People On Sunday is an original soundtrack to the 1930 silent film variously known as Menschen am Sonntag, Les Hommes le Dimanche and People On Sunday. The film is a key work of interwar German cinema, based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder.
Part documentary, part fiction, People On Sunday follows a group of characters going about their business in Weimar-era Berlin over one weekend and shows normal life in Germany before dictatorship.
Domenique Dumont was invited to compose the score for a special screening and live performance at the Les Arcs Film Festival in the French Alps in December 2019.
“Working on this score strengthened my belief that the time we currently live in, although far from perfect, might be the best time to be alive. All the bells and whistles, all the advantages that we have the opportunity to enjoy in the 21st century, are things people couldn’t have dreamt of only a hundred years ago. At the same time, we haven’t yet transformed away from our sense of humanity. As absurd and optimistic as it may sound, we are living in a utopia compared it to what came before and, perhaps, what is to come. Somehow this movie made me think of the present more than the past.”