"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

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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,

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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

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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. Eggel’s “The Holy close-up, his eyes rolling, his fingers Grail” confirms this withthe complicated articulating like spider legs; the light void bowedleading of arched stained-glass that surroundshim at first yieldsto his windows, and a delicate balance of conjuring, filling with polymorphous thirteen swirling angels in flight. Dora oozes of organic forms(created by Walter Brandenburg-Polster’s 1911 “Battle”, in a Ruttmannwith Oskar Fischinger’s more modern, expressionist style, still wax-slicing machine) thatfinally resolve meets a challenge for intricacy and into the magic horse. The Caliph’s dynamics, with ten foot-soldiers encircling birthdayfestivalopens withelaborate a man on horseback withno less than 20 architecture along a horizon line from spears menacing the steed who rears and which appear diagonallines of twists, its whirling mane and tail multi-national courtiers bearing gifts; the contrasting to the jagged trajectoriesof the diagonalcomposition remains constant spears. Maria Lahrs’ similarly for these characters each time they are expressionist 1910 “Fishermen at seen. Indetails such as Dinarzade’s lacy Königsberg” delights in capturing the curtains and veil, the Caliph’s palanquin abstractrippled reflections in the water. and the mane of the magic horse (as well Whether in light, open compositions such as the architecture of the Caliph’s palace) as Cornelia Zeller’s “Storm” and we see the impossible intricacy. In the “Dragon-Kites” withthe sky as a blank arrestof the Sorcerer (similar in design to matrix for jagged and twining lines, or in Dora Brandenberg-Polster’s “Battle”) the the dark, thick“Pierrot’s Death” of Lotte irregular trajectories of the guards’ spears Nicklaß with its textured stage curtains, encircling their victim depicts the dynamic tutu, ruffs and flowing black robes, the tension of the moment. Prince Ahmed’s silhouette artist strives to infuse the stiff, flight into the stratosphere is supported by frozen image witha balance of pattern multiple layers of soft clouds and and positive/negative space, with implied hundreds of stars moving in perspective. energetic dynamics, and with an The palace of Peri Banu, with its carved “impossible” sense of intricacyand jali screens, lacy curtains and pierced fluidity thatdefies our assumptions about lanterns again astonish with their scissorsand paper. impossible intricacy. And Peri Banu’s Lotte Reiniger, whentaking this bath in the forest pool(with reflections of tradition into the animated film, needed the palm trees, and rippling reflections of not only to fulfillthese expectations but Peri Banu herself, as well as her servants also to devise a time-based dynamic that and a doe –recalling Maria Lahrs’ choreographed and balanced these “Fishermen”) provides an ecstatic elements as they developed within scenes, moment of bravura animation magic. made transitions, and expressed These sensitive and spectacular effects something about the various characters continue throughout the film– the and narrative twists. The opening gorgeous sinuouslayers of the Chinese sequences of The Adventures of Prince mountain landscape, for example, or the Ahmed demonstrate that she succeeded exquisite miniature image of Ahmed brilliantly.9 inside the Sorcerer’s conjuring hair-ball

