Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (June 2, 1899 – June 19, 1981) was a German silhouette animator and film director.

Biography

Early life

Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin-Charlottenburg, German Empire, on June 2, 1899. As a child, she was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, even building her own puppet theater so she could put on shows for her family and friends.

As a teenager, Reiniger fell in love with cinema, first with the films of Georges Méliès for their special effects, then the films of actor and director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem (1920). In 1915, the young woman attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the fantastic possibilities of animation.

After a bit of persuasion, she convinced her parents to enroll her in the acting group Wegener belonged to, the Theater of Max Reinhardt. In an attempt to attract the attention of her distant and very-busy hero, she started making silhouette portraits of the various actors around her. This had its desired effect, and soon she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured silhouettes.

Adulthood and success

In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles for Wegener's Der Rattenfänger von Hameln (The Pied Piper of Hamelin). The success of this work got her admitted into the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for Cultural Research), an experimental animation studio. It was here that she met her future creative partner and husband (from 1921), Carl Koch, as well as other avant-garde artists such as Hans Curlis, Berthold Brecht, Berthold Bartosch, and others.

The first film Reiniger directed was Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The Ornament of the Enamoured Heart, 1919), a short piece involving two lovers and an ornament that reflected their moods. The film was very well received. She made six short films during the following few years, all produced and photographed by her husband. These were interspersed with advertising films (the Julius Pinschewer advertising agency invented ad films and sponsored a large number of abstract animators during the Weimar period) and special effects for various feature films – most famously a silhouette falcon for a dream sequence in Part One of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen). During this period she became the center of a large group of ambitious German animators, such as Bartosch, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger.

In 1923, a unique opportunity came her way. She was approaced by Louis Hagen, who had bought a large quantity of raw film stock as an investment to fight the spiraling inflation of the period, who asked her to do a feature length animated film. The result was The Adventures of Prince Achmed, completed in 1926, the oldest surviving animated feature film, with a plot that is a pastiche of stories from One Thousand and One Nights. Although it failed to a find a distributor for almost a year, once premiered at the Cannes Film Festival (thanks to the support of Jean Renoir), it then became a critical and popular success. Reiniger anticipated Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks by a decade by devising the first multi-plane camera for certain effects. In addition to Reiniger's silhouette actors, Prince Achmed boasted dream-like backgrounds by Walter Ruttmann (her partner in the Die Nibelungen sequence) and a symphonic score by Wolfgang Zeller. Additional effects were added by Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch.

The success of Prince Achmed meant that Lotte Reiniger would not need a stroke of luck to make a second feature. Doktor Dolittle und seine Tiere (Doctor Dolittle and His Animals, 1928) was based on the first of the English children's books by Hugh Lofting. The score this time was composed by Kurt Weill, Paul Hindemith and Paul Dessau. A year later, Reiniger co-directed her first live-action film with Rochus Gliese, Die Jagd nach dem Glück (The Pursuit of Happiness, 1929), a tale about a shadow-puppet troupe. The film starred Jean Renoir and Bertold Bartosch and included a 20-minute silhouette performance by Reiniger. Unfortunately, the film was completed just as sound came to Germany, and release of the film was delayed until 1930 to dub in voices by different actors – the result being so unsuccessful as to ruin any enjoyment of the film. Reiniger also attempted to make a third animated feature, based on Maurice Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Bewitched Things, 1925), but found herself unable to clear the rights for the music with an unexpected number of copyright holders. She worked with British poet, critic, and musician Eric Walter White on several films, and he wrote the early book-length essay on her work – Walking Shadows: An Essay on Lotte Reiniger's Silhouette Films, (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf, 1931).

Flight from Germany and later life

With the rise of the Nazi Party, Reiniger and Koch decided to emigrate (both were involved in left-wing politics)^[1], but found that no other country would give them permanent visas. As a result, the couple spent the years 1933–1939 moving from country to country, staying as long as travel visas would allow. When they couldn't get a travel visa, they were forced to stay in Germany. Somehow, they still managed to make 12 films during this period, the best-known being Carmen (1933) and Papageno (1935), both based on popular operas (Bizet's Carmen and Mozart's Die Zauberflöte). When World War II commenced, they were forced to stay in Berlin.

In 1949, Reiniger and Koch were finally able to move to London. She made a few short advertising films for the General Post Office. Whilst Reiniger was living in London in the early 1950s she befriended "Freddie" Bloom who was the first director of the National Deaf Children's Society. She asked her to design a logo for the new charity. Reiniger responded by cutting out 4 children running up a hill. Freddie was amazed at her skill with a scissors. In a few moments she created about four different silhouettes of the children from black paper. The logo was used until the 1990s when a design company was invited to revamp the design. The result was a very minor modification but the new design was also dropped a few years later.

In 1955, Louis Hagen, Jr. of Primrose Productions obtained a commission from Telecasting America for Lotte Reiniger to create a series of short animation films based on some Grimm's Fairy Tales. Reiniger also provided illustrations for the 1953 book King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green.

