How did Lotte Reiniger develop her silhouette

animation technique and is her work a significant

influence on contemporary animators and

illustrators?

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Contents

List of illustrations 3

INTRODUCTION 4

CHAPTER 1: The origins and inspirations of Lotte Reiniger's art 6

Silhouettes and Shadow play 6

Legend and Fairy Tales 7

The Music 9

Epoch and Environment 10

CHAPTER 2 : The Adventures of Prince Achmed 12

CHAPTER 3: Lotte Reiniger's influence 16

Contemporary animators 16

Michel Ocelot 16

Hannes Rall 18

Contemporary illustrators 19

CONCLUSION 21

Bibliography 24

Illustrations 27

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List of Illustrations

(figure 1) Image from “Das Geheimnis der Marquise” (The secret of the Marquise) by Reiniger, L.

1922. online) Available at: http://rateyourmusic.com/film/das_geheimnis_der_marquise/

(Accessed 1 November 2013)

(figure 2) “tricktisch” (trick table) 1923 (online) Available at:

http://www.lottereiniger.de/filme/dokumentarfilme.php (Accessed 7 November 2013)

(figure 3) Poster of “Princes et Princesses” by Ocelot, M. 2000. (online) Available at:

http://worldscinema.org/2013/02/michel-ocelot-princes-et-princesses-2000-2/ (Accessed 15

November 2013)

(figure 4) Image from “Kingdom Under the Sea” by Jan Pieńkowski 1978. (online) Available at:

http://graphicnothing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/jan-pienkowskis-pictures-for-kingdom.html

(Accessed 20 November 2013)

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INTRODUCTION

This essay investigates and analyses one of the stop motion animation techniques: cut-out animation

and more especially silhouette or shadow animation. It is like a traditional animation technique,

governed by the law of persistence of vision, where the illusion of motion is created with fixed

images. Paper is the main medium, but instead of redrawing the character each time on a different

sheet of paper, the character is made up of several independent parts, such as hands, arms, head,

legs and feet. Economical in material, this technique is often used by amateurs or students today,

but silhouette has always been a minor art. However some great masterpieces of animation have

been produced in this medium, such as Lotte Reiniger's animation “Die Abenteuer des Prinzen

Achmed” (The Adventures of Prince Achmed) and Michel Ocelot's “Princes et Princesses” which

will be described and analysed in chapters 2 and 3.

Lotte Reiniger is often referred to as the inventor of silhouette animations. She was a female

German animator who was born in 1899 and who died in 1981. In 1926 she made “The Adventures

of Prince Achmed” (Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed), which is often described as the first

feature-length animated film. However, two earlier ones were made in Argentina by Quirino

Cristiani, but they are considered lost, so Reiniger's is the oldest surviving animated feature film.

This essay attempts explain how Lotte Reiniger developed this silhouette technique and why “The

Adventures of Prince Achmed” was in many ways ahead of its time.

What is the difference between a shadow and a silhouette? Lotte Reiniger was often asked this

question when she used to insist on calling her films “Silhouette films” and not “shadow films”

(Reiniger.L 1970 p 11). According to Reiniger and her 50 years of experimenting in this medium

there is a difference.

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Two hundred years ago, before the camera was invented, someone wishing to have an inexpensive

portrait created of their loved ones would have visited a silhouette artist. Within minutes and using

only a pair of scissors, some paper and a sharp eye, an artist would have been able to produce an

accurate silhouette.

The name Silhouette can be traced back to the middle of the 18th century, when there was a French

finance minister called Etienne de Silhouette. As his name was synonymous with doing things

cheaply and he was fond of making these images himself, this art-form was named after him.

In America, Silhouettes were highly popular from about 1790 to 1840. The invention of the camera

signalled the end of the Silhouette as a widespread form of portraiture.

Everybody knows that where there is a light, there is also a resulting shadow. A shadow does not

exist on its own. The shadow follows everyone and nobody can jump over or move faster than it

(except “Lucky Luck” by Morris). From the early days of making them, shadows seemed to men to

be something magical. The spirits of the dead were called shadows, and the underworld was named

the Kingdom of Shadows. A shadow can be distorted, subject to the geography of the space, and the

sources of light it comes from. This is the essential difference. A silhouette cannot be distorted but

can cast a shadow. “When you see trees or figures against an evening sky, you would say, not that

they are shadowed against sky, but silhouetted against it. The silhouette exists in its own right”

(Reiniger.L 1970 p 13).

