Lichtspiel Opus 1.

I just found this info on Opus I:

In 1914 World War I disrupted the lives of millions of people world wide, and Ruttmann was no exception. He served as a lieutenant in the German army durring the war, and when the war ended in 1918 he became increasingly dissatisfied with the medium of painting. The main problem Ruttmann saw in the medium was its inherently static nature. A painter could attempt to capture some sense of motion in his paintings, but the paintings were, in the end, fixed in place forever. We are told that Ruttmann made a comment, shortly after the end of the war, to the effect that it made no sense to continue painting, unless the paintings could be set in motion(Starr). In 1921, in Frankfort, Germany, he realized this desire with the release of his first abstract film, and indeed the first abstract film the world had ever seen: Lichtspiel Opus I. As is evident from its title, the film combined the separate art forms of painting and music into one work. The film featured moving patterns of light set to a custom score, written specially for Lichtspiel Opus I by Max Butting. The film was a great success, making a lasting impression on people such as Bernhard Diebold, film reviewer for the Frankfurter Zeitung, and Oskar Fischinger, future avant-garde filmmaker in his own right. Ruttmann went on to produce three more completely abstract films, Opus II, Opus III, and Opus IV, which were all well recieved at the time.

I would like to know more about this great short. Did Ruttmann write the mesmerizing score himself?

Opus one is a German Short which consists of a great score for strings over which abstract animation (in color) is played. Think Toccata in Fugue in D minor in the original Fantasia.

I found this work very interesting and I,d love to have this score on CD, it sounds like Shostakovitch meets Richard Strauss!

This was included on the DVD for "Berlin: Symphony of a Great City". It's also by Walter Ruttman and is an early and much shorter film. It consists of animates shapes going back and forth across the screen--all set to music that was added for the DVD (since the film is a silent). It's all a bit hypnotic but the sort of film only a small select group could love. Believe me, the average person out there would only scratch their head at this one! You know it's a pretty dull film when you get excited late in the film when one of the moving blobs is red! Because it's so experimental and non-commercial in style, I'll elect not to score this one. It's one you just need to see for yourself...or not.

This experimental one-reeler was included as an extra on the Image Entertainment DVD of the same director's famous feature-length documentary BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927) – though I actually acquired (and, consequently, watched) both via ulterior sources. The film is basically a play of lights set to music (composed, for this 1993 edition, by Timothy Brock – who also scored its companion effort on the R1 disc), highlighting various shapes and occasionally adopting colour (predominantly red) for greater effect. The end result approximates (indeed precedes) what was achieved by the Walt Disney animation studio in the opening segment of their ode to classical music, FANTASIA (1940) or the works of Canadian animator Norman McLaren around the same time. For the record, OPUS 1 would be followed by volumes II, III and IV (albeit all running for about half its length!) within the space of 3 years.

German artist/filmmaker Walter Ruttman was seeking a new form of artistic expression using painted moving images. Combining brushed oil drawings on glass with geometric cut-outs, Ruttman created cinema's first abstract animation in 1921's "Lichtspiel Opus 1."

Ruttman saw paintings hanging on walls as a single snapshot in a long sequence of action. Wanting to steer modern art towards a moving fashion, he created rhythmic movements of abstract that are far more colorful than his contemporary counterparts Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling's black and white works. Ruttman's film also was the first of abstract artists to be shown to the public, making him a true pioneer in a new form of moviemaking. Walt Disney 19 years later incorporated Ruttman's ideas to develop his 1940 monumental movie "Fantasia."