance is in the air work and school is finished! Part 5 has club music playing. Director Walter Ruttmann is now showing the excitement of the Berlin night life. For instance there is a montage of fireworks, gambling, boxing, and juggler's all mixed together. The film is trying to display that Berlin is not only a working city it also has a lively night life with lots going on. There are also displays of the various architecture of Berlin. Throughout the film we observe the fact that music gives us a sense that time is passing, continuity to the image and it creates locale with the atmospheric tone.

We discussed in class different concepts for instance, music and time. Music and time harmonize and structure our perception of film. Window Water Baby Moving is a silent film. While the entire class viewed it in silence, one student decided to watch it with his own music. This put him into a whole different understanding of the film with a mood entirely different from the rest of the class. It allowed his perception to be more like the music he listened to, from happy to sad or whatever it may be. By letting the audience listening to their own music it created a different mood while watching the film also gave the audience a different way of interpreting what the director of the film is trying to explain.

Also another topic we discussed in class is specifics of film and sound. We build the identities of the characters in a film through three key components such as sound, music, and silence. It is important to note as well that sound is often brilliantly conceived. The effects of sound are often subtle and processed by our subconscious minds. Yet, it forces us to foster an awareness of film sound as well as film space so as to appreciate the film as a whole. Throughout the different parts of Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, music adds emotion and rhythm, It provides a tone and an emotional attitude towards the story. In the original sound track of the movie the director played soft classical music has people began to wake up in part 1. In part 2 the music began to pick up a few beats as people got into work. Than in part 3 it was midday and the classical music was deep and in full effect. Part 4 the music slowed down as people were head back home. Than Part 5, the music became very dramatic as people were enjoying the night life of down town Berlin. In general terms, we expect an acceleration of music during car chases and creaky doors in horror films which shows that film sound is comprised of conventions and innovations. The director used rhythm in the music to create a meaning through audio. Every situation had a different loudness making every part very different and unique. The following link shows an evolution and development of sound to as we know it.

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955, Poland, 32 mins)

The additional film illustrates the horrors of the genocide of approximately six million Jews during the Second World War through Alain Resnais’s documentary film Night and Fog. Filmed in 1955, it combines colour and black and white in a total length of 32 minutes, showing footage of Poland’s most inferior concentration camps to tell the story of how thousands of lives were inhumanly taken and the direness of man’s brutality.

Alternating between the past and the present, Night and Fog describes the rise of the Nazi ideology. It reveals the life of the Nazi party “Schuztaffel” compared to the tortured prisoners in the concentration camps. Images of the dying, broken, and starved bodies are shown to start with and the presence of extreme cases of sadism inflicted upon the ruined inmates, including torture, executions, scientific and medical ‘experimentation’, and prostitution. The film then focuses on the gas chambers and the mountains of bodies and finally the emancipation of the country, the discovery of the revulsion of the camps, and the questioning of who was responsible. It investigates the inveterate nature of man’s violence towards man and presents the unsettling suggestion that such history may be possible to reoccur.

10 years subsequent to the Holocaust, Resnais was one of the first to show cinematic reflections of the abandoned camps which contrast the stillness of them. Quiet, empty buildings with a haunting feel. We are shown a tranquil sky above a huge grassland, the camera then reveals a fence of rusted barb wire leading to a watchtower of a concentration camp, showing how any serene seeming land anywhere could actually be the home of a derelict camp. Resnais presents a dream-like suspension within the concept of the film which nonetheless holds the nightmares of wartime destruction. Midway through the film, it is narrated that “even a quiet country scene, even a field harvested, and crows aloft, even a road with cars and people passing, even a village fair, may lead directly to a concentration camp” (Night and Fog, 1955). The tone of the narrator is soft as opposed to miserable or angry, and the music takes yet another deviating approach by the use of an impulsive and redolent soundtrack instead of a loudly orchestrated one. We are effectively able to see how “the image, text and music in Night and fog thus coexist with a lightly surreal tension that reflects the endlessly self-deluding, fantastical [oppositions] of a humanity driven wilfully to create monstrosities and think them as normal, […] nothing, after all, is more surreal, at least at a temporal distance, than the Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’ and it structural manifestations.” (Rees 2005, p. 119) The key factor here was the music which helped suggest a point-of-view where it is meant to strengthen the image being shown rather than question its prestige.

