569 People on Sunday

[Jeff]

People on Sunday



People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) represents an astonishing confluence of talent—an early collaboration by a group of German filmmakers who would all go on to become major Hollywood players, including eventual noir masters Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer and future Oscar winners Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. This effervescent, sunlit silent film, about a handful of city dwellers enjoying a weekend outing (a charming cast of nonprofessionals), offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin. A unique hybrid of documentary and fictional storytelling, People on Sunday was both an experiment and a mainstream hit that would influence generations of film artists around the world.

Disc Features

- New high-definition digital restoration, created in collaboration with the Filmmuseum Amsterdam
- Two scores—a silent-era-style score by the Mont Alto Orches­tra and a modern compo­sition by Elena Kats-Chernin, performed by the Czech Film Orchestra—both presented as uncompressed stereo soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
- Weekend am Wannsee, Gerald Koll’s 2000 documentary about the film, featuring an interview with star Brigitte Borchert
- Ins Blaue Hinein, a thirty-six-minute short from 1931 by People on Sunday cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Noah Isenberg and reprints by scriptwriter Billy Wilder and director Robert Siodmak

DVD
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Blu-ray
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[swo17]

Isn't this Criterion's first silent film on Blu-ray (other than a couple included as extras in 1080i)? That seems, um, sort of significant.

[Tom Hagen]

Who had the rights on this one?

[lubitsch]

- Weekend am Wannsee, Gerald Koll’s 2000 documentary about the film, featuring an interview with star Brigitte Borchert

That's a lovely extra alone for the fact that they managed to track down one of the lead actresses 70 years later.
The film is obviously one of the best of the 30s merging everything together from city symphony to montage cinema, from the realist cinema of the time obviously predating neorealism to Neue Sachlichkeit plus a shot saucy sex comedy.

[matrixschmatrix]

Isn't this Criterion's first silent film on Blu-ray (other than a couple included as extras in 1080i)? That seems, um, sort of significant.

Assuming you don't count Modern Times, yeah. I'm actually really looking forward to the uncompressed stereo soundtracks on this one.

[zedz]

Corrected:

Isn't this Criterion's first silent film on Blu-ray (other than a couple included as extras in 1080i)? That seems, um, sort of significant.

Assuming you don't count Chaplin's second sound film Modern Times, you know, the one with the synchronised soundtrack and the talking and everything, yeah.

[swo17]

Sorry zedz, you are wrong.

[zedz]

Sorry zedz, you are wrong.

Ah yes! It's there along with that other well-known silent film Blood of a Poet, and probably a few other old black and white films that the intern who created that hadn't actually seen.

Is Criterion aware that they left Playtime and all their other Tatis off that list?

[Tommaso]

I thought I could avoid double-dipping, but this looks like a truly great edition, especially with the inclusion of that Schüfftan film as an extra, which features Theo Lingen and a very young Wolfgang Staudte. I hope this sells reasonably well so that they might feel like doing an Eclipse set of Siodmak's early German sound films (allow me some dreaming...)

[artfilmfan]

I'm glad that Criterion decided to provide the Elena Kats-Chernin-composed and Czech Film Orchestra-performed score. It's so perfect. Can't wait for the Blu-ray edition!

[Camera Obscura]

I completely agree. The Elena Kats-Chermin score is wonderful.

- Two scores—a silent-era-style score by the Mont Alto Orches­tra and a modern compo­sition by Elena Kats-Chernin, performed by the Czech Film Orchestra—both presented as uncompressed stereo soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition

Compared to the German dvd from Zyx Music (which carried the Elena-Kats-Chermin score as well), a good choice they ditched the Steven Garling score in favour of a seemingly (haven't heard that one yet) much more appropriate silent-era-style score by the Mont Alto Orchestra.

