Director: Walter Ruttman
Country: Germany
Language: no dialogue with electronic music
Duration: 80 minutes
Age limit: 0+

Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis is largely an avant-garde film, and does not have a story or a plot. However, the events of the film are arranged to simulate the passage of a single day (simulated from an assemblage of film shot over the period of one year). Shots and scenes are cut together based on relationships of image, motion, point of view, and thematic content. At times, a sort of non-narrative commentary can be implied, as in edits that juxtapose workers entering a factory with cattle being beaten and driven into a corral. The five reel film is divided into five acts, and each act is announced through a title card at the beginning and end. One leitmotiv that is present in all of the acts, which largely connects them, is the theme of the train and streetcar. Much of the motion in the film, and many of the scene transitions, are built around the motion of trains and streetcars.