A rainy day in Amsterdam provides the inspiration for Joris Ivens’ striking film poem. Although seamless in its presentation of a day in the life of the Dutch people, the film actually took two years to prepare.

Alberto Cavalcanti presents all walks of life as he chronicles a day in Paris from dawn to dusk. While faithful to its real life subjects, the film uses a modernist form which complicates its common classification as nonfiction. Cavalcanti’s film reputedly inspired Dziga Vertov to create his own city symphony, Man with a Movie Camera.

Walther Ruttman’s impressionistic vision of Berlin stands as one of the great “city symphonies” of the silent era. A day-to-night portrait of the city that deploys kinetic editing and a graphic mode of cinematography to capture the dynamism of the modern urban environment, the film set a lasting precedent for the representation of city life in cinema. Although the events appear to take place during a single spring day, Ruttman spent eighteen months assembling footage to produce the final film. Whether classified as a work of nonfiction or the avant-garde, Ruttman’s poetic work remains a classic of cinema.