"In terms of the conceptions of its creators, Berlin corresponded to the coded messages of an abstract film. The idea came from Carl Mayer, the expressionist film writer. Under the influence of New Objectivity, he was fascinated by the documentary possibilities of a film comprising a cross-section of the complex everyday realism of the capital. He was joined by Karl Freund, the renowned cameraman...and Walther Ruttmann, until then an abstract filmmaker. Shooting took over a year...They wandered the great city, filming from high buildings, descending into the sewers or the tunnels of the Underground system, submerging themselves-often with a hidden camera-in the pulsating life of the city... 'The aim was to organize the temporal as rigorously as possible according to strictly musical principles. Many of the best shots had to be left out, because this could not be allowed to become a picture book; rather the structure had to be like a complex machine, that can only operate when every tiny element fits with absolute precision into the next' (Ruttmann)." --Lothar Prox. We present the film without musical accompaniment, in order to emphasize the sense of a symphony created through rhythms within and between shots.