Some Critical Perspectives on Lotte Reiniger William Moritz [1996] 15

"Animation: Art and Industry" ed. by Maureen Furniss, Indiana University 2Some CriticalPerspectives on Lotte Reiniger SomeCritical Perspectives onLotte Reiniger William Moritz [1996] otte Reiniger was bornin Berlin her first independent animation film, Das on 2June 1899. As a child, she Ornament des verliebten Herzens (Ornament Ldeveloped a facility withcutting of the Loving Heart), in the fall of 1919. paper silhouette figures, which had On the basis of the success of thisfilm, she become a folk-art formamong German got commercial workwith Julius women. As a teenager, she decided to Pinschewer’s advertising filmagency, pursue a career as an actress, and enrolled including an exquisite “reverse” silhouette in Max Reinhardt’s Drama School. She film, Das Geheimnis der Marquise (The began to volunteer as an extra for stage Marquise’s Secret), in which the elegant performances and movie productions, and white figures of eighteenth-century during the long waits between scenes and nobility (urging you to use Nivea skin takes, she would cut silhouette portraitsof cream!) seem like cameo or Wedgwood the stars, which she could sell to help pay images. These advertising films helped her tuition. The great actor-director Paul fund four more animated shorts: Amor und Wegener noticed not only the quality of das standhafte Liebespaar (Cupid and The the silhouettesshe made, but also her Steadfast Lovers, which combined incredible dexterity in cutting: holding the silhouettes with a live actor) in 1920, Hans scissors nearly still in her right hand and Christian Andersen’s Der fliegende Koffer moving the paper deftly in swift gestures (The Flying Suitcase) and Der Stern von thatuncannily formulated a complex Bethlehem (The Star of Bethlehem) in profile. 1921, and Aschenputtel (Cinderella) in 1922. Wegener hired her to do silhouette The success of these shorts convinced titles for his 1916 feature, Rübezahls the banker Louis Hagen to finance the Hochzeit (Rumpelstilskin’s Wedding), and production of a feature-length animated for his 1918 Der Rattenfänger von Hammeln film, Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The (Pied Piper of Hammeln) she made not Adventures of Prince Ahmed), based on only titles but also animated rat models stories from The Thousand and One Nights. (since the real animals refused to follow Production on this feature took three the piper). Through Wegener she met years, 1923 to 1926, with a staffof six: Hans Cürlis and Carl Kochof the Institute Reiniger; Carl Koch(now her husband); for Cultural Research, which produced the experimental animatorsWalter educational films. They helped her make Ruttmann and Berthold Bartosch, who This content downloaded from 24.185.43.110 on Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:26:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 14 ANIMATION: ART & INDUSTRY did “specialeffects;” Walter Türck, who some thirteen before the war, and after the manipulated a second level of glass for war, living in England, she made some animation of backgrounds, etc.; and twenty-three more, half in color, most of Alexander Kardan, who kept track of the which were shown on British and exposure sheets, storyboard and such American television. In1970, after the technicaldetails. The young theater death of her husband, she wrote a composer Wolfgang Zeller wrote an definitive book, Shadow Theatres and elaborate symphonic score for the film, Shadow Films.3 She also made additional which launched him on a long career as a advertising films, severaldocumentary film composer. films, live shadow-theater performances, The great success of Prince Ahmed and gave various workshops before her encouraged Reiniger to make a second death on 19June 1981. feature, Doktor Dolittle (based on Hugh Such a distinguished biography – and Lofting’s book1), which premiered in a filmography of more than seventy items December 1928 with Paul Dessau – begs the question of why Lotte Reiniger conducting a musical score that included remains rather undervalued. Despite the music by himself, Kurt Weill, Paul occasional nod to her as having made one Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky. feature-length animation film before Walt At Prince Ahmed’s French premiere Disney (when indeed she made two), most in July 1926, Carl and Lotte met Jean critics today still tacitly assume that Renoir and became life-long friends, silhouettes constitute a secondary or which involved their collaboration on inferior form of animation, so that Renoir’s features, La Marseillaise, The Disney’s cartoon Snow White counts as a Grand Illusion and Tosca. Renoir also real first animation feature. appeared as a actor in a 1930 live-action As withmost other animation feature Lotte co-directed, Die Jagd nach pioneers, one key factor in Reiniger’s dem Glück (The Pursuit of Happiness), neglect must be the unavailability of good which also starred Berthold Bartosch in a quality prints. When Reiniger fled to love storyset in the milieu of a carnival England in the 1930s, her original shadow-puppet theater. This feature, no negatives remained in Germany, and most less