Reiniger was awarded the Filmband in Gold of the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1972; in 1979 she received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Reiniger died in Dettenhausen, Germany, on June 19, 1981, at the age of 82.

Influence

• Although all subsequent makers of animated fairy tales could be said to have been influenced by Reiniger, Bruno J. Böttge is probably the one who has made the most explicit references to her work.
• Michel Ocelot employs many of the techniques devolved by Reiniger, along with others of his own invention, in his silhouette film Princes et princesses.^[2]
• The silhouette books of illustrator Jan Pieńkowski are reminiscent of Reiniger and Hans Christian Andersen in their coloured backgrounds and complex arrangements.
• Be-PaPas' TV series Revolutionary Girl Utena frequently references silhouette paintings, shadow puppets, flying horses and the European fairy tale tradition – all icons of Reiniger's films – but there is no known official confirmation of her influence.
• The ending credits of the film 300 (2007) depict a battle in silhouette, and the source-material graphic novel by Frank Miller features extensive use of stylised silhouettes.
• Experimental animation artist, filmmaker and activist Helen Hill drew inspiration from the cut-out silhouettes of Lotte Reiniger and went on to incorporate stop motion, puppetry, cycles, and drawing on film in her own award-winning animation.
• Further influences can be seen in many music videos, including "Annie, Let's Not Wait" – Guillemots (Dir: Corin Hardy), "Bench Sleeping" – My Little Problem & "Ladybug" – The Presidents Of The United States of America' (both Dir: Moog).
• Film director Henry Selick was influenced by Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

Filmography (as director)

• The Rose and the Ring (1979 short)
• Aucassin and Nicolette (1975 short)
• The Frog Prince (1961 short)
• Hansel and Gretel (1955 short)
• Jack and the Beanstalk (1955 short)
• Aladdin and the Magic Lamp (1954 short)
• Caliph Storch (1954 short)
• Cinderella (1954 short)
• Puss in Boots (1954 short)
• Snow White and Rose Red (1954 short)
• The Frog Prince (1954 short)
• The Gallant Little Tailor (1954 short)
• The Grasshopper and the Ant (1954 short)
• The Little Chimney Sweep (1954 short)
• The Sleeping Beauty (1954 short)
• The Three Wishes (1954 short)
• Thumbelina (1954 short)
• The Magic Horse (1953 short)
• Mary's Birthday (1951)
• The Goose That Lays the Golden Eggs (1944 short)
• The HPO - Heavenly Post Office (1938 short)
• Daughter (1937)
• The Tocher (1937 short)
• Silhouetten (1936 animation scenes)
• Puss in Boots (1936)
• Der kleine Schornsteinfeger (1935 short)
• Galathea: Das lebende Marmorbild (1935 short)
• Kalif Storch (1935)
• Papageno (1935 short)
• Das gestohlene Herz (1934 short)
• Carmen (1933 short)
• Sissi (1932)
• Harlekin (1931 short)
• Zehn Minuten Mozart (1930 short)
• Der scheintote Chinese (1928 short)
• Dr. Dolittle and His Animals (1928 short)
• The Chinese Nightingale (1927)
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)
• Aschenputtel (1922 short)
• Das Geheimnis der Marquisin (1922 short)
• The Flying Koffer (1922 short)
• Sleeping Beauty (1922)
• The Star of Bethlehem (1921)
• The Ornament of the Lovestruck Heart (1919)

References

1. ^ "Lotte Reiniger" by William Moritz, California Institute of the Arts, at Animation World Network
2. ^ Jouvanceau, Pierre (2004). The Silhouette Film. Genoa: Le Mani. ISBN 88-8012-299-1. http://www.heeza.fr/description.php?lang=2&path=64&sort=Article&page=0&id=296. 

• Donald Crafton; Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928; University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-11667-0 (2nd edition, paperback, 1993)
• Giannalberto Bendazzi (Anna Taraboletti-Segre, translator); Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation; Indiana University Press; ISBN 0-253-20937-4 (reprint, paperback, 2001)
• Leslie, Esther. Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory, and the Avant-Garde. London: Verso, 2002. Print.
• Reiniger, Lotte. Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films. London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1970. Print.

External links

• Lotte Reiniger biography and selection of works at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Lotte Reiniger at the Internet Movie Database
• "Born to Be Wild", a biographical excerpt from Women and Animation, a Compendium (edited by Jayne Pilling) focusing on Reiniger's childhood; part of the British Film Institute's "Drawn to be Wild" website^{[dead link]}
• "Lotte Reiniger's Silhouettes" by Abhijit Ghosh Dasitidar

Persondata
Name	Reiniger, Lotte
Alternative names	Charlotte Reiniger
Short description	German silhouette animator and film director
Date of birth	June 2, 1899
Place of birth	Berlin Charlottenburg
Date of death	June 19, 1981
Place of death	Dettenhausen, Germany