The first sequence reminds me of the beginning of Lang’s Our Daily Bread/City Girl, with the young farmer in the café meeting this city girl. Likewise, some shots from Murnau’s Sunrise in the city. And more in the same timeframe, the beginning of Francesco Rosi’s Hands Over The City (1963), with the post-war reconstruction and the people in the street running errands.
The appliance POV would be more likely to remove the appliances, whatever they are, from the screen, since what matters here is to show the consumer greed in the envious eyes of the passer-bys. We don’t look at technological innovation or comfort or high standing, but at the post-war working class craving to own.
All the bureaucrat shots remind me a lot of the similar esthatics deployed in Brazil (attention to people’s intimate gimmicks, obsessive relation to tehir immediate environment, suspicion…)

I like the color contemporan remake you made. Nice echo.

-jesse