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CHAPTER 1: The origins and inspirations of Lotte Reiniger's art

Silhouettes and Shadow play

Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin and she grew up in a cultured family that was interested in art. At

an early age she showed an exceptional ability to cut free-hand paper silhouettes and could cut out

silhouettes as presents for all the birthdays in her family. Not much later she explored the technique

of scissor cuts and used her creations in her own shadow-theatre. She was encouraged by her family

to continue even though no-one could have known where this would lead to.

The shadow theatre of shadow play is a two dimensional puppet figure held against a translucent

screen and lit so that an audience, on the opposite side, can see the shadows performing.

These figures or characters are animated by handlers using thin rods. It is a complex art which

combines music, recitation and singing, literature, visual aesthetics, arts and crafts, and handling.

The origins of shadow theatre are lost in the mists of time. Researchers believe that the first

shadow-plays were invented to illustrate gods and beliefs of ancient times during ceremonies. Over

the course of centuries, it became an art form to tell stories.

The geographic origins of these tradition are obscure. The work of investigators has been hampered

by the lack of evidence that has been found. Even when they find some evidence, there are

difficulties in translating it, especially in the case of ancient Chinese. The tradition makes China its

birth location, but some recent studies prefer India. From there it would have reached the Middle

and then the Near East. It is still very strong in Asia, Greece and Turkey. Europe discovered this art

only through reports from missionaries in the 18th century.

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Many sources, including Currell (2007) and Reiniger (1970) like to relate the following story, dated

around 140BC, as the birth of the shadow play:

“In China, when the favourite concubine of Emperor Wu died, he became inconsolable, the only

thing I was wishing for was to see her back to life. To satisfy the Emperor his Sorcerer had the idea

of recreating the shape of the concubine, using 11 separate pieces of leather and an oil lamp, he

made her shadow move, bringing her to life.”

Even in this first legend the shadow is a reference to death, and is used to distract the Emperor. The

fact that the legend is close to a fairy tale is intriguing. It is a love story of a king helped by a

Sorcerer to find a taste of life again.

Legend and Fairy Tales

When we look at the full filmography of Lotte Reiniger, more than 80 short films, most of them are

adaptations of folk stories, legends and fairy tales. From the very beginning of her career, she

naturally focused her work in that direction.

According to Happ in Raganelli's film (1999) she confessed willingly that she believed more in the

truth of fairy tales than in the truth of newspapers. She made film adaptations of the stories written

by the Brothers Grimm (J. 1785 - 1863, W. 1786 - 1859), White (1905 - 1985), Hauff (1802 - 1827),

Andersen (1805 - 1875) and La Fontaine (1621 - 1695).

"Once upon a time" is a phrase we have all heard as an introduction to childhood stories of princes

and princesses, kings and fairies. Fairy tales have always been part of traditional literature. Firstly

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from an oral tradition, the tale has travelled through the ages and influenced whole generations.

Intended both to entertain and educate, they use common universal symbols to put on the stage the

fantasies and the fears of children. In their own way, they also bring solutions to these problems.

Most fairy tales offer two levels of interpretation: the child will be focus on the first or superficial

level, the story, but subconsciously he will learn the "principle of reality" (Bettelheim. 1999), which

is the integration and discerning the meaning of good and evil.

For these reasons, fairy tales help children confront, understand, and overcome the difficulties in

their present and future life. The delicate aesthetics of animated silhouettes translate the magic of

fairy tales in a simple and efficient way. Lotte Reiniger rightly believed that black silhouettes leave

more room to complete the scene with our own imagination. Consequently she never used coloured

figures, except in “Prince Frog” (1961) where she used coloured paper.

Even when she made “Das Geheimnis der Marquise” (The secret of the Marquise) in 1922, which

was an early advert for Nivea skin care products where she reversed the shadows and moved white

silhouette on a black background, she applied her commitment to the stylistic methods of her

silhouettes in her fairy tale films.