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(like the holy niches in Eggel’s the German inflation, when a loaf of “Kriemhild”). bread cost thousands of marks. While Reiniger definitely designed This anecdote has been interpreted to and directed her films, and to her belongs suggest that (a) Reiniger’s filmsare just the full artistic credit for their successes, children’s filmswith no broader another markof her genius lies in her significance, and (b) Reiniger herself had choice of experimental animatorslike no political conscience. Neither of these Walter Ruttmann and Berthold Bartosch assumptions is true. Not only did she to workfor her. Onone hand Ruttmann’s surround herself with communists and soft, sensuous paintings on glass and his socialists (including Ruttmann, Bartosch, jagged expressionistic lightning and his Carl Koch, the Institute for Cultural exciting pulsating effects in the climactic Research, Paul Dessau, KurtWeill and duel between the Sorcerer and the Lotte Lenya, Bertolt Brecht, JeanRenoir) “Ogress”, and Bartosch’s dizzying but believed enoughin those multiplane starscapesand hypnotic waves humanitarian ideals that she could not in Peri Banu’s waters all add just the right stay in Nazi Germany and emigrated at complementary virtuosity and variety to great personal danger and discomfort – Reiniger’s cutout figuresand not able to get a permanent visa to backgrounds. On the other hand, another country, she spent several years Reiniger’s support of these film artists traveling back and forthbetween France helped them to develop and continue their and England on visitor’s passes. Although ownwork, for Ruttmannproduced his her artform, silhouette animation, lent abstract films Opus 3 and Opus 4 under itself to children’s filmsand fantasy Reiniger’s aegis, and the experience works, she thought consciously of a Bartoschculled from Prince Ahmed and Dr. socialist responsibility to infuse these films Dolittle made possible the refined layering (which would be seenby young, and luminous effects in his own impressionable minds) with constructive subsequentmasterpiece The Idea. and thought-provoking ideas. In Renoir’s In a famous conversationat the La Marseillaise, Reiniger’s shadow puppets animation stand,10 Walter Ruttmann do not appear as the “ombres chinoises” asked Reiniger: of the idle aristocracy, but rather as a “Lotte, why are you making a fairy tale political theater of the revolutionaries, film like this?” presenting a satirical parable “King and “I don’t know either”, she replied. Nation”. Das gestohleneHerz (The Stolen “What has it got to do with the year Heart, 1934) presents a similar anti-Nazi 1923?” he pursued. parable: an ogre who wants to control “Nothing at all. And why should it? I’m everything, own everything, steal here, living in the year 1923, and I have everything others find meaningful, the chance to make this film, so naturally I’m going to do it. That’s all it especially since this means violation of has to do with the year 1923.” privacy, hoarding and joy in others’ “That doesn’t seem right to me”, he misery; the musical instruments rebel, insisted. refuse to be silenced, trap the ogre in his But despite his socialist principles, own web, fly home to their lovers, Ruttmann continued to work on Prince watchmen, chamber players and women Ahmed, because 1923 was a bitter year of at their sewing. I, personally, have always

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imagined that there wassomething of the (Seemingly-Dead Chinaman) was advanced socialist tolerance for birth originally animated as an episode for control and abortionrights (suppressed by Prince Ahmed but wasomitted fromthe the Nazis) in the satirical literalness of the feature not only to reduce the running mad proliferation of little Papagenos and time (which some distributors feared Papagenas at the end of Reiniger’s 1935 mightbe too long for children’s attention Papageno. span) but alsobecause men were nervous Inthe 1920s equal rights for women about the homosexual content. Reiniger and homosexuals formedpart of the had read the essay by Sir Richard Burton, agenda for socialists, and Reiniger also English translator of The Thousand and One treated those issues with good Nights, about “The Sotadic Zone” and consciousness. The kind, resourceful and how important homosexual relationships powerfulAfrican magician in Prince were in the world of Prince Ahmed. She Ahmed (somewhat inaptly called an also knew Kurt Hiller, who was not only a “Ogress” in the new English-language key member of the Socialist party but also titles) represents a traditional priestess of of Magnus Hirschfeld’s homosexual the old goddess religions, who uses her liberation movement in Berlin. “Of healing powers for good, as opposed to course, I knew lots of homosexual men the evil male Sorcerer who exploits people and women fromthe filmand theater withmagic tricks for his ownbenefit. The world in Berlin, and saw how they good and capable woman wins out over suffered fromstigmatization”, she told the sleazy male trickster. me. “By contrast, Iwasfascinated by how InReiniger’s Carmen (1933), we see natural love between members of the same another kindof feminist re-interpretation: sex was depicted in the Arabian Nights, so I her Carmen is inventive and thought, let’s be casual and honest and self-sufficient, while the “macho” José truthful aboutit. Inmovies like Different keepsbeing tripped up by his own vanity, from the Others, poor Reinhold Schünzel quite literallywhen he enters with his and Conrad Veidt had to grovel and nose in the air and stumbles over his own suffer; Isuspect that when the Emperor sword. The smoking Carmen (freedomfor kisses Ping Pong, that must have been the women to smoke was then a feminist issue first happy kissbetween two men in the as well) aggressively seduces him, steals cinema – and Iwanted it to happen quite his clothes while he sleeps, and calmlyin the middle of Prince Ahmed so resourcefully pawns them to buy herself a children– some who would be new outfit. His mad attempts to stab her homosexual and some who would not – all fail. The similarly vaintoreador could see it as a natural occurrence, and blithely knocks her downas he passes, but not be shocked or ashamed.”11 Carmengets revenge by outshining him in Lotte Reiniger did not talk much the bull ring: bravely feeding the bull a about her ideas, or the meanings of her rose fromher mouth and converting the films, partly perhaps because, like many blood-sport back into its ancient emigrants fromNazi Germany, she Cretan-goddess religious ritual by suffered not only a dislocation of language somersaulting over the bull’s horns and (which made it difficult to express things dancing withhim. precisely or correctly), but alsoa spiritual The little-seen Der scheintote Chinese displacement –the terrible task of always

