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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
To witness Such Is Life in Munich is to step through a temporal fissure into a world that was as much an illustration as it was a reality. Henry 'Hy' Mayer, a man whose nib was sharper than most sabers of his era, offers us a glimpse into a Bavarian idyll that feels simultaneously ancient and startlingly modern. This 1914 curiosity is not merely a travelogue; it is a manifestation of the flâneur's philosophy, where the act of looking is elevated to a high art form. Mayer does not just record the city; he interprets it through the lens of a satirist, making this film a crucial ancestor to the modern animated documentary.
Mayer’s approach to the medium is inherently idiosyncratic. Unlike the somber, heavy-handed realism found in Polikushka, which sought to capture the crushing weight of the human condition through stark, unadorned visuals, Mayer utilizes the camera as an extension of his sketchbook. There is a levity here that belies the technical limitations of the time. The way the frame interacts with Mayer’s live-action sketching—seeing the artist’s hand literally create the world we are about to inhabit—creates a meta-textual layer that was decades ahead of its time. It challenges the viewer to question the boundary between the observer and the observed.
The film functions as a rhythmic exploration of Munich's geography. We are treated to the sweeping vistas of the Isar, yet these are not the sterile landscapes of a tourism board. They are populated by the grotesques and the beauties of the city’s underbelly and overworld. In comparison to the rigid social structures depicted in Luksuschaufføren, Mayer’s Munich is a place of fluid boundaries where a beer stein acts as the ultimate equalizer. The richness of the black-and-white photography, even in its surviving fragments, suggests a city that was vibrating with a specific, pre-industrial energy.
The heart of the film beats most loudly within the cavernous halls of the Munich beer gardens. Here, Mayer’s lexical diversity of visual storytelling reaches its zenith. He captures the chiaroscuro of the smoke-filled rooms, where the light filters through layers of tobacco and steam to illuminate faces that seem carved from the very oaks of the Bavarian forests. This is a far cry from the polished, almost sanitized morality plays like The Easiest Way, which relied on theatrical artifice to convey social standing.
Instead, Mayer finds the truth in the exaggeration. The wobbling jowls of a burgher consuming a bratwurst become a synecdoche for the entire decadent era. There is a sense of voracious life in every frame. While films like Humility might focus on the quiet, internal struggles of the individual, Such Is Life in Munich revels in the collective, the noisy, and the communal. It is an unapologetic celebration of the senses, a cinematic feast that refuses to apologize for its own vulgarity.
When we look at contemporary works of the era, the uniqueness of Mayer’s vision becomes even more apparent. Consider Jim Corwey ist tot, a film that grapples with the finality of death and the coldness of the urban machine. Mayer’s Munich, by contrast, feels immortal. It is a city that breathes, eats, and laughs. Even when the camera lingers on the more somber aspects of the city—the disciplined marches of soldiers—there is an underlying current of satire that suggests the artist sees the absurdity in the pomp. This satirical edge is sharper than the melodrama found in The Girl Who Came Back, which deals with themes of redemption and return. In Mayer's world, there is no going back, only the perpetual motion of the present moment.
The film’s pacing is reminiscent of a musical composition, shifting from the slow, languid shots of the English Garden to the staccato editing of the marketplace. This rhythmic variety prevents the film from ever feeling like a mere historical document. It is alive. It is as if the very ink on Mayer’s page had been electrified. We see echoes of this visual playfulness in Schools and Schools, yet Mayer possesses a more cynical, more worldly eye. He is not interested in the didactic; he is interested in the visceral.
One cannot watch Such Is Life in Munich without a profound sense of dramatic irony. Produced in 1914, it stands as a final testament to a Europe that was about to be pulverized. The jovial faces in the beer gardens would soon be replaced by the hollowed-out stares of the trenches. This tension is palpable, even if unintentional. It shares a certain geopolitical anxiety with With Serb and Austrian, though Mayer hides his anxiety behind a mask of comedy. While Madame Spy would later dramatize the intrigue of the war years, Mayer captures the last gasp of the peace.
The technical prowess displayed here is also worth noting. The integration of animation and live-action was a nascent field, and Mayer’s mastery of the 'lightning sketch' technique is a marvel. It provides a sense of cinematic alchemy, turning static lines into bustling crowds. This artfulness is often missing from the more straightforward historical epics like Cardinal Richelieu's Ward or the exoticism of A Prince of India. Mayer doesn't need grand sets or ancient history to create a sense of scale; he finds the epic in the everyday.
At its core, the film is an exploration of fraternity. The way Mayer captures groups of men locked in conversation, their faces illuminated by the joy of shared experience, calls to mind the themes of Who's Your Brother?. There is a primal, almost tribal connection between the people of Munich and their city. Mayer, as an outsider—an American of German-Jewish descent—brings a unique perspective that is both affectionate and critical. He sees the beauty in the tradition but also the rigidity that threatens to stifle it.
This duality is what makes the film so enduring. It is not a simple hagiography of a city; it is a complex portrait of a place in flux. The film’s spiritual cousin might be Revelation, which also sought to find deeper meaning in the visual world, albeit through a more mystical lens. Mayer’s 'revelation' is found in the curve of a smile or the tilt of a hat. He finds the divine in the mundane.
To analyze Such Is Life in Munich is to engage with the ghosts of cinema’s past. It is a reminder that before the medium was dominated by narrative features, there was a period of wild experimentation where the boundaries between art forms were porous. Mayer’s work is a testament to the power of the line—both the line drawn by a pen and the line captured by a lens. It lacks the melodrama of Three of Many or the sentimentalism of A Poor Relation, and it is all the better for it.
The film remains a vital piece of cultural history, not because it tells a great story, but because it captures a great truth. The truth that life, in all its messy, beer-soaked, sun-drenched glory, is worth observing. Henry 'Hy' Mayer was more than a cartoonist; he was a philosopher of the visual. In Such Is Life in Munich, he gave us a gift that continues to resonate: the ability to see the world through the eyes of someone who found everything—absolutely everything—worthy of a sketch.
In the end, we are left with the image of Mayer himself, pen in hand, a mischievous glint in his eye, reminding us that while empires may fall and cities may change, the human spirit, as captured on a few feet of celluloid, remains stubbornly, wonderfully alive.
IMDb —
1919
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