Her life was itself a fairy tale, earning a living from her art, which was not easy for a woman at that

time. In 1954 she was awarded the prize of the silver dolphin at the Venice festival. A journalist

asked her what she really wished to achieve in her film. “I just want to tell a story and tempt people

to smile with a gentle sense of humour."

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The Music

Music plays a substantial part in her films, first of all, because silent films were common at the

time. But when sound films became widespread she never really used dialogues as she always

preferred the narrative possibilities of music, which would guide the motions of the characters.

She collaborated, over a period of more than 15 years, with the German composer and musician

Gelhorn. He stated that she was not technically a musician, but she had a sense and instinct for

music. She continually tried to harmonise the sound with the image.

Thus, her love for Mozart motivated her to make the short film “Papageno” in 1935, using his

original music from the opera ”Die Zauberflöte” (the Magic Flute) (1791). In this animation we can

appreciate her full range of skills in synchronizing music with actions.

Once again she was a pioneer of her time, she invented what we call today the video clip.

Reiniger used the music of Mozart in many animations, in 1988 her friend Happ collected and

assembled in a book all the silhouettes she cut out concerning the theme of Mozart's operas.

(Mozart. Die großen Opern in Scherenschnitten von Lotte Reiniger). She used Mozart's music in

most of her films.

Jean Renoir (1894 - 1979), the French film director, who became a close friend and passionate

admirer of her work, described her films as "visual expression of Mozart's music." Mozart and other

classical themes of opera, often provided her subjects, such as in her film adaptations of “Carmen”

(1933) from Bizet, “Helen La Belle” (The Beautiful Helen) (1957) based on Offenbach's music; and

“a Night in a Harem” (1958), which was based on Mozart's opera.

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Epoch and Environment

In Germany, women have had the right to vote since 1919.With that right, they slowly started to

have more professional careers. Lotte Reiniger is a representative of German female emancipation

and is one of the first female animation filmmakers. Her husband, Carl Koch (1892 - 1963)

originally an art historian, gave her substantial help throughout her career. He became the superviser

and her best collaborator for most of her films, from "The Prince Achmed" to his death. He was the

camera operator and the producer, giving her the time and the freedom to write the stories, draw the

stoyboards and design and animate the silhouette figures.

"The Prince Achmed" gave her success and esteem: many artists and intellectuals of the time hailed

the work of Reiniger. Jean Renoir and the theatre director Bertolt Brecht (1898 - 1958) were proud

to count the Reiniger and Koch couple among their friends. Their colleagues were also already

prominent when they agreed to take part in “The Adventure of Prince Ahmed”, and more specialy

Ruttmann, (1887 - 1941) who was a pioneer of abstract cinema in Germany.

Lotte Reiniger did not please the Nazis because of her proximity to the left under the Weimar

Republic. After the Nazis came to power in 1933 and the enactment of laws on " degenerate art" ,

the Reiniger and Koch couple wanted to leave Berlin for London. They obtained visas, but they

were not permanent, resulting in their being condemned to wandering between Paris and Rome,

before having to return to Berlin during the war. Nevertheless, the short time the couple spent in

London enabled them to start a film company, "Fantasia Productions ltd", where she created small

musical silhouette films.

It was during this same period in the United States that Walt Disney used the "Silly Symphonies" as

a laboratory for animated feature films and he achieved a significant popularity and financial

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success. In 1937, he created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which he claimed was the first true

animated feature film as it was in colour and benefitted from the best sound technology of the time.

He subsequently made Fantasia in 1940. Commercial success was almost instant, but these Disney

productions cannot eclipse the magical feeling that one experiences while watching one of

Reiniger's films. According to Finch (1999) finesse, imagination and artistic research are as

valuable as the best technology or largest budget in the world.

After the war, the Reiniger and Koch couple continued to work in Berlin, before finally settling in

London in 1949.

