Rain
1929 · 14m · Netherlands
Directed by Joris Ivens, Mannus Franken
Genres: documentary, experimental
Tones: contemplative
A lyrical, wordless city symphony that captures the passage of a rain shower over Amsterdam — from the first drops through the storm's climax to the return of sunlight — transforming an ordinary meteorological event into pure visual poetry.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Ivens spent two years filming Amsterdam rain to make a wordless cine-poem. Beautiful, canonical, contemplative. Worth the 14 minutes once a decade.
Joris Ivens spent two years catching Amsterdam's rain to produce one of cinema's founding city-symphony shorts — in dialogue with Ruttmann, Vigo, and Vertov. An essential survey piece.
The Vimeo upload here is the 4:16 Joris Ivens / Juan José Rueda restoration with new chamber-music score — Ivens spent two years filming an Amsterdam rainstorm to assemble cinema's earliest pure cine-poem. Foundational silent-era avant-garde, still gorgeous.
Reviews
Ivens and Franken transcend the mortal condition they suggest — and we feel this transcendence. On one level, then, Rain is a film about the power of art.
Probably the most perfect evocation of this strange thing called 'rain' and with that one of the most Dutch films ever. It shows our daily reaction to rain in both a poetic, realistic and even comedic way.
Festivals
- Canon of Dutch Cinema 2007, Selected as one of sixteen defining Dutch films