Walter Ruttmann Overview

If Walter Ruttman had not been killed while making a newsreel on the frontlines of World War II, the history of film might have turned out differently. He made breathtakingly beautiful movies -- both animated and shot --that radically departed from... [more]

If Walter Ruttman had not been killed while making a newsreel on the frontlines of World War II, the history of film might have turned out differently. He made breathtakingly beautiful movies -- both animated and shot --that radically departed from the traditional narratives of contemporaries like Charlie Chaplin and Max Fleischer. Maybe you've seen "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City" (1927)? If not, think Godfrey Reggio's 1982 epic "Koyaanisqatsi," but made 60 years earlier. Ruttman's roots lay in architecture and painting; the geometric animations of his very early filmmaking days have the collagist angularity of Constructivist posters. The short, "Lichtspiel Opus 1" (1921), was one of the first films to treat animation as high art. Ruttman might well be the grandfather of "Claymation." His most well-known film is "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City" (1927), which utilizes the "Kino-Eye" or "Cinematic-Eye" technique of Dziga Vertov. Ruttman edited the scenes so that the images change in time with the music. It may not seem like anything extraordinary now, but for his time it was revolutionary. As the music chugs forward and switches back, the camera follows Berlin's streets and people from early morning to late night. His later "World Melodies" expanded on the synthesis of the visual and the musical with scenes taken from all over the world. In the late '30s Ruttman delved deeper into documentary filmmaking, and then eventually moved towards propaganda. During Hitler's rise to power, he worked with Leni Riefenstahl in the editing of the infamous Nazi film of the Berlin Olympics, "Olympiad" (1936). Whether or not Ruttman would have suffered the same lapse in reputation that Riefenstahl did after the war will never be known, since he was killed on the Front just three short years later. [show less]