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CHAPTER 2 : The Adventures of Prince Achmed

As a teenager Lotte Reiniger planned to become an actress and study with the Austrian-born theatre

director Max Reinhardt (1873 - 1943). There, she acquired the skill of body movement to express

emotions. She started to cut out silhouette portraits of the actors, which, the film maker, actor and

artist Paul Wegener (1874 - 1948) saw and became interested in. He was fascinated by the new

medium “film”, little explored at this time. He invited her to make silhouettes for the subtitles of his

films “Rübezahls Hochzeit” (Rübezahl's Wedding) (1916) and “Der Rattenfänger von Hameln”

(The Pied Piper of Hamlin) (1918). In 1919 he introduced her to a group of young artists who were

ambitious to use and experiment with all the possibilities of the camera. In this experimental

animation studio she made her first short animated silhouette: “Das Ornament des Verliebten

Herzen” (The Ornament of the Heart in Love). In the meantime she married one of the artists, Carl

Koch (1892 - 1963) who was an art historian. As mentioned before, he would constitute a

considerable help for Reiniger throughout her career. From 1919 to 1922 she made five other short

films: “Der fliegende Koffer” (The Flying Trunk), “Der Stern von Bethlehem” (The Star of

Bethlehem), “Aschenputtel” (Cinderella), “Dornröschen” (Sleeping Beauty); and “The secret of the

Marquise” which was an early advert for Nivea skin care products in 1922 (figure 1).

At a time when animation was only used for short films to make people laugh and was considered

to be inferior to live-action, Louis Hagen, a young Berlin banker, asked Lotte Reiniger and her team

if it would be possible to make a feature length animated film. That was the challenge which set up

the Prince Achmed adventure.

She was 24 years old and until 1923 she had only made short films lasting a few minutes, but

Hagen had complete trust in her skill to the extent where he made the film financially possible and

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transformed his garage into an animation studio.

It cannot be disputed that Reiniger was avant-garde, shown by the finesse and elaborate narrative of

her animations at a time when animation was still an experimental medium. Nothing was

comparable to “Prince Achmed”. In the Thirties the Disney studio would employ dozens of artists

but, in 1923 Lotte Reiniger's team consisted of only five people: her husband Carl Koch as

producer and photographer, Berthold Bartosch and Walter Ruttmann, who created backgrounds and

special effects; and Alexander Kardan, her technical adviser. Reiniger created all the silhouettes for

the Prince Achmed and animated each one of them by herself. More than two hundred thousand

frames were shot and the film took three years to complete. Due to the sophisticated level they

wanted to reach Reiniger's team had to invent techniques and tools, such as the “tricktisch” (trick

table) (figure 2). Today called the multiplane animated stand, it is Walt Disney who was granted the

patent for it in 1940.

The story of her film is inspired by the book “One Thousand and One Nights”, which is a

masterpiece of world literature; it is an anonymous collection of Arabian folk tales of Persian and

Indian origins. Used to convey mythologies and beliefs specific to the East, this popular book is a

unique cultural witness. It is the source of images and clichés of the Orient created by the West,

which is a kind of catalogue of the imaginations of generations of artists and creators, who both

feed on it and contribute to it to further enrich it.

The Sultan Shahryar, in retaliation against the infidelity of his wife, sentenced her to death. To make

sure he will not be deceived again, he decides to kill every morning the woman he has married the

day before. Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter, proposes to marry the Sultan. Assisted by her sister,

she tells the Sultan each night a story that needs to continue the next day. Then the Sultan cannot

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resolve to kill the young woman and not listen to the part of the next story. He therefore became a

master of procrastination. For one thousand and one nights she tells stories including “Sinbad the

sailor”, “Ali Baba and the forty thieves”, “Aladdin” and many others. Gradually, Scheherazade wins

over the trust of her husband, and finally, after a thousand and one nights, he decides not to execute

her.

Lotte Reiniger made a conscious choice for the story, using and modifying the tales of the Arabian

nights. To serve the technical interest of her silhouette skill, she wanted the actions of the film to be

impossible to achieve in a real life by a real person. To achieve this purpose she selected all kinds of

objects and characters, such as magic islands, fantastic birds, the fling horse, sorcerers and witches

able to achieve fabulous metamorphoses. The latter gave the animator the chance to use abstract

shapes and realise incredible transformations.

The narrative is based on a few of the most famous tales of the thousand nights, such as the magic

horse, Aladdin and the magic lamp, the Story of Prince Achmed and the Fairy Pari Banu. The story

has a large number of characters involving the Caliph, his daughter Dinarsade, his son Prince

Achmed, the bird woman Pari Banu, Aladdin, an African sorcerer and a witch.

