Summer in the City (1971) User Reviews

20 minutes of plot in almost two hours

[stevergy2000 · 5/10 · 1 July 2016]

As Wim Winders first feature, it certainly makes a unique impression, although not always a positive one. Entitled Summer in the City, virtually all the exterior shots have snow covered grounds,cars and streets. The main character even speaks of how the snow makes Berlin seem to be a ghost town. Even weirder are the relationships Hans seems to have with three different girls, all of whom are very attractive.In the first case, he calls to ask if he can stay over for a few days, which she agrees with. Later, after moving from Munich to Berlin, he simply appears in his friends' apartments, playing an unknown board game in the first and being offered port wine in the second. There is never any hint of intimacy between him and any of the girls, and when he finally leaves the third one, there is five minutes or more of silent closeups of her in her rather modestly furnished apartment. Then, there's the music: notably by The Kinks (To whom the film is dedicated), the Lovin'Spoonful, (whose song used for the title of the movie is played in its entirety), Bob Dylan (the first two cuts from his John Wesley Harding album) and many other rock and roll tunes from the late'60s. Very often, the song has little if any apparent connection to what is transpiring on the screen at the time. And what it is that is transpiring for the majority of the films is movement: we see Hans being driven in a car, flying in an airplane, walking the streets and taking a train, all the time with a flowing montage of the passing street scenery. If nothing else, Winders proves he's a master of steady cam operation. The 'plot' - Hans' apparent attempts to stay clear of the associates he had before some unknown bad deed landed him in prison, is merely tangential at the most to the visual panoply of street scenes. And he smokes like a chimney! Very different, quite unique, but not all that inspiring.

Early Wenders still needs refinement

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 15 August 2017]

"Summer in the City" is a West German film from 1971, so this one had its 45th anniversary last year. It was written and directed by Wim Wenders and for him it was (after quite a few short films) his very first full feature film. And he made quite a jump as this one comes fairly close to the two-hour mark. The cast does not really include any well-known names with the exception of lead actor Hanns Zischler who was like Wenders in his early 20s at that point and it was for him a bit of a breakthrough as well. He worked with Wim on other occasions too. This one is pretty similar compared to other Wenders works from decades ago. Lots of music, it is in black-and-white and it is all about the atmosphere as really very little happens from start to finish in here. It is an extremely slow movie. Sadly the formula is not working the way it did in other works by WW afterward, such as "Wings of Desire". I love the latter really, but this one here is not even a poor man's version of that classic really. Quite a shame. It all feels so random really. For example there is a scene when Wenders acts himself in the film and plays pool billiard with a character for a while and absolutely nothing happens. They aren't talking even and Wenders' character disappears as quickly afterward as he showed up. People who like this film will call it chilling or relaxing, but I personally found it boring. Oh yeah don't be fooled by the English title, this one is in the German language. Actually, this is another common thing for Wenders that several of his films are not in the same language as the titles, maybe include a few words at best in this language. The title here is one of the many songs used in the movie and that scene near the end actually made for the perhaps most memorable moment and one of the few only good ones I would say. But it can not make up for all the lengths and I agree with the other reviewer that honestly the plot here does not match the runtime. As you read earlier, Wenders did some stuff I enjoyed quite a bit, but for this film here I must say it seems to me that he had not yet found the right approach. Thumbs down. Don't watch.