I'm watching the DVD collection of 50 preserved films from American Film Archives. When I saw the title of this particular film I thought it might be some type of travelogue shot by Americans in Germany.
As a Minnesotan, I was pleasantly surprised to see the film was set in the small town of Cologne, Minnesota in 1939. This amateur documentary was actually made by a doctor and his wife. It is cleverly done given the limitations of having no audio (as the Germans would say, MOS - Mit Out Sound). Despite what another IMDB reviewer of this film mistakenly claims, amateur movie makers in that time period would find the technical difficulties of shooting a film with audio rather daunting.
Anyways, I thought the film had a creeping subtlety to it that rewarded the viewer by the time it concluded.
When the movie began it seemed like it might be a pleasant Norman Rockwell type portrait of a farming community in the upper midwest, but it becomes more and more nuanced in it's revelation that the town is both fueled by a German and Dutch work ethic, as well as an apparently healthy (or un-healthy) consumption of beer.
Review of Cologne
