1

CGAA UNIT 5 – ANIMATION PROJECT ESSAY

Investigating Critically

the Animator Lotte

Reiniger and her

work.

By Emma Foster

2

Contents

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………3

Main Body……………………………………………………………………………………….4

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………8

Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………9

List of Illustrations…………………………………………………………………………..9

3

Introduction

This assignment will investigate critically the German animator Lotte Reiniger and

her work. Key sources include Donald Haase’s The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and

Fairy Tales: G-P (2008) to examine the history of shadow puppetry, Christiane Schönfeld’s

Practicing modernity: female creativity in the Weimar Republic (2006) to study how the

culture and society of Reiniger’s time impacted on her work and the awn.com article

Shadow Play with Potter’s Tale of Three Brothers (2006) to delve into Reiniger’s effect on

contemporary animation. The assignment focuses on the stylization of Reiniger’s paper cut-

animations beginning by introducing Reiniger and her type before moving on to explore how

Reiniger’s background impacted on her work. It will then look at specific elements of her

animation that make it stand out then looking at her impact on contemporary animation. To

conclude, the vital relationship between Reiniger’s life and her work but also the work that

follows her will be expressed.

4

Main Body

Lotte Reiniger was a German born animator and film director (1899-1981) who is

renowned and familiarised for her work with shadow puppet like techniques and stylisation

as well as, her success in the world of child animation. There is hardly a part of her life to

point out where she wasn’t involved in some sort of animation and perhaps that is why her

development of her techniques later in her life still held a large audience. Yet, holding a

sizable audience and continually successfully completing work in the animation world

doesn’t always grab you the recognition that is deserved as film and animation history

teacher William Moritz assesses. ‘Lotte Reiniger when mentioned at all, is most often

brushed off in a single sentence noting that she apparently made a feature-length silhouette

film in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed; but since that was in Germany, and

silhouettes aren’t cartoons, Disney still invented the feature-length animated film with Snow

White. Anyone who had seen Prince Achmed wouldn’t be convinced by this reasoning, but,

alas, only a tiny fraction of the people who see Snow White ever get to see any Reiniger film

at all.’ (Moritz, 1996) Moritz seems to suggest that Reiniger did not receive the recognition

that was rightfully hers as she took an ‘unusual’ stance in the animation world with her

silhouettes and was part of what was viewed as a less important involvement in animation

from countries such as Germany. This oppression that Reiniger faced could have meant that

her animations were stopped from being all the more successful and inspirational because

others were not willing to accept it especially if it could potentially make their animation

revolutions seem less impressive. However, this didn’t go to say it was right and so it would

make sense if an opinion on alienation and oppression was taken to inspire work.

When the First World War was coming to its climax Reiniger was only just entering

her twenties and so her childhood had been beset with the violence and oppression that

took place. She would then enter into witnessing the events of the Second World War which

took discrimination and alienation beyond what she had yet to observe. It was these

unforgettable events that have laid so much impact on her ambition into a career of

animation. Lecturer, Christiane Schönfeld, in her book Practicing modernity: female

creativity in the Weimar Republic explores just how these historical events left an

impression on Reiniger’s work. ‘Lotte Reiniger created silhouettes to epitomise the

5

unimaginable horrors of World War I. From the beginning of her career as an animator, her

acknowledgement of the significance of animation was based on her conviction regarding

the representational potential of animated sequences. In her view, it was due to animation

that representational restrictions in cinema could be surpassed.’ (Schönfeld, 2006: 174)

What Schönfeld appears to be saying is that Reiniger decided on the animation of

silhouettes to be able to personify the terrible events and emotions of World War I. The use

of silhouettes enables a blank canvas which doesn’t allow us to the ability to view emotions

easily and so this is highly effective because it embodies the fear to express feelings and the

act of being shocked into speechlessness. Also, in a time of judgement and alienation these

blank canvases prevented the ability to

do just this, allowing a universal

audience to engage and identify. Lotte

Reiniger’s first animated short, Das

Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The

Ornament of the Heart in Love) is a

great example of applying these black

canvas effects at their fullest in an anti-

oppression stance. The black silhouette

of an ornament behaves as the echo of

two lovers’ sentiments that are also made up of silhouettes. This is a great example of

Reiniger’s beliefs at work because she could have easily followed typical animation and

allowed the two lovers to express their emotions in a naturally human way yet she takes her

animation to new depths just so she can engage an audience much more effectively,

especially as she believed animation was the way to break into film without the risk of

judgement. However, the use of pulling on people’s emotions wasn’t the only way Lotte

Reiniger had such an impact on creating animations that were open to everyone.

