A point was raised in last week's seminar on Walter Ruttman's Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt concerning, at least as I understood or perhaps have falsely remembered, the affective qualities of music on our experience and interpretation of film. To confess, I found it difficult to watch Berlin in silence. After five minutes, following a recommendation from The Internet Archive, I spun some Kraftwerk and felt comfort, ease, joy even. Not because of the music but because a silent experience of Berlin seemed, somehow, alienating. Maybe Ruttman wanted it that way. What's more likely is that you and I are so used to the gift of sound and vision that we want, perhaps need, to experience films as we, those of us who are neither blind nor deaf nor both, experience the world: noisily, visually, with sight and sound. That "symphony" is included in the title of the film is clue enough.
I don't really have much more to say on the subject, other than a request for any critical theory surrounding these ideas and an embedded video I found on YouTube, where someone (Akbar) has taken the first five minutes of Berlin and added a bad synthpop soundtrack. It's not really that interesting, but this concept of "the musicality of the avant-garde" introduced by the YouTubber seems like it's worth thinking on.
