Cast: Erna Bergman, Willy Hildebrand
(Set to Claude Debussy's 'Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune' and Maurice Ravel's 'Daphnis et Chloé')
The critic, film historian, and cinema manager of a little theater in Baltimore, Herman G. Weinberg produced at least two avant-garde films, although apparently the first, 'City Symphony' (1930), was cut up to provide footage for the second, 'Autumn Fire' (1931). According to Weinberg, the latter film was a romance sentimentale, made as a means of courting a woman he then married, not for public exhibition. The film subjectively portrays two lovers who suffer through their separation until they are reunited at the end. Utilizing a Russian montage style, Weinberg intercuts continually between the two, juxtaposing their environments, identifying the young woman symbolically with nature and the man with the city (New York). Their reunion in the train station is accompanied by an orgy of flowing-water images, an obvious reference to Freud. Thus, the film mixes elements of the city film with a portrait of nature.
