Opus IV
About Opus IV
Walter Ruttmann’s last Lichtspiel short has no story and no actors. Squares, ovals, and ellipses of color travel across the frame, grow, and vanish. A Lichtbild-Bühne reviewer of the Berlin matinee wrote that the color tones carried the eye along even when the shapes had no object.
Cast & crew
More about Opus IV
Filmportal credits Ruttmann as director, animator, editor, and producer, with Lore Leudesdorff as collaborator. The German release print is listed as one reel, 70 meters, 35mm, black and white and partly colored. Censorship card B.10333, dated 21 April 1925, passed it for young audiences.
Themes
Background
The 3 May 1925 matinee was organized as a public showing of absolute film. Viking Eggeling, whose Symphonie diagonale opened the abstract portion of the program for many in the audience, died a few days later.
Making
Lore Leudesdorff is credited on filmportal as Ruttmann’s collaborator. The production name on the same record is Kunstmaler W. Ruttmann, the painter’s own Berlin shop.
Reviews
Lichtbild-Bühne of 4 May 1925 said Ruttmann’s films drew strong applause: colored planes, square, oval, and elliptical, moved across the screen with tones the writer found beautiful. The same notice said the program was art for artists, not for a large public.
Technique
The release print is partly colored. A nitrate copy at the EYE Filmmuseum, photographed for the FilmColors project, is identified as tinted and carries an Agfa edge mark used from 1924.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam holds a nitrate print. Filmportal lists the original as 70 meters, partly colored, and a shorter 16mm black-and-white reduction of 25 meters.
Notes
- The premiere was the matinee Der absolute Film at the U.T. Kurfürstendamm in Berlin.
- Opus II and Opus III were on the same bill, with Viking Eggeling’s Symphonie diagonale, Hans