Murnau, Borzage and Fox

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.

Farmers' wives from Amager selling flowers.

Street Trading. Fishermen's wives from Skovshoved sell their fish from the stalls at Gammel Strand. Anker Kirkeby is in the picture.

Swimming. The Russian swimmer Romantschenko visits Copenhagen. He jumps into the water and swims around in the harbor, and he is later seen together with journalist Anker Kirkeby.