Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte Lotte Reiniger was a German film director and the prime inventor (fore-runner) of silhouette animation. Overall, Reiniger made more than 40 films over her career, all using her own invention. She was born on 2 June 1899 in Berlin, Germany and died on the 19 June 1981. As a child, Lotte was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry and would build her own puppet theatre, in order to 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 the actor and director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem (1920). In 1915, she attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the possibilities of animation. Reiniger eventually persuaded her parents to allow her to enroll in an acting group, the Theatre of Max Reinhardt. She began by making costumes and props and working backstage. She then started making silhouette portraits of the actors around her, and soon she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured her silhouettes.

In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles (silent films) for Wegener’s movie ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’. The success of this work got her admitted into the Institute for Cultural Research, an experimental animation, and short film studio. It was here that she met her future creative partner and husband (from 1921), Carl Koch, as well as other avant-garde artists. She made six short films during the following few years, all produced and photographed by her husband. Lotte Reiniger, a pioneer in the world of animated film, and a standard-bearer for women in the industry was born 118 years ago today in Berlin.

Artist’s style:

Before there was Disney’s first full-length animated feature, “Snow White” (1937), there was Lotte Reiniger’s “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” (1926). Lotte used Silhouette animation and invented a technique which involved cutting out sheets of lead and cardboard and animating them frame by frame under the camera. She pioneered a style of animation that relied on thousands of photos of paper cut-out silhouettes arranged to tell a story. It was a careful process that involved moving paper characters slightly and snapping a photo of each movement. Reiniger continues to inspire animators and artists, including Google doodle.

Fig 1

This is a still from one of Lotte Reiniger's paper cut-out animations – from Cinderella (Aschenputtel). Here only a few colours are used showing the simplicity of animation at the time. The short clip of Cinderella shows a similar version of the modern Cinderella we know now but with obvious transitions that are not smooth. The artist tends to make a silhouette of the characters in a darker colour (in this case black) than the background (a blue tint). This allows the characters to stand out and creates a very clear story with beautiful details. Lotte’s cut-outs tend to be quite detailed so that there is not much room for interpretations and misconceptions meaning that her stories are well understood and beautifully captured. Consequently, the story of Cinderella has not changed very much. While the animation present in the 14-minute short is pleasant in itself, what really sticks out in this particular adaptation is a surprisingly gruesome sequence where Cinderella's two evil sisters lop off part of their own feet in a desperate attempt to make the slipper fit them but even versions of this story still exist today.

In conclusion, Lotte Reiniger’s animation was a baseline for animation now and was created through silhouettes and cardboard cut-out that could create a beautiful story.

Illustration;

fig.1 :
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Kku75vGDD_0/hqdefault.jpg

Video;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kku75vGDD_0