Walter Ruttmann | |
|---|---|
 Walter Ruttman at recording Berlin-Movie, 1928 | |
| Born | (1887-12-28)28 December 1887 |
| Died | 15 July 1941(1941-07-15) (aged 53) |
| Occupation | Film director |
| Years active | 1921–1941 |
| Notable work | Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt |
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941)[1] was a Germancinematographer andfilm director, an important Germanabstractexperimental filmmaker, along withHans Richter,Viking Eggeling andOskar Fischinger. He is best known for directing the semi-documentary 'city symphony'silent film, with orchestral score byEdmund Meisel, in 1927,Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. His audio montageWochenende (Weekend) (1930) is considered a major contribution in the development ofsound collages andaudio plays.
Ruttmann was born inFrankfurt am Main, the son of a wealthy mercantilist.[2] He graduated high school in 1905 and began architectural studies inZürich in 1907. In 1909 Ruttmann began painting inMunich, where he befriendedPaul Klee andLyonel Feininger, and he would later paint inMarburg.[citation needed]
Ruttmann was conscripted into the army in 1913, first serving in Darmstadt, and shortly after the outbreak ofWorld War I he was sent to theEastern Front, where he served as an artillery lieutenant and a gas defense officer. After spending 1917 in a hospital forpost traumatic stress disorder, he began making films.[2] Ruttmann had the financial means to work independently of the major German studios of the time.[2] He founded Ruttmann-Film GmbH in Munich and patented an animation table, in June 1920.
His first productions were the first fully animated German cartoons and abstract animated films.[2]Lichtspiel: Opus I, produced between 1919 and 1921, premiered on 27 April 1921 at theBerlinMarmorhaus, and released for German theatrical distribution in 1922, is the "oldest fully abstract motion picture known to survive, using only animated geometric forms, arranged and shown without reference to any representational imagery".[2]
Opus I andOpus II, were experiments with new forms of film expression, and the influence of these early abstract films can be seen in some of the early work of Oskar Fischinger. Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new formal techniques.[3]
In 1926 he worked withJulius Pinschewer onDer Aufsteig, an experimental film advertising theGeSoLeitrade fair inDüsseldorf.[citation needed]
In 1926, Ruttmann licensed a Wax Slicing machine fromOskar Fischinger to create special effects forThe Adventures of Prince Achmed, an animated fairy tale film, forLotte Reiniger, making the moving backgrounds and magic scenes.[4][5]
Ruttmann was a prominent exponent of both avant-garde art and music. His early abstractions played at the 1929 Baden-Baden Festival to international acclaim despite their being almost eight years old. Together withErwin Piscator, he worked on the filmMelody of the World (1929), though he is best remembered forBerlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, 1927).
Weekend (Wochenende), commissioned in 1928 by Berlin Radio Hour, and presented on 13 June 1930, is a pioneering work ofmusique concrète, a montage of sound clips, recorded using film optical sound track from theTri-Ergon process.[6][7][8] Ruttmann recorded the streets sounds of Berlin with a camera, but without images, this was beforemagnetic tape.Hans Richter called it “a symphony of sound, speech-fragments, and silence woven into a poem.”[9]
A pacifist, he traveled to Moscow in 1928 and 1929. During the Nazi period he was replaced byLeni Riefenstahl as director of the documentary which eventually becameTriumph of the Will (1935), supposedly because Ruttmann's editing style was considered too "Marxist" and Soviet influenced. He died inBerlin 15 July 1941 due to an embolism after leg amputation.[1]
Segments from Ruttmann's experimental filmsLichtspiel: Opus II (1923) andLichtspiel: Opus IV (1925) are used in the credits of the Germanneo-noir television seriesBabylon Berlin.[10]
from: An Excerpt from 'The History of Motion Graphics'
Assistant Professor,... in the Department of German Studies at Cornell University
Lichtspiel Opus 1 1920, 11'; Opus 2 1922, 3'; Opus 3 1924, 3'; Opus 4 1925, 4'; Berlin, die Sinfonie der Großstadt 1927, 65'; Melodie der Welt 1929, 48' (EDITION FILMMUSEUM is a joint project of film archives and cultural institutions in the german-speaking part of Europe. Its ambition is to publish film works of artistic, cultural and historical value in DVD editions that both utilise the possibilities of digital media and meet the quality demands of the archival profession.)