Divided into five acts; the film is sixty five minutes long and depicts the story of a powerful African

sorcerer who creates a flying horse, and offers it to the Caliph, who buys it for whatever the sorcerer

wants from his treasures. The sorcerer chooses his daughter Princess Dinarsade and explains to the

Caliph's son, Prince Achmed, how to ride the magic horse. The prince tries and immediately flies,

but the evil sorcerer does not show him how to get off it. Then Prince Achmed is sent away to the

distant land of Wak-Wak Spirits, where he meets the beautiful Pari Banu, whom he falls in love

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with. They will continue their journey and fight against the African sorcerer, helped by the worst

enemies of the latter, the witch, and Aladdin with his magic lamp.

The characters of the Chinese Emperor, the African Sorcerer and the Witch are clearly racial

stereotypes, but this reflected the standards of the day and when the Nazis came to power, Reiniger

and Koch left Germany, going into self-imposed exile. Lotte Reiniger confessed later "I didn't like

this whole Hitler thing and because I had many Jewish friends whom I was no longer allowed to

call friends."

The film was made during the time of silent films. Reiniger worked with the composer Wolfgang

Zeller (1893 - 1967). To increase the synchronisation with the orchestra during projection, the

scenes were shot in time with the musical rhythm of the scores. The original prints of the film were

colour-tinted backgrounds and were destroyed during the second world war along with much of

Reiniger's other early work. But luckily, the BFI (British Film Institute) national film archive

preserved a nitrate positive of the film and new prints were made from it. Working from these

surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists managed to successfully restore the film and

incorporate the original colour-tinted backgrounds. Last but not least, Zeller's original music was

preserved and added to it.

The film was not premiered in Berlin as might be expected as there was no distributor there who

was interested in promoting the film. In fact, the film was screened for the first time at Louis

Jouvet's Comédie des Champs Elyséees in Paris in July 1926. The Parisian audiences gave the film

enormous success, which reassured and convinced German distributors and, finally, in September

1926 "Prince Achmed" was shown at the Gloria Palace in Berlin, where it was a triumph.

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CHAPTER 3: Lotte Reiniger's influence

Contemporary animators

Lotte Reiniger was one of the first animators to do fairy tale adaptations. It would be an

exaggeration to consider her work as the source of inspiration of any animator who adapted any

fairy tale.

The first animator who Lotte Reiniger influenced was the German Bruno J. Böttge (1925 - 1981).

Indeed, he is probably the one who has made the most explicit references to her work. He was, like

Lotte Reiniger, inspired by the art of silhouette puppetry as a child. In common with Reiniger, his

own works were mostly animated fairy tales using a very similar silhouette technique.

Today, professionally made silhouette films are rare, and even less common are animators who

work primarily with this medium.

Michel Ocelot

Michel Ocelot is a French writer and animator, director of several animated films and television

programmes. He was also president of the Association internationale du film d'animation (ASIFA)

from 1994 to 1999. His best known creation is Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), a striking line-

drawn film based on traditional African folk tales. Born on the côte d'Azur, France in 1943, Michel

Ocelot, spent his childhood in Conakry in Guinea and his adolescence in Anjou, France. A student

at the Beaux-Arts de Rouen, he subsequently joined The Art Deco school in Paris, before going to

The California Institute of the Arts. He then decided to move into animation, making nearly twenty

short films and series for both the small and big screen. Most of them have been awarded prizes in

international film festivals.

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He used the technique of silhouette animation several times: “Princes and Princesses” (2000) is the

one with the closest relation to “the Prince Achmed”. A metaphor by Michel Ocelot summarizes his

work : "I use in my own way the ideas of everyone. I play with balls that innumerable jugglers have

used through the centuries . His balls, which went from hand to hand, are not new . But now it's me

who juggles."

Michel Ocelot never really presents Lotte Reiniger as his inspiration, but there are interesting

similarities between the two artists.

With these six stories, Michel Ocelot returns to cut-out. Its starting point is a staging of his own

creative work . In the prologue of each tale, a boy and a girl meet each night in a disused cinema

theatre. An old projectionist opens the doors of the show. In six sessions they invent stories that

continue through the centuries and make them cross borders. These three characters are the director

and his two assistants who create stories, costumes and music for the play which they then perform.

