Summer in Berlin: films that explore the city’s history and landmarks

And so, my peregrinations bring me to Berlin, for the first time in summer. I’d only been here for the justly celebrated Berlin Film Festival, which is held during the winter and the act of rushing from screening to screening keeps you warm at what is truly a miserable time, weather-wise, in this great metropolis. Summer in Berlin, on the other hand, is a glorious time. The sun is shining, Covid is at bay, and vaccinated people are back at cinemas, museums, galleries and restaurants.

Also Read | Get ‘First Day First Show’, our weekly newsletter from the world of cinema, in your inbox. You can subscribe for free here

Pausing only to meet a few filmmaker friends who are based in Berlin, I launched into my musings about films set in this magnificent city without much delay. Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) in two parts — Festival of Nations and Festival of Beauty — her document of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, is correctly derided as Nazi propaganda, and she was subsequently disgraced. However, there is no denying her immense cinematic talent and the films are beautiful to look at, though the politics and underlying social history cannot and should not be denied.

There is of course Sebastian Schipper’s pounding Victoria (2015), where a young Spanish woman in Berlin is caught up in events beyond her control. Set across one night in the city, Victoria is one of those one-shot films featuring non-stop exhilarating action with nary a pause for breath. A dazzling technical achievement which was duly recognised at the Berlin festival.

A key sequence in Victoria takes place at Checkpoint Charlie, that hallowed gateway between the erstwhile East and West Berlin which has been referenced in countless novels and movies. I duly visited the place which now also has a harrowing exhibit detailing the history of Berlin from 1933-45. Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965) opens at Checkpoint Charlie, James Bond crosses over in Octopussy (1983) and the locale and indeed the Berlin Wall has been featured time and again in many films dealing with the Cold War including recently, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (2015).

This can in no way be a comprehensive look at films set in Berlin, so after a quick hat tip to Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (1987), I’ll confine myself now to the various iterations of Berlin Alexanderplatz, named after the vast square in the heart of the city. In 1929, Alfred Döblin wrote Berlin Alexanderplatz, about a small-time criminal who has just been released from prison after being involved in a murder and finds himself in the big, bad city, and inevitably is drawn to those of his own ilk. The book was adapted as a film as early as 1931. The most comprehensive adaptation of the book is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s sprawling 14-part 1980 television series. In preparation for this trip, I pulled out my hitherto unwatched blu-ray of Burhan Qurbani’s 2020 adaptation, which changed the lead character to an illegal immigrant from Bissau, West Africa, lending layers of complexity to an already dense tale. The film is three hours short and is another breathtaking ode to the city that has and will continue to give to cinema.