Hans Richter: Race Synphony (1928)

Of the three films that avant-garde director Hans Richter released in 1928, this is the least of them. Indeed, there appears to be little "avant-garde" about it. 'Race Symphony (1928)' belongs to a different style of film-making, most popular popular in the 1920s, known loosely as "City Symphonies." Documentaries such as 'Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)' and 'The Man With a Movie Camera (1929)' celebrated the working-class mechanics of society, often shunning intertitles and instead using diverse optical effects – such as double-exposures, dissolves, split-screen and slow-motion – to communicate story and mood. Richter's entry runs just seven minutes, and documents a typical day at the German races, where sophisticated people turn up in droves to place a bet, watch the horses and celebrate a well-deserved win. Despite the excellent workmanship of the short – and, make no mistake, Richter is a phenomenal editor – the problem here lies in the subject matter, which is largely uninteresting.