http://www.bulsar.de
American Vagabonds on Grand Tour
This is my favourite amateur film. The photographer has a true interest in places, sights and buildings visited, and most of the footage has high quality. Some young Americans – “Bill and I” – travel in Europe, probably in 1936 (the airship Hindenburg is seen passing Cologne heading towards Berlin). They leave New York in march and sail home in the autumn. They go by boat and train and come to many places: Lisbon, Gibraltar, Algiers, Palermo, Naples, Capri, Monaco, Geneva, Wengen, Lucerne, Cologne, Brussels, Vienna, Budapest, Salzburg, Munich and Berlin.
I don’t know who these people are, or if they did something more than sightseeing during this half year. You get glimpses of personal life, but in the end you find anonymity. Their tourist perspective seems to change during the trip. First they see “picturesque” and “strange” things. Algiers is a “city of contrasts”. They come to “The modern French section”, and then see “some strange sights in the old Arabic quarters”. Some women in hijabs run away from the offensive tourist camera, while some boys laugh – at the Americans. In Vienna, Budapest and Berlin they see more of the ordinary life between the great buildings, and they see the Nazis. There are great pictures of Nazis marching in Berlin and of the people watching. Near the end, now in colour, we see a brown house with bright red Nazi flags waving in the wind. Bill stands in front of this house. Strange enough, his colours are almost the same as the Nazi colours – a camel-hair ulster, a red scarf and a brown hat – but he seems to feel uncomfortable standing there. – The thrill of these amateur films is that you see scenes like these and only can guess what they mean.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDG51S7BBc
Part 2:
00:12 The Alps: our frinds climb a mountain, admire snowy alps and a village far down in a valley.
01:54 A hotel with good view of alps
02:14 TITLE May 11th. We arrive in Geneva, Switzerland by bus.
02:24 The bus. A street. Bill studies a memorial tablet honouring Woodrow Wilson as the founder of the League of Nations.
02:44 Views from a train.
03:02 Unterlaken-Ost. Streets. Alps
03:48 TITLE Dreams of Swiss Alpine scenery come true at Wengen and the Jungfrau!
03:58 Views of the Jungfrau and a valley. Bill throws a snowball.
05:08 Unterlaken-Ost again
05:21 TITLE Swiss lake scenery at Lucerne. Boat trip to Fluelen
05:31 Streets in Lucerne. Lake. Alps. Panoramas
07:29 On the train again. Chateau-Thierry. Trip up the Rhine
07:45 A war monument (WW1)
08:29 TITLE Our Rhine trip comes to a climactic end at Cologne
08:40 Cologne with the dome
09:07 TITLE The “Hindenburg” passes over Cologne heading towards Berlin
09:09 Hindenburg passes and disappears behind rooftops
09:18 TITLE We found a bit of old world atmosphere in Brussels
09:27 Granc Place and other sights in Brussels.
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVp3U_tteZg
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ7tmYH6s9M
________________________________________
Creative Commons license Public Domain:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
________________________________________
Der Film ist Gemeinfrei und unterliegt keinem Urheberrecht mehr: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/deed.de
________________________________________
Duration : 0:10:9
Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati Tags: 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939, alps, Amateur Film, berlin, brussels, bus, Chateau-Thierry, cologne, dome, Europe, Fluelen, France, geneva, Germany, Granc Place, Hindenburg, holiday, Home Movie, hotel, journey, Jungfrau, lake, Lucerne, mountain, old world, private, Reise, rhine, snowball, snowy alps, Spain, Street, Swiss Alpine, Switzerland, Train, travel, Travelogues, trip, Unterlaken, valley, village, war monument, Wengen, Woodrow Wilson