Film is rhythm

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Movie
Original title Film is rhythm
Country of production Germany
Publishing year 1925
length 82.8 meters, at 18 fps 4 minutes
Rod
Director Hans Richter
script Hans Richter
production Hans Richter (Berlin) on behalf of: Universum-Film AG (UFA) (Berlin)
camera Svend Noldan , Otto Schmalhausen

In 1925 , the German avant-garde artist Hans Richter programmatically called the summary of his abstract film experiments "Rhythm 21" and "Rhythm 23" from the early twenties, film is rhythm .

"Rhythmus 21" is now considered to be "a key film of the modern age". Like “Rhythmus 23”, the film shows pure visual “art of movement”: a “ballet” inspired by the theory of musical counterpoint, black, white and less gray geometric surfaces “in a uniform rhythm that runs through the entire picture” (Richter).

action

The film consists of animated geometric shapes and patterns. Black and white squares fade in and out on the screen. Sometimes they seem to move from one side of the field to the other, sometimes from foreground to background.

background

In 1918, after becoming a founding member of the artists' association “ Novembergruppe ”, Richter had made the acquaintance of Viking Eggeling through Tristan Tzara , with whom he soon became friends and worked together. Together they made experiments with role models, through which they came to the moving image medium of film. In 1921, Richter's first abstract film, “Rhythmus 21” , was made in Klein Kölzig, Brandenburg , which he revised again and again until 1923. Svend Noldan and Otto Schmalhausen from UFA's animation department operated the camera .

The film was first called "Rhythm 21", then "Film is Rhythm". On July 6, 1923 Richter first performed it in Paris at the Théâtre Michel at the Soirée du coeur à barbe . The first performance of the revised version in Germany took place on May 10, 1925 in Berlin at a repetition of the matinee “The absolute film” in the UFA-Palast on Kurfürstendamm. The works shown by seven different artists pursued different formal approaches, but had in common that they all renounced narrative structures. Therefore, there was consequently no music at the matinee that was added later.

reception

The Dutch constructivist Theo van Doesburg reviewed Richter's films in his magazine De Stijl and contributed as an author to Richter's own avant-garde journal “G - Material zur elementarengestaltung” , which was published together with Werner Graeff .

László Moholy-Nagy described “Rhythmus 21” as “approach to a visual realization of a light-space-time continuity in the movement thesis”.

Kasimir Malewitsch reacted to Richter's rhythm films by writing an exposé for a joint “suprematist” film entitled “Painting and the Problems of Architecture”.

“Rhythm 21 is the first film in which the negative material was used as a positive. Formally, Richter's film looks like the animation of abstract images by Mondrian or Malewitsch ... "(Scheugl / Schmidt: Eine Subgeschichte des Films)

The reactions of contemporary film critics were rather negative. At the matinee in 1925, Richter's own recollections even said that there were tumults during which the audience loudly expressed their displeasure. The piano player the theater had hired to accompany the film was almost beaten up by spectators who had found the performance to be unreasonable.

Despite the negative criticism of his film, Richter is today one of the best-known representatives of the absolute film .

Re-performance

The culture broadcaster Arte showed the program of the matinee “Der absolute Film” from 1925 [ three-part color sonata (D 1923, D: Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack ), Images Mobiles (F 1924, D: Fernand Léger , Dudley Murphy ), Symphonie diagonale (D 1924 , D: Viking Eggeling ), Film ist Rhythmus (D 1923, D: Hans Richter), Entr'acte (F 1924, D: René Clair ), Opus 2 , Opus 3 and Opus 4 (D 1922, D: Walter Ruttmann ) ] with musical accompaniment on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 11.55 pm under the title “Short Films of the Avantgarde” on German television.