The whole origin of Reiniger’s art direction comes down to her inspiration, even at a

young age, from the Chinese art of shadow puppetry. The art of shadow puppetry goes back

even further than this and has been widely used for centuries but it was the Chinese

adaptation of this technique which really grabbed her attention even leading to her creating

her own shadow puppet theatre where she would perform to her family and friends. Donald

6

Haase, author, explores the popularity of

shadow puppetry throughout history in his

book The Greenwood Encyclopedia of

Folktales and Fairy Tales: G-P. ‘In Europe,

puppetry appeared in Greece and Rome,

depicting folktales and mimes. Medieval

puppet shows… depicted fables or Bible

stories… Chinese shadow plays dramatize new stories … In the early nineteenth century,

puppet performances of nursery and fairy tales were wide-spread. In Britain, a hobby

version, the “toy theatre,” featured cutout figures in an open-topped box with backdrops

and curtains.’ (Haase, 2008: 791) Haase is exploring the belief that shadow puppetry

reaches out to all different types of cultures and people yet they are used to tell all different

stories from mimes and fables to fairy-tales. So it makes perfect sense for Reiniger to adopt

this art stylisation when it comes to her animations as it is her aim to bring everyone

together, to get rid of the borders between two different people just so they can enjoy a

piece of animation in the same way. Furthermore, the fact that this puppetry is used to tell

fables and similar is all the more suitable because these types of stories can deal with

alienation and people being brought together, so what better way than for Reiniger to

combine her love for this art and her beliefs to create animations such as the story of

oppressed Cinderella. But again, she has even more control than this with the way she

technically approached her style.

It may be hard to visualise Lotte Reiniger’s shadow puppetry inspired as anything but

that however, Reiniger manages still to explore more opportunities with this to make her

work all the more stunning. One way she does this is through the technicality of moving and

forming each individual silhouette. Essayist, Megan Ratner explains how exactly Reiniger

goes about this. ‘Reiniger broke the figures down into separate parts, then cut each limb and

torso from black cardstock. These were hinged on thin wire so that every joint was able to

articulate a great number of movements. She hated the imprecision of some animation.

“Hands are practically the only way to show a silhouette figure’s emotions,” she explained.

“Without all five fingers, it’s not so good.” In fact, her contribution to the elegance and

dexterity of animated figures is enormous.”’ (Ratner, 2006) Reiniger seems to believe that

7

without silhouettes it is much more difficult to create her desired effect which relies on

showing emotion through generic black canvases that are only

different through decoration in the cuttings and the way they

move. She believes she could not manipulate these figures as

freely if she didn’t create hinge like cut-outs. By doing just this

Reiniger produces stunning action that like classic exaggerated

squash and stretch animation doesn’t actually look exaggerated

but rather fits the characters very well. However, unlike this

classic animation, Reiniger’s techniques allow her to create a

higher amount of elegance and grace that is not generally seen

in squash and stretch which rather relies on a more comedic approach. She opens the world

of both animation and audience to new magic on the screen so it is no wonder why she

continues to be such a major influence to some more contemporary animators.

Animation is constantly changing shape and style yet past animators will always have

an influence on what is produced. Lotte Reiniger is a perfect example of just that. It is

Reiniger’s ability to shape fairy-tales to reflect on her own world view that impacts on the

world of fairy-tale adaptations today, but also her aptitude to develop of the world of

shadow puppetry and create something more up to date and even more creative with it.

This response continues to be taken and it’s with thanks to Reiniger as director and

animator Ben Hibon explains of the latest Harry Potter’s inspiration for the Tale of the Three

Brothers sequence. ‘I dug up a couple of images and one of the early references that we

responded to was from Lotte Reiniger for her scissor cut out, silhouette style of animation.

And there was something naïve and very graphical that David responded to. So I came away

with that and was already fascinated with Asian shadow plays and puppetry -- very crudely

articulated puppets on sticks. I thought that merging the two things would look wonderful.

But there was always something that bugged me a little bit about all of these references.