The images of naked bodies, rotting flesh, dried bones, of men, women and children were ghastly and extremely disturbing. Piercing images of open-eyed dead bodies were unforgettable. Although many aspects of Night and Fog were unbearable, they just had to be seen. The unabridged drive of the film was to be a reminder to humanity of what can happen when an inhuman world-view is fused to state-of-the-art technology.

With the disconcerting realities of the now-empty camps after the war, the viewer able to piece together the fact that these silent buildings were once heaving with the sound of gunshot, fear, and screams of uncountable people. Sound gives a new value to silence. A quiet passage in a film can create almost unbearable tension, forcing the viewer to concentrate on the screen and wait in anticipation for any sound that will emerge. The breaks that have a lack of music produces an emotional involvement in the material. Any music or silence together take turns on playing with our emotions. They guide us with how to feel from moment to moment  and change the way we understand the film from beginning to end.

The entire purpose of documentary film is to remind us about our past and how vital it is to learn from it and, more importantly, to forbid ourselves from forgetting it. Is the nature of human beings set to a position where we are doomed to repeat our mistakes?
With the image playing with our perception and the sound influencing our reactions, can we ignore such destructive nature of human beings? The film’s uncomfortable analysis poses many difficult questions, which breach the heart and force our eyes open to the fact that human beings may potentially be animalistic and willing execution machines.

This pain evoking exhibition of The Jewish Museum of Berlin is aimed to recreate what it was like to be a Jewish person during the holocaust. The floor is made from steel carvings of faces and walking on them not only creates scream-like sounds but also paints an image of the desperation felt by the victims and the irretrievable loss which resulted from the Holocaust.

How are we effected?

In our opinion the films we watched in class taught us a lot about peoples actions when they are most vulnerable.

In the film Window Water Baby Moving, it showed a man and woman getting ready to give birth. This shows a couple at home in possibly in of the most vulnerable and honest situations you can be in. The fact that there was no sound also lets you feel their emotions for what they were and not for what the sound was telling you, for example its very easy for a movie director to change the perception of the scene by simply changing the music. If there were to be horror music in the background, you could interpret that scene as a horror scene, where something goes wrong in the child birth. But if you were to change that around and put a love song, it could be seen as a very romantic scene with a couple fighting threw child birth together. The fact that there was no music, really gave us the honest truth with no distraction and it engages a distinct sense which can lead to a synchronization of sense, making a single rhythm or expressive quality unifying both image and music.

The other short film Berlin: Symphony of a Great City also captured the everyday life of people in the big city of Berlin. With the rhythm provided by the sound of different paced music, the viewers were easily able to establish the time of the day, based on people everyday habits and rituals. In this case the music added to the production by our professor's choice and helped express what time of the day it was, in the mornings the music was more upbeat and at night it was more of a party type of music. In our opinion this didn't tamper with reality but helped remind us of the reality given the time of day. The time of day changes peoples attitude, for example people act different on Monday mornings than they do on Friday nights. The music helped remind us why the people were acting differently in different sections of the movie, the simple answer to that, is the time of day. We thought that these films expresses reality and people living everyday lives but we also learnt that by adding things such as sound, you can can tamper or change the reality into something completely different. All three films Window Water Baby Moving, Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, and Night and Fog, silence, and rhythmic sound influenced our feelings and puzzle together the final image transmitted through the films. Sound is universal, it does not discriminate and is understood by people speaking any language. It is a variation of frequencies that have the power to transmit emotions, self-expressions and messages to its listeners. Music can be a form of expressing one's self, in other cases it also creates an identity. On a personal scale, Western music is different than the music of other cultures where I am able to unite with the people from my culture through music, even though I am far from home. Music itself plays a crucial role in my life where it helps me to reduce stress, escape to a different world, alleviate boredom while doing repetitive tasks, and creates an environment appropriate for particular kinds of social occasions. In short, music is used by individuals to enhance the quality of their lives.

This video demonstrates how one scene of a film can be perceived in different ways based on the background music.

In conclusion these films teach us how sound can greatly impact how we perceive a film and how it play with our emotions. Documentary films in general continue to teach us about ourselves. Visual media is a powerful tool of persuasion, manipulation and communication. Through it we are able to see who we are, where we come from and what our role is in society. These films collectively  transmit messages and reminders all delivered through powerful images and/or sound.