than Dr. Dolittle and Prince Ahmed, fell were dispersed or lost at the end of the victim to the new fad for talking pictures: war. While many of her films are available shot as a silent film, Pursuit of Happiness in England, not all of these represent an was converted into a sound film using the excellentreproduction of Reiniger’s voices of professional actors, but the original art: some have virtually lost their lip-synch wasfar fromperfect, and though backgrounds through repeated duping critics praised Reiniger’s script, direction fromavailable prints, others are coupled and animation,2 the film could not with modernsoundtracks (whichcause compete with the sharp, elaborate UFA the animation to move a third faster at musical Love Waltzes, with Lilian Harvey, “sound speed”) that banalize the narrative or the impressive Conrad Veidt war film, with kitsch music and redundant The Last Company, which opened in the voice-over. Only a few Reiniger filmsare weeks preceding Reiniger’s feature. available for rental in the U.S., none in Reiniger returned to making her superb editions except the NationalFilm silhouette shorts, of which she completed Board of Canada’s Aucassin and Nicolette, This content downloaded from 24.185.43.110 on Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:26:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Some Critical Perspectives on Lotte Reiniger William Moritz [1996] 15 which is hardly Reiniger’s best work – not validation of a women’s folk art form. thatit is a bad film, by any means, but the Although silhouette cutting had enjoyed a convoluted medieval adventure story, general vogue in the era before with its battles, escapes and disguises, photography and lithography allowed doesnot lend itself easily to imaginative easier formsof recording and reproducing touches (though Lotte manages a few, portraits, after the middle of the suchas the rats cavorting on the prison nineteenth century it came to be practiced bed before the humans arrive), and the more and more by women who were not realismof the tale (which mightas well allowed access to other arttraining but have been done by live actors) tends to who learned scissor-craft as part of their raise a “realism” question about the household duties.6 So Martin Knapp’s silhouettes in relation to the multi-color 1914 German Shadow and Silhouette Pictures backgrounds. from Three Centuries7 shows a The early critics of Reiniger’s work preponderance of women artists in the recognized the special power of the pure 1900s: Maria Lahrs, Elisabeth black-and-white silhouette: Béla Balász in Wolff-Zimmermann, Charlotte his essay “The Power of Scissors”noted Jancke-Sachs, Greta von Hörner, Dora thatany literary text seemed hardly Brandenburg-Polster, Lotte Nicklaß, competitive with the imaginative quality Gertrud Stamm- Hagemann, Cornelia of the silhouette.4 Rudolf Arnheim, in his Zeller, Magda Koll, Johanna Beckmann, review of the Doctor Dolittle feature, went Lisbeth Müller, Hildegard von Bayer, and so far as to claimthatall children’s films Hertha von Gumppenberg – to whom shouldbe made in the silhouette could be added Lore Bierling, a Munich technique, because the imagination of a silhouette artist who also made animation child can make a monster more films according to the German edition of frightening, an exploit more daring and Lutz’s Animated Cartoons, which contains extravagant, a maiden more beautiful (or four elegant illustrations from her “many” more personallyhuman in their own silhouette films (though Ihave never met image) than the literal representations in anyone who had seen one).8 puppet or cartoon, which automatically Looking at the 300 plates in Martin limit and impoverish the visionary, Knapp’s book, we candiscern some of the fantastic mentalimagery of the viewer.5 aesthetic challenges of thisgenre. In When Lotte Reiniger began to use Emma Eggel’s “Kriemhild viewing multi-color backgrounds (and in some Siegfried’s Corpse” (anillustrationfor the cases figures) due to the demandsof Niebelungenlied fromthe 1880s), the television in the mid-1950s, her filmsalso complexity of the hall in which the hero entered the terrain of the “cartoon” film lies obviously demonstrates a bravura which gives more information than intricacy of cutting in decorative elements necessary for imagination– but while that might not be necessaryfor the perhaps they can not match the brilliance narrative aspect of the image: pencil-thin of the early Reiniger films, they are still curving lines vaulting the ceiling, a superior to many other conventional pine-tree with hundreds of needles outside animations. one wall, and sevenniches withtinybut The genre of silhouette films also fully-detailed holy pictures in them – these constitutes for Reiniger a kind of feminist aside fromthe perspective of tiles and the This content downloaded from 24.185.43.110 on Sun, 04 Nov 2018 19:26:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 16 ANIMATION: ART & INDUSTRY main figures, of which Kriemhild is The first appearance of the evil caught rushing in, strands of her hair Sorcerer shows him unfold in medium fluttering behindher.

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