They were heavily 2D in their craft and I was very aware of breaking the flow of the movie,

and so it was very important that we keep the language of cameras and not lose the motion

of the cinematic experience as a Potter movie. I tried to devise a way to think of that visual

style but in 3D’ (Hibon, 2006) What Hibon appears to be saying is that where Lotte Reiniger

proved to be a big inspiration in the art direction they wanted to take this fairy-tale element

Figure 3 Reiniger at work

8

of the Potter films, her work was still too 2D to flow with

the film. Bu t Hibon and his colleagues then take

inspiration from another aspect of Reiniger’s career, her

ability to develop further and this is what they do

themselves. They take her shadow-puppetry inspiration

and combine it with inspiration from the 3D animation feel

of the rest of the Potter films. They also put a voice over of

character Hermione narrating which prevents the

sequence again from losing the Harry Potter quality. So

really, even though they took inspiration from Reiniger

they reinvented her style; she just helped push them in the

right direction.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Lotte Reiniger took the art form of shadow puppetry to an all new

development in animation which would ensure that the form continued to be referred back

on and perhaps even used more widely. The styles of more contemporary graphic based

computer generated animations such as the Harry Potter example above would not have

existed if it wasn’t for the inspiration Reiniger gives through her high experimentation and

expressive animation decisions. These animations may even still be going through pre-

production to find a style that works if they hadn’t stumbled across Reiniger. And so

Reiniger created an alternative type of animation that was widely targeted rather than

focusing on what can only be viewed as niches in comparison, and this is probably why

Reiniger still remains highly regarded.

Figure 4 Reiniger's inspiration on Harry Potter

9

Bibliography

Haase, Donald. (2008) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales: G-P.

U.S.A. Greenwood Publishing Group. (Accessed 27/04/2012)

Hibon, Ben. (2006) Shadow Play with Potter’s Tale of Three Brothers. On awn.com

http://www.awn.com/articles/article/shadow-play-potters-tale-three-brothers (Accessed

27/04/2012)

Mortiz, William. (1996) Lotte Reiniger. On awn.com

http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.3/articles/moritz1.3.html (Accessed 27/04/2012)

Ratner, Megan. (1996) In the Shadows: Lotte Reiniger. On meganratner.net

http://www.meganratner.net/lotte-reiniger-art-on-paper/ (Accessed 27/04/2012)

Schönfeld, Christiane. (2006) Practicing modernity: female creativity in the Weimar Republic.

Germany. Königshausen & Neumann. (Accessed 27/04/2012)

Illustrations List

Figure 1. Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens on randform.org

http://www.randform.org/blog/wp-content/2006/07/Achmed1.jpg [Online Image] (Accessed

27/04/12)

Figure 2. Chinese Shadow Puppetry on theatredesombres.fr

http://theatredesombres.free.fr/images/Dragon.JPG [Online Image] (Accessed 27/04/12)

Figure 3. Reiniger at work on yahoo.com

http://uk.images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A0PDodm_2ZlPQXUAK7dNBQx.;_ylu

=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F

%2Fuk.images.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dlotte%2Breiniger

%2Bcutting%26n%3D30%26ei%3Dutf-8%26y%3DSearch%26fr%3Dmcafee%26tab

%3Dorganic%26ri%3D60&w=171&h=239&imgurl=drnorth.files.wordpress.com

%2F2009%2F08%2Flotte_reiniger_achmed_400x560.jpg%3Fw%3D171%26amp%3Bh

%3D240&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdrnorth.wordpress.com%2Fcategory%2Fpuppetry%2Fpage

%2F2%2F&size=7.8+KB&name=Lotte+Reiniger

%2C+Shadow+Theatres+and+Shadow+Films+.+London

%3A+B.T+...&p=lotte+reiniger+cutting&oid=31a5ef9c8f33ed7d1ab755be06624415&fr2=&fr=

mcafee&tt=Lotte%2BReiniger%252C%2BShadow%2BTheatres%2Band%2BShadow

%2BFilms%2B.%2BLondon%253A%2BB.T

10

%2B...&b=31&ni=50&no=60&tab=organic&ts=&sigr=11mikc0ag&sigb=13r4avp60&sigi=12la

mmrtv&.crumb=y7KkOaBQZId [Online Image] (Accessed 27/04/12)

Figure 4. Reiniger’s inspiration on Harry Potter on tumblr.com

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lfji1zqccI1qzahuvo1_500.png [Online Image] (Accessed

27/04/12)