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Menschen Am Sonntag was made at a time of financial upheaval when the great German film concern UFA had lost its lead. Sound had arrived, but had not been wholeheartedly accepted. A time of flux - the overwhelming Social Democrat victory was imminent, and conditions of living were far from prosperous in the capital. Many of the great names in the German cinema in the twenties were already dispersed in America or France — Veidt, Jannings, Murnau and Pabst were soon to look abroad for finance. But Menschen Am Sonntag united a brilliant assembly of talents. There was at this time a strong trend towards a remarkable movement known as Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) which, in the confusion of politics, social change and, not the least, the coming of sound to the cinema, has been overlooked.
Menschen Am Sonntag remains as fresh today as it must have seemed thirty years ago; perhaps its simplicity has much to do with this, for the plot, the background, the characters and their feelings are entirely lacking in any sensational element.
Four young people - a driver, a salesgirl, a commercial traveller and an extra - leave their modest homes in Berlin to spend Sunday by the Wannsee. They bathe, picnic, laze and flirt, and in the evening return to the city. And that is all. But the directors, unhampered by the demands of a complicated narrative, have time to linger over detail, to catch a fleeting expression or a revealing gesture. Through their acute observation, the reality they have created is not linked to any special epoch, but has a timeless quality.
In its sensual poetry, and in the importance it attaches to its natural surroundings, Menschen Am Sonntag recalls Renoir's Une Partie De Campagne, whilst its theme and its ordinary people remind one of Domenica D'Agosto without the occasionally contrived element of the Italian film. Three directors, famous today - Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann - worked on this film, which affords a fascinating insight into the character of their talent at an early stage.