People on Sunday (1930)
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None of the five people on screen had ever acted before, and none of them ever would again. They played versions of themselves, using their own names, spending a Sunday exactly as they might have spent it anyway.
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY (1930), or Menschen am Sonntag, follows a taxi driver, a record shop clerk, a wine seller, a film extra, and a model as they escape Berlin for a day at the lake. The camera catches them flirting, napping, squabbling, and posing for snapshots, and treats all of it as worth watching.
The crew making it was just as unknown at the time. Billy Wilder and Curt Siodmak wrote it, Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer directed it, and a young Fred Zinnemann worked as an assistant cameraman. All of them would leave Germany within a few years and become major figures in Hollywood.
Shot on a shoestring with non-actors and real locations, the film mixes documentary footage of Berlin street life with staged scenes of ordinary romance and boredom. It has no professional lighting, no studio sets, no trained performers, only a city, a lake, and five people willing to be filmed living an ordinary day.
Physical Media
DVDCriterion CollectionUPC 715515083010
Adam added 9/28/2026
Blu-rayCriterion CollectionUPC 715515082914
Adam added 9/28/2026
About the Film
- Directed By
- Robert Siodmak, Edgar G. Ulmer
- Runtime
- 74 minutes
- Released
- February 4, 1930
- Country
- Germany
- Starring
- Erwin Splettstößer (Erwin, the taxi driver), Brigitte Borchert (Brigitte Borchert, the record shop sales assistant), Wolfgang von Waltershausen (Wolfgang
More Credits
- Genres
- Drama
- Language
- No Language
- Origin
- DE
- Studios
- Filmstudio 1929, Filmstudio Berlin
- Written By
- Billy Wilder, Curt Siodmak
- Produced By
- Seymour Nebenzal, Moriz Seeler, Heinrich Nebenzahl, Edgar G. Ulmer
- Cinematography
- Eugen Schüfftan
- Music
- Otto Stenzeel, Uwe Dierksen, Elena Kats-Chernin
- Also Starring
- the wine shop sales assistant), Christl Ehlers (Christl, the film extra), Annie Schreyer (Annie, the model), Kurt Gerron, Valeska Gert, Heinrich Gretler, Ernö Verebes, Moriz Seeler
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Berlin was the Art Capitol of the World, before WWII.
Ron Richter I’d say Paris was.
I’m going to watch this tonight!
This is such a good film. There was a small ensemble, Trio Bravo, that did a great soundtrack for this.
Great film.
Annie Schreyer fascinates me. Stunningly beautiful (she reminds me of Alexandra Daddario), and very naturalistic on screen. Yet I can’t find any information about her.
Its very moving – a modern city, with young beautiful people living a free life, just before Nazi Fascism napalmed this culture. Amazingly, it all came alive again about 40- 50 years later in the 1970s and 80s, like green shoots coming from old roots in a burnt forest
As a massive fan of the Babylon Berlin tv series, this is a must see.
Simon Egleton that and Grand Hotel
I loved Ruttmann’s Sinfonie der Großstadt – I’ll probably love this.
None of them had acted before or since, but one of them was a film extra??
Michael Graves Having just finished the Ricky Gervais series, I’m pretty confident she would have been offended by that. 🙂
TUBI
I saw this at the NFT on the South Bank in November 2001.
Lida Kita
It is a lovely picture – by future masters.
In many ways the film is a miracle. The chance that talented up-and-coming film artists made with a non-professional cast and a decidedly undramatic “plot” was considerable but it all jelled magnificently. Many celebrated film critics have considered it one of the greatest films ever made and its charm never fades.
You can see a german version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SITErFUYXaw
It always blows my mind that there was such a liberal, vibrant, intellectual culture in Germany in the years leading up to the madness of WWII. How did we go from there to half the world in ruins?
Tony Ellis A question particularly relevant right now if you ask me.
Tony Ellis … Very different situation than the one today in the USA: Germany was the best educated, competent and cultured nation in the world when they destroyed themselves and many others. MAGA is ignorant buffoons exploiting the idiocracy loophole, shooting itself in the foot at every turn. So the scenarios are very different. …Though both fell due to pride. So maybe not so different?
Tony Ellis Ex machina
One of my favourite movies for all times
I need to see this. Thanks for posting about it.
a natural film , relaxing to watch , over and over. Plus no visual crash/bang wallops .
I wanted to love this film. I watched it without knowing much about it. I was anticipating something dramatic would happen throughout the film, but it never did. Ultimately I found it bland and uninteresting.
Ken Winokur I guess you had expected a conventional melodrama, because it was such an old movie – and the movie fooled you, eh?
Dani Bains Manu Bains
beginning of the end. who’d a thought such a carefree existence would soon come to a tragic end.
We tried something similar in Granite Orpheus (2025). I want to see this.
Hey folks! I’m trying to find the name of a film I saw, relatively obscure, in a series of German mountain films (Bergfilme?)? Are you, or a friend, an expert on German film in the first half of the 20th century? I really, really want to find this one again! Your help is appreciated!
They didn’t know the horrors that were coming.
I wonder how many of them would be alive fifteen years later.
Wonderful film
Sounds like Seinfeld
undsowas – Ich werde immer ein Berliner sein 😎