[Tizzod]

Here's something interesting. I just picked up the Believer Film issue and it came with a DVD of 'People on Sunday'. After seeing the Criterion I looked a little more closely and it says licensed from Janus. When I popped the disc in it starts playing immediately (no disc menu) but it's pretty clearly the restored version of the film. Now granted it lacks all of the extras but if you're just looking for the film it's pretty hard to beat the $10 price of the magazine. I was pretty psyched before but now I'm really excited to watch this.

[RodneySauer]

The Mont Alto score for People on Sunday hasn't been heard much because we've only performed it once -- at the 2006 Telluride Film Festival. Luckily for us, word got around about the show, and Criterion decided to commission a recording. It's our first for the label, and we certainly hope they'll think of us again in the future.

We just finished the recording a few days ago, and I've put a couple of excerpts on our web site if you want to check them out. They're on our home page.

As with most Mont Alto scores, this is entirely made up of pieces published for salon, dance, and film orchestras during the teens and twenties. But -- because of the nature of this film -- this is a particularly light, sunny, and fun score; especially compared to some of our recent work on films like Faust, Chicago, and The Last of the Mohicans.

[ccfixx]

DVDBeaver - Criterion's first 1080i transfer to blu-ray of a disc's main feature film.

[cdnchris]

I've only seen a few 1080i transfers on Blu-ray and other than the one for The Killer and some special features on other discs I can't say interlacing has been a huge issue on high-def, nothing like DVD anyways.

[Peacock]

I'm guessing this means that The Phantom Carriage will also be 1080i, unless they use one of those frame duplication tricks mentioned here to get it to 24p. Glad they haven't sped this one up...

[swo17]

As we've discussed in the Kino thread about Our Hospitality, 1080i may actually be optimal for films with frame rates less than 24fps.

[RodneySauer]

I've only seen a few 1080i transfers on Blu-ray and other than the one for The Killer and some special features on other discs I can't say interlacing has been a huge issue on high-def, nothing like DVD anyways.

People on Sunday was transferred at 22 fps, which seems to be about the same as for the BFI release, and suits me just fine. And yes, 1080i is used for film speeds other than 24 fps, though I'm not technically savvy enough to know why... somehow 1080p requires 24 fps. The same is done for Kino's Blu-Rays of some of the Keaton films like The Three Ages and Our Hospitality that would be too fast at 24 fps.

[cdnchris]

Blu-ray

I'm also going to post some high-res versions of some of the grabs I made there simply because a couple things got lost in the resizing (an issue I'm not fond of but I'm usually happy as long as they still give the appropriate idea of the overall quality) and show some problems because of the interlacing.

I must stress, though (really stress) that while playing the issues present in these grabs are not at all noticeable, at least on a 46-inch television. I'm only posting them here just because my resized grabs don't show everything for these particular shots (the rest look fine.) The images are all still JPGs (the PNGs are just way too big.)

Image #3
Image #7
Image #15

[Peacock]

According to the review on Blu-ray.com; People on Sunday is 1080p?

[manicsounds]

I put in a request to change the listing to 1080i

[knives]

The second film on the disc is really charming. It's not a great work, but it's far better directed than most early sound films and has a cute enough sense of humour. I'm really glad they attached it.

[beardofbees]

can anyone tell me what the clip during the Weekend am Wannsee documentary containing the slide that reads "Im Jahre 2000" is from? i can't seem to find any information on it, but then again i'm not even sure what i'm looking for.

[TMDaines]

This might be my favourite release of 2011. The older the film the more it seems to benefit from the leap to 1080p/1080i. Menschen am Sonntag looks absolutely beautiful and the B-side is an entertaining piece also.

It would be great to see Criterion release a greater number of silents on Blu-ray but I really don't see it happening as they have seemingly never been a big area of interest for them and there's also Kino who seem much more eager to pick up the rights for the US for films of this era.

[crawjo]

Just saw it last night. A wonderful film, one of the best silents I have ever seen. Parts of it had a certain dream-like quality that reminded me of certain passages of Malick. The reduction of dialogue, the focus on image and sound, somehow seem to speak to each other from across the centuries.