Walter Ruttman's Berlin Symphony of City is a non-narrative and experimental film, which combines documentary Elements with filmic ones to portray real city life at any given day. The main characters of the film are city dwellers. The setting is in the city buildings, streets, industries, and other city locations. At the climax of the first act of the film, there is a scene of a factory that produces light bulbs. The scene has no visible human presence but rather running machines, pouring molten glass into molds and giving out emissions. The scene can be interpreted as portraying the replacement of human labor by machines in the current city life. The organizational of the film initiates among the audience the thoughts of comparison and contrast between different city scenes. For example, in one particular scene, the film goes from images of a dummy in a shop displaying lingerie to those of girls wearing alluring costumes and ready to go to a stage. The way the two scenes follow each other has significance. It shows a connection between business, marketing and the culture of the city inhabitants.
Being an experimental film, Berlin Symphony of City rises from research as well as the development of new technology. Ruttman featured the typical events of a German city from dawn to dusk, in the 1920s. The film has both documentary and experimental forms. It is not only a film about the lives of the people of Berlin but also about the city as a living mechanism. The film reflects a new era of industrialization, and therefore its maker tries new ways of communicating the elements of the new era.
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The inside Nazi Germany film has a one-sided point of view. The film portrays Germans as evil people, and only focuses on events in which Germany was directly connected to the beginning of the war. It, however, leaves out the reasons behind the violent actions of Germany. For example, the film covers the events of Germany annexing Australia in 1938 and invading Poland in 1939 hence marking the beginning of the Second World War. This manipulates the audience into sticking to the point of view that Germans were evil people who only wanted to impose their course. The filmmaker should have done better by presenting the events as they were and letting the audience develop different points of view. In addition, he should have avoided imposing his opinions and ideas on the minds of the viewers. That way, he could have avoided bias by letting the audience be the judge.
Inside Nazi Germany is a compilation found footage film. This was the best approach for the film because it presents events that happened over the years. For instance, there is footage from the Nazi party rally of 1937 and that of Jewish boys arriving in France. The compilation of found footage helps the filmmaker combine the important pieces of footage that carry significant events in historical time. The film, therefore, is able to capture only the most significant events and explain a whole historical era in a short time.
“Momma dont allow” applies the fly on Wall observational approach. The film has no narrator and therefore leaves the audience to interpret the silent images according to their understanding. The documentation is pure and shows the true happenings with no manipulation. What is shown in the video is the life of young people socializing and enjoying themselves. There is dancing, drinking, smoking, and spending time with friends, which is what the life of a young person especially a teenager is illuminated by. The observational approach is interesting since it challenges the audience to be keen on the images and come up with a narrative that explains the events on their own. The power given to the audience by the approach makes it a working one. The editing choices of the filmmaker may in a way have warped up the reality. For example, the filmmaker focuses on the dominant group of teenagers who are up to competing on who can socialize better. This might, however, not apply to all the teenagers of the time.
Technology has a great impact on filmmaking and how people currently view films. Documentaries are even more affected by what computers have enabled filmmakers to do. Technology has enabled documentary filmmakers to manipulate stories and tell them in the way that they want the stories to be told. Nowadays, documentaries are just as commercially viable as other films. Technology advancements such as the zoom lens enable the filmmaker to focus on the aspects that he or she wants to communicate to the audience, which can make the manipulation worse because the filmmaker robs the audience the opportunity to interpret events on their own. For example, in the "Momma dont allow" film, the filmmaker makes the audience concentrate on some of the people in the film and not others, for example, the Toff's teenagers.