Each story takes place in a different location and time: in the Middle Ages; when a Princess is

bewitched and where a Prince must find all the diamond necklaces to break an evil spell; where a

young man confronts a witch who is less formidable than his assailants; where a Prince and a

Princess kiss and become some animals. In Japan, where a thief wants to rob an old woman who has

a precious coat. In the World of science fiction, where a Queen who wants to marry one of her

suitors must undergo a fatal event. In ancient Egypt, where a young peasant offers the Queen

Pharaoh figs that have matured miraculously in winter on his fig tree.

The six stories are: "The Princess diamonds", "The Boy figs," "The Castle of the Witch", "The

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Mantle of the old lady," "Cruel Queen and showman Fabulo" and "Prince and Princess. "

Michel Ocelot, unlike Reiniger, created his own fairy tales, keeping the characteristics of most fairy

stories such as king, queen, prince, princess, witch and sorcerer; the fight between good and evil.

He also tries to deliver the message of peace and tolerance, for children and adults, using dual levels

of interpretation.

Compared to Disney or Pixar, the appearance of his silhouette animation may be seen as amateur or

"do-it-yourself", but one of the effects of Reiniger's and Ocelot's animation is that they give the

audience the chance to use their own imagination. It is a fairy tale, they do not try to make us

believe in it, they simply invite us to pretend with them. This is often known as the willing

suspension of disbelief. The silhouettes add to this elegance and poetry and serve the stories.

The film poster (figure 2) highlights the silhouettes of two characters, a prince and a princess

kissing, who illustrate the title above them. Written in a style of slightly Arabic calligraphy, the

white title, filled the upper half of the image. The background reminds us of a sunrise, a dark blue

and white contrast and balance with the title and the characters. This poster releases grace, delicacy

and poetry, both sides, the upper one with the title and the lower one with the silhouettes, meet and

are full, and the eye is not more attracted by one or by the other.

Hannes Rall

The illustrator, animator and teacher Hannes Rall, claims that he was inspired by the works of

Reiniger. He does not use the same technique of paper cut, but he is like Reiniger was, an artist who

experiments with new media. There are some silhouettes in his work, but they are created digitally.

His philosophy is that the animator should know about traditional art and especially animation

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before using digital tools. His approach to creation is to mix the new digital media with the

traditional art-form.

"At the end of the day it is never the tool that matters to me, but the originality of the artistic

concept and the skill level of its execution .” (Rall, 2008)

The television show "South Park", created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone is the perfect illustration

of this philosophy: the pilot of this famous series was hand-made in paper cut, then the other

episodes which constitute the series we know today were and still are produced by computer

generated animation. The use of technology makes the working process much faster. For example

an episode of South Park does not take more than six days to be completed (Bradford. A, 2011).

Contemporary illustrators

Like the art of shadow play, the art of paper cutting's origin is similarly lost in the mist of time. The

oldest evidence of its provenance comes from China. This folk art was and still is used today to

decorate homes to celebrate the new lunar year. In Japan, it is call Kirie (paper cut), the tradition is

still current and renewed in contemporary styles.

In the Jewish tradition, artists carve wedding contracts " ketubah " where the paper cut juxtaposes

calligraphy and painting.

In Poland, Wycinanki are brightly coloured pieces of paper that illustrate popular themes, especially

at Christmas and Easter. Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) used the paper cut in colourful silhouette

compositions.

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During her career Lotte Reiniger also did illustrations for books, using her ability to cut out

silhouettes for publications such as "Ballet Stories For Young People by Davidson (1960) and

"King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table: Newly retold out of the old romances" by Green

(1957). She also wrote and illustrated "Shadow Theatres and Shadow" (1970). This was a book

dedicated to her late husband at this time, where she explained in detail all the processes of the

shadow plays and shadow films.

Born in 1936, Jan Pieńkowski is a Polish-born British author and illustrator of children's books. He

uses different techniques and styles to tell stories. He has often used the silhouette style to illustrate

fairy tales. The detailed black silhouettes over brightly coloured marbled backgrounds clearly

remind the viewer of the work of Reiniger (figure 3).

