Despite the post-war peace, progressive attitudes, and economic successes with which the 1920’s are associated, the Weimar Republic was an incredibly insecure time for German people. From the eerie darkness of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to the destructive chaos of Metropolis, much of the era’s popular film thematized this insecurity with expressionistic flair. By the summer of 1929, however, the expressionist movement had faded, giving rise to a new movement: New Objectivity. Robert Siodmak’s People on Sunday led this movement, and it did so with prodigious support from German critics and audiences alike. Its lighthearted realism initially struck a note in thousands of viewers, and it continues to captivate viewers nearly a century later …show more content…
Like before, it tries to capture every angle it can before the film has it settle on another small vignette to try and find a complete answer. In the camera’s frame stands a photographer surrounded by about a dozen people, each waiting for a picture. It is here that the first title screen of the sequence appears: it says, “Bitte recht freundlich!” (smile, please!). At first, this statement is directed at a group of people taking a picture together, but then the photographer begins to take photos of individual people. Here, the camera adopts an interesting perspective: it shows the faces of individuals in a close-up shot (that is, a snapshot style). Each person’s movements are recorded for a few seconds before their picture is taken, and then their picture is frozen in place for a few more seconds before the film cuts to the next individual. This seems to play on the previously-established idea that the film is exploring a moment temporarily frozen in time – here, it allows the camera to examine the facial expressions and movements of various people before freezing them in a picture to preserve what otherwise would be