Rhythmus 21

A lot of misleading facts, most of them spread by Richter himself are surrounding this film as well as the subsequent Rhythmus 23. I've tried to sort them out: The first public screening was held on July 6th 1923 in France. The opening title 'Un film de Hans Richter' which still can be seen on surviving prints may have been for years the only title the film had. The first public screening held in Germany occurred on May 10th 1925. This time it's been called 'Film ist Rhythmus', but probably only in Ads. By then the film was roughly two minutes long. Over the next two years Richter must have worked on the film and extended it to almost seven minutes. Eventually before October 16th 1927 when the film(s) was(were) screened at the Film Society in London, he must have split it up and later on called it Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23. By calling them Rhythmus 21 respectively 23 he apparently insinuated 21 meaning 'made in 1921'.He thereby tried to predate Walther Ruttmann who on April 27th 1921 screened the first 'absolut' film.

A kind of perpetual monochromatic Mondrian-in-motion. Seen with Sue Harshe's appropriately stark modern score; although the inevitable question is posed of whether the meaning changes with the interpolation of seemingly unconnected audio. Given it's an abstraction, perhaps less so.

White boxes moving to the sides, like opening doors to a lift (or is it a black line which gets thicker, until it occupies the full frame?) opens this Dada short film, where the movements of white squares and white rectangles against a deep black background takes up two thirds of its brief run time. Then comes the final minute, when another white square enlarges to fill the frame completely, and black squares and various black geometrical shapes dance against a plain white square, all in complete silence, with absolutely no music score to accompany it.

Hypnotic, yet pointless, also meditative; it is calming to me to watch Richter's experimental work, and see the first time movement was even implied on film.

This is a short film by Hans Richter--one of the very first experimental film makers. It is not meant to appeal to the masses but is simply an experiment by Richter. It consists of black and white shapes moving about the screen and has a definite cubist look to it. I see it as an interesting attempt by the artist to redefine what film is--in this case it's not intended to entertain but appears to be an attempt to expand what can CAN be. Because of this, I cannot assign this one a numerical score or say whether it's good or bad...it just is what it is. I wonder how the film would feel if it had an accompanying musical score (something you wouldn't have had when Richter made the film in the 1920s). More watchable than most art films but not something most folks would want to watch every day!

Hans Richter was not just a filmmaker; although thanks to works like these he is better remembered as such, he was also a painter who explored modern styles of painting (like those of the Dadaists). One of these styles was Cubism, which basically reduced paintings to no more than geometric shapes and colors; a very simple style, but one which was growing increasingly popular in the 20th century. "Rhythmus 21" (which is now 100 years old just about) is essentially a transfer then of that concept to film: there are no actors or anything onscreen in this three-minute film, which is the first in a series of "Rhythmus" shorts by the filmmaker (the other two were "Rhythmus 23" and "Rhythmus 25"). Instead, it is like watching one of Richter's paintings moving; the man himself has been quoted to say he saw his films as continuations of his paintings.

That said, this is an extremely simple film which can mainly be enjoyed in the context of less being more. All the film consists of are squares and lines shrinking and moving before the audience for around three minutes, with the rest of the space occupied by either a black or white background. Compared to the work of Stan Brakhage, it's hardly exceptional, but then again, it's cubism, all geometry, just transferred to film to allow these shapes movement and independence from the canvas. I could see it being enjoyed better as a painting than as a film, as that largely appears to be what Richter was going for; but regardless, an interesting beginning to one who would later take his definition of abstract to a whole new level.