Cut-out illustrations are fixed imagery so there is no need of articulation, the entire picture is cut out

from a single sheet of black paper. The background is the only part where colour is applied. This is

the most significant difference between the two artists.

In Reiniger's illustrations, she generally retains the whiteness of the background to create a sharp

contrast with the black of the silhouettes. Without distracting the viewer, it delivers all the accuracy

and elegance of her ability. Jan Pieńkowski's film backgrounds are very colourful, but rather than

distracting, they amplify the emotion of the picture. The texture is also prominent, giving a warmth

and motion which also creates an antithesis to the cut-out figure. In a way his illustrations are

clearly more inspired by Reiniger's animation rather than her illustrations.

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CONCLUSION

Lotte Reiniger was an avant-garde artist, as demonstrated by the finesse and complexity of her

paper cut-out and elaborate narrative of her animations. At a time when animation was still an

experimental medium, she found her own way to tell stories and became not only a pioneer of

animation, but also the inventor of the silhouette animation technique.

This essay has attempted to analyse where she found the inspiration which led her to pursue a career

in this particular style of animation technique. It appears that she was influenced by many different

sources, such as Chinese shadow-plays and shadow theatres, the music of Mozart, legends and

fairy tales.

She spent all her working life cutting out delicate figures, bringing them to life with the magic of

animation. Today the animated film industry is generally dominated by computer-generated

cartoons, made as quickly as possible. It is interesting to look back at Lotte Reiniger's films and see

how most of them remain relevant today due to her use of the timelessness of the fary tale and the

beauty of the silhouettes. Today, as before, they leave room for the audience to add their own

imagination to the story.

It also appears that the employment of black silhouette is mainly used for story telling, from the

ancient art of shadow-play to the animation of Michel Ocelot. It tells stories and attempts to

transmit in a poetic way the great values of life such as love, companionship, wisdom, perseverance

and uses visual metaphors and shows the negative side of human emotions such as revenge,

jealousy and greediness. Silhouettes have something magical: the fact that we can see and guess

how it is all made, with simple pieces of paper cut out by hand, makes it closer to us. Why do

silhouette artists choose to animate fairy tales? Is the silhouette a fairy tale in itself? These questions

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would require further research and are beyond the scope of this essay.

The silhouette animation will probably remain a minor technique within the film industry as a

whole. Clearly the time of this kind of animated fairy tale is over and animation is less and less for

children. The world of the fairy tale still inspires animators, but more for the action and adventure,

rather than the poetry and the wisdom. The evolution of technology means that there is less scope

for modern animators to do what Lotte Reiniger did when she experimented by trying new things.

With computers and new technology the possibilities are endless and growing every day. Twenty

five years ago Aardman studio (“A Grand Day Out” 1989, “Chicken Run” 2000) was making

Wallace and Gromit out of plasticine. Today the Laika animation sudio (“Coralin” 2009,

“ParaNorman” 2012) makes character faces by printing them with a 3D printer.

From the cut-out silhouette technique followed the technique of the coloured paper cut, which Terry

Gilliam used, at first for the opening titles for the Monty Python television programmes and then in

Monty Python's Flying Circus. His technique inspired Trey Parker and Matt Stone to create “South

Park”. They use computer-generated animation, which reduces the working time but retains the

visual style of the cut-out technique.

Lotte Reiniger's contribution to animation is more substantial than we can imagine. She is,

according to Winsor McCay (1809 - 1934) who created “Little Nemo” (1905), masked by the

success of Walt Disney, who was, without doubt, inspired, not by her technique but more by her

working process. He used the same concept of fairy tale adaptations in a more industrial and

commercial way. Moreover, he re-used, improved and renamed Reiniger's "trick table", which

became known as the "multiplane camera".

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If today animation is recognized as an art form in itself, it is because of its diversity. In a way, this

can be traced back to Lotte Reiniger and her legacy. She took the first step in the world of

animation. In her last days she embarked on a world tour to show her technique that she used to

compare as a dinosaur of animation; it might be preferable to say, as a cave woman of animation,

she discovered how to make fire.