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trying to (alwayshaving to) explain how if the original negatives were destroyed, things were before the Nazis, how things the quality and details of backgrounds were during their reign of terror, how should be reconstructed by computer things were afterwards. But she was enhancement, withthe original music and confident that what she really had to say writtentexts also restored. But until then, was contained in her films, so it is Reiniger’s films, even in their present imperative for us to revive them, study condition, remain one of the chief them and show them more often. Perhaps, treasures of animation.¦

Notes 1. Hugh Lofting, The Story of Doctor Dolittle (New York: Frederkick Stokes, 1920). 2. The collected reviews reprinted in Lotte Reiniger: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 1969), 59–63. 3. Lotte Reiniger, Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films (New York: Watson-Guptill, 1970). 4. Béla Balász, “Die Gewalt der Schere”, Der Geist des Film (Halle, 1930), 122–123. 5. Rudolf Arnheim, “Lotte Reinigers Schattenfilm”, Die Weltbühne 52 (24 December 1928): 961. 6. Joseph and Yehudit Shadur, Jewish Papercuts: A History and Guide (Berkeley: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1994). 7. Martin Knapp, Deutsche Schatten- und Scherenbilder aus drei Jahrhunderten (Dachau: Der Gelbe Verlag, 1914). 8. Konrad Wolter, Der gezeichnete Film (Halle: W. Knapp, 1927), 109, 197, 210, 212. 9. A scene-by-scene description of Prince Achmed with frame enlargements for each scene was published in Alfio Bastiancich’s excellent Lotte Reiniger (Turin: Centro Internazionale per il Cinema di Animazione, 1982),12–70. AGerman picture book with 32 full-page plates from PrinceAchmed,originallypublished in 1926, and re-published in 1972 [Lotte Reiniger, Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1972)], shows how much detail has been lost from the backgrounds in many scenes. 10. Recorded in Alfred Happ’s “Die Mozart Schnitte Lotte Reinigers”, Mozart, die großen Opern in Scher- enschnitten von Lotte Reiniger (Tübingen: Heliopolis, 1988), 320. 11. Interview with Lotte Reiniger, London, 1970. Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), a 1919 feature by Richard Oswald,containedan appearance by Magnus Hirschfeld pleadingfor tolerance and equal rights for homosexuals; see Richard Oswald, Regisseur und Produzent (Munich: Text + Kritik, 1990), 25–35.InformationalsoappearsinJames Steakley, TheHomosexual Emancipation Movement inGermany (New York: Arno, 1975) (English-language), and Eldorado: Homosexuelle Frauen und Männer in Berlin 1850–1950 (Berlin: Berlin Museum, 1994).

Moritz, William. “Some Critical Perspectives on Lotte Reiniger”. Animation Journal 5:1 (Fall 1996). 40–51. This paper was delivered at the Fourth AnnualSociety for Animation Studies Conference, Sunday, 25 October 1992, California Institute of the Arts. ©1996 WilliamMoritz

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