Walter Ruttmann
Walter Ruttmann | |
---|---|
Born |
Frankfurt am Main, Germany | 28 December 1887
Died |
15 July 1941 53) Berlin, Germany | (aged
Occupation | Film director |
Years active | 1921–1941 |
Notable work | Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt |
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film. He also worked with sound alone (Wochenende, 1930).
Biography
Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main; he studied architecture and painting and worked as a graphic designer. His film career began in the early 1920s. His first abstract short films, Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921) and Opus II (1923), 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.
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. Ruttmann licensed a Wax Slicing machine from Oskar Fischinger to create special effects for Lotte Reiniger. Together with Erwin Piscator, he worked on the film Melody of the World (1929), though he is best remembered for Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927).
During the Nazi period he worked as an assistant to director Leni Riefenstahl on Triumph of the Will (1935). He died in Berlin of wounds sustained when he was working on the front line as a war photographer.
Select filmography
![](../I/m/-Lichtspiel_Opus_I_(1921).webm.jpg)
![](../I/m/-Lichtspiel_Opus_II_(1922).webm.jpg)
- Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921)
- Der Sieger (1922)
- Das Wunder (1922)
- Lichtspiel: Opus II (1923)
- Lichtspiel: Opus III (1924)
- Lichtspiel: Opus IV (1925)
- Das wiedergefundene Paradies (1925)
- Der Aufstieg (1926)
- Spiel der Wellen (1926)
- Dort wo der Rhein... (1927)
- Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927) in collaboration with Alberto Cavalcanti
- Melody of the World (Melodie der Welt) (1929)
- Wochenende (1930) [an experimental film with sound only, no image]
- Feind im Blut (1931)
- In der Nacht (1931)
- Steel (1933)
- Altgermanische Bauernkultur (1934)
- Schiff in Not (1936)
- Mannesmann (1937)
- Henkel, ein deutsches Werk in seiner Arbeit (1938)
- Waffenkammern Deutschlands (1940)
- Deutsche Panzer (1940)
- Krebs (1941)
Further reading
- Cowan, Michael. Walter Ruttmann and the Cinema of Multiplicity: Avant-garde-Advertising-Modernity. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. ISBN 9789089645852
- Dombrug, Adrianus van. Walter Ruttmann in het beginsel. Purmerend, NL: J. Muusses, 1956.
- Goergen, Jeanpaul. Walter Ruttmann: eine Dokumentation. Berlin: Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek, 1989. ISBN 9783927876002
- Quaresima, Leonard, editor. Walter Ruttmann: cinema, pittura, ars acustica. Calliano (Trento), Italy: Manfrini, 1994. ISBN 9788870245035