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Bibliography

BOOKS

Bettelhim. B, Psychanalyse des contes de féés. Pocket. 1999

Currell. D, Shadow puppets and shadow play. The Crowood press. 2007

Finch. C, The art of Walt Disney from Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1999

Pienkowski. J & Walser. D, The thousand nights and one night. 2011

Reiniger. L, Shadow theatres and shadow films. B.T Batsford Ltd. 1970

FILMS & DOCUMENTARIES

Days to Air: The Making of South Park. 2011 (Film) Bradford. A,

Lotte Reinige Tanz der Schatten. 2012 (DVD) Directed by Bieberstein, R., Marschall, S. Germany: Arte edition

The Adventures of Prince Achmed. 1926 (DVD) Directed by Reiniger, L., Germany: Comenius-Film GmbH

Lotte Reiniger, Homage to the inventor of the Silhouette Film. 1999 (Documentary) Directed by Raganelli. K., UK: Diorama Film GmbH

Lotte Reiniger. The fairy tale films. 2008 (DVD) Directed by Gibson. R., BFI

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WEBSITES

Anonymous, 2011, Histoire du theatre d'ombres. (pdf). Available at: http://www.letheatre-narbonne.com/saisons/13-14/dp/histoiretheatredombres.pdf (Accessed 1 November 2013)

Bazou, S., 2011. Princes et princesses les contes de fées revisitée. (online) Artefake illusion & Arts visuels. Available at: http://www.artefake.com/PRINCES-ET-PRINCESSES.html (Accessed 15 November 2013)

Bitoun, O., 2008. Les Aventures du Prince Ahmed. (online) DVDClassick.com. Available at:http://www.dvdclassik.com/critique/les-aventures-du-prince-ahmed-reiniger (Accessed 7 November 2013)

C.A.H.P.A. : Compagnie des Arts d’Hier Pour Aujourd’hui, 2013. Les Aventures du Prince Ahmed (online) Available at: http://www.cahpa.fr/cahpa_cie_sebastien_bertrand/les_aventures_du_prince_ahmed.php (Accessed 7 November 2013)

Clarke, G. A., 2011. Jan Pienkowski's The Kingdom Under The Sea. (online) Available at:http://graphicnothing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/jan-pienkowskis-pictures-for-kingdom.html (Accessed 20 November 2013)

Deming, M., 2013. Michel Ocelot – Princes et Princesses (2000). (online) Cinema of the World. Available at: http://worldscinema.org/2013/02/michel-ocelot-princes-et-princesses-2000-2/ (Accessed 15 November 2013)

Ellenberger, A., 2012. Living shadows – silhouette films by Bruno L. Böttge. (online) 19.internationales trickfilm festival. Available at: http://www.itfs.de/index.php?id=2637&L=1 (Accessed 28 October 2013)

Kemp, P., (n.d.). Reiniger, Lotte (1899 - 1982). (online) BFI screenonline. Available at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/528134/ (Accessed 28 October 2013)

Mortiz, W., 1996. Lotte Reiniger. (online) Animation world network. Available at: http://www.awn.com/articles/people/lotte-reiniger (Accessed 28 October 2013)

Plas, L., 2011. Choisir l'envoûtement? (online) France culture, Available at: http://www.franceculture.fr/blog-les-trois-coups-2011-11-16-%C2%AB-princes-et-princesses-

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%C2%BB-de-michel%C2%A0ocelot-critique-de-laura%C2%A0plas-th (Accessed 15 November 2013)

Rall, H., 2008 Teaching and research (online) Available at: http://www.hannesrall.com/teaching.html (Accessed 29 Novenber 2013)

Schönfeld. C., Lotte Reiniger and the Art of Animation. (pdf) (ed.) Practicing Modernity: Female Creativity in the Weimar Republic',Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann 2006. Available at: http://dspace.mic.ul.ie/bitstream/10395/713/2/Sch%C3%B6nfeld,C.%282006%29%20%27Lotte%20Reiniger%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Animation.%27%20%28Book%20Chapter%29.pdf (Accessed 8 November 2013)

Studio O, (online) (n.d.). Available at: http://www.studio-o.fr/michelocelot-vf/Sommaire.html (Accessed 15 November 2013)

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Illustrations

figure 1

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figure 2

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figure 3

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figure 4

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