literature

  • Christoph Bareither: Hans Richter's Rhythm 21: key film of the modern age. Verlag Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8260-4861-6 .
  • Philipp Brunner: Abstract Film. In: Lexicon of Film Terms (last changed on October 12, 2012)
  • R. Bruce Elder: Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century . Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 2010, pp. Vi, 133-134, 161-162, 170, 192-194, and the like. 476.
  • Alexander Graf, Dietrich Scheunemann: Avant-garde Film (= Volume 23 of Avant-garde critical studies ). Verlag Rodopi, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-90-420-2305-5 , pp. 12-13, 15, 47-49, 58, 73-74, 94 u. 383
  • Jeanpaul Goergen, Angelika Hoch: Hans Richter: Film is rhythm . With e. Preface v. Ulrich Gregor. Arsenal, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-927876-19-4 .
  • Julian Hartmuth: From sound to moving visual . disserta Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-95425-982-3 .
  • Aimee Mollaghan: The Visual Music Film (= Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture). Illustrated edition, Verlag Springer, 2016, ISBN 978-1-137-49282-1 , p. 10 and 46-49, 51, 88, 101
  • Barbara Naumann: Rhythm - traces of an interplay in the arts and sciences . Königshausen & Neumann Verlag, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3056-7 , pp. 218-219.
  • Michael O'Pray: Avant-Garde Film, Forms, Themes, and Passions (= Short Cuts. Volume 17). Illustrated edition. Columbia University Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-231-85000-1 .
  • Hans Scheugl, Ernst Schmidt: A sub-story of the film. Lexicon of avant-garde, experimental and underground films . 2 volumes. 1st edition. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1974, pp. 243, 461, 503.
  • Andrea Schuster: Decay or Change of Culture? A cultural-sociological interpretation of German film . Illustrated edition. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-663-01430-0 , p. 76.
  • Anne Umland, Adrian Sudhalter: Dada in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art (= Studies in modern art. Issue 9). Illustrated edition. The Museum of Modern Art, 2008, ISBN 978-0-87070-668-4 , p. 262.
  • Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors . Berlin, Rembrandt Verlag 1956.

Web links

Movies

  • Hans Richter - Film Ist Rhythmus: Rhythm 21 (c1921)
  • Hans Richter - Film Ist Rhythmus: Rhythm 23 (c1923)

items

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Bareither (2012) and filmportal.de
  2. ↑ cf. filmportal.de
  3. ↑ cf. film data sheet rhythmus 21 at berlinale.de
  4. ↑ cf. O'Pray pp. 13-14, Elder p. 193, note 201
  5. ↑ cf. Elder p. 198 Note 230: "In 1919 Eggeling and Richter began working on scrolls, Eggeling on" Horizontal-Vertical Mass "and Richter on" Praeludium "..." , also Zglinicki pp. 595–596.
  6. ↑ on the other hand, Erna Niemeyer claimed that she photographed Rhythm 21 and Rhythm 23 in 1925 and 1926; the films were also based on drafts by Viking Eggeling, cf. Elder S. 194 Note 208: “Erna Niemeyer-Soupault also claims that she photographed Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 in 1925 and 1926, and that these film were based on visual designs that Eggeling had laid out”
  7. ↑ 6 June 1923: La soirée du coeur à barbe, organized par Tristan Tzara , cf. Dave Lewis at allmusic.com (English), La mort de Dada , 20 octobre 2012, at typepad.com (français)
  8. ↑ cf. Zglinicki p. 439, Elder p. 163, “Pupillary intoxication and optical noise” pp. 4–6.
  9. ↑ cf. Jeanpaul Goergen ( Memento from May 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at DIAF
  10. ↑ cf. Filmlexikon 2001 , also Marcel Schwierin: “Despite the orientation to basic musical principles, the films often ran without music and only created the rhythm through the sequence of the images, such as B. “Diagonal Symphony” by Viking Eggeling around 1925. With others, however, for example “Lichtspiel Opus 1” by Walther Ruttmann from 1921, a separate score was written for the film in order to be able to perfectly coordinate the visual and auditory impressions. " (quoted from Hartmuth, From Sound to Moving Visual, pp. 24-25)
  11. ↑ cf. monoskop.org and wernergraeff.de
  12. ↑ cf. kunstwissenschaft.tu-berlin.de , p. 6.
  13. ↑ cf. “Bauhaus & film”, June 2009, at arsenal-berlin.de
  14. ↑ so at kunstwissenschaft.tu-berlin.de , p. 6.
  15. ↑ so at kunstwissenschaft.tu-berlin.de , p. 8.
  16. ↑ cf. dvduell.de and beepworld.de ( Memento from March 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive )