Carl Mayer's Complaint: Documentary Cutting and the Ethical Limits of Formalism

In 1926, Carl Mayer, the most distinguished of German screenwriters, withdrew from the production of BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY, a film that he had conceived and initiated. He did so because Walter Ruttmann, the person assigned by the studio to direct and edit the film, was destroying the integrity of the objects and events seen within it through his techniques of continuity cutting. Within this lecture I describe Ruttmann's techniques and Mayer's objection to them, for the latter's insistence that filmmakers respect the integrity of the objects and events encountered by means of movies has profound implications for the ethical making of them and therewith the making of artefacts within other arts as well.