Living in the Shadows: The Pioneer of Silhouette Animation

Lotte Reiniger, born in 1899 and died in 1981, was a German film director. She was the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation and was also responsible for having invented a predecessor to the first multiplane camera. She used this camera for more than 40 of her films, and the later to come multiplane camera would be used in works such as Snow White. By creating the predecessor to the multiplane camera, she preceded the work of Walt Disney by a decade. Her interest in silhouette puppetry began as a child with her fascination with the Chinese arts of paper. She even built her own puppet theatre so that she could put on shows for her family and friends, drawing on the superstructure that Gardner claims to account for creativity in Creating Minds. Gardner emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the child and the master, which Reiniger executes through her young fascination with silhouette puppetry and her later pioneering of silhouette animation as well as her supportive friends and family referring to Gardner’s ‘relationship between an individual and other persons.’

While Reiniger was the pioneer of silhouette animation, she was also the first to make a feature-length film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926 which was quite the feat. However, she is not credited with this accomplishment. Instead, Disney was given credit for inventing the feature-length animated film with Snow White which was released to the public in 1938, over a decade after Reiniger’s Prince Achmed. It’s important to note that production for Snow White began in early 1934, so Prince Achmed had already been out for years before the film Snow White was even conceived by Disney. Unfortunately, because Reiniger used silhouette animation and silhouettes aren’t considered cartoons, Disney was still credited with inventing the feature-length film. In other words, you could say that Reiniger, the creator of silhouette animation, lived in the shadows of Disney. 

As for creating the films themselves, Reiniger was nearly a one-woman show. She would cut all of the puppets by herself, draw the storyboards, and devise the plots and characters. If a figure needed to make a complex or supple movement, it would have to be built using 25-50 separate pieces, then joined together with a fine lead wire. If a character needed to appear in a close-up, a separate, larger model of the head and shoulders had to be built – as well, possibly, as larger background materials to stand behind it. While Lotte did all of the behind the scenes work, when it came time to make the productions, she worked alongside her husband, Carl Koch, who usually ran the camera and occasionally also helped move the puppets with her. For larger projects like Prince Achmed, she had a staff of five. Lotte’s close work with her husband and her small staff are perfect examples of collaboration. It would be interesting to compare Reiniger’s staff of five to however many people worked on Snow White. (Okay, I looked it up: over 750 artists worked on the sketches alone, not even accounting for the rest of what needs to happen to make a film.)

Reiniger’s distinct art style set her apart from other artists in the 1920s and 1930s, especially in terms of characters. In the 1920s, characters relied on facial expressions to express emotions or actions. Reiniger’s characters, on the other hand, used gestures to display emotions and actions. While Reiniger’s characters are not always biologically correct, they are able to express a fluidity that is very important to her style of expressionism.

Later, under Hitler’s rule in Germany, Reiniger was forced to make propaganda films for Germany, working under harsh and limiting conditions to please the German state. During this time, around 1944, her work appeared to be creatively stifled. However, after a period of seclusion after her husband’s death in 1963, Reiniger returned to her work with renewed interest and passion. This period of seclusion could also be referred to as a sort of incubation period for Reiniger, something that helps the flow of creativity, as she went on to make three more films before she died.

Although not many know of Lotte Reiniger’s work, it has been referenced in several famous works. Disney’s Fantasia uses Reiniger’s style in the opening scene. Her cut-out animation style was used in the credits of the 2004 film Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Reiniger’s style of animation was also used perhaps most notably in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part I, when animator Ben Hibon used her style in the short film “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” So while I still feel Reiniger has been robbed of fame as the pioneer of silhouette animation and maker of the first feature length film, her work can still be seen in pop culture today.  

https://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.3/articles/moritz1.3.html

https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/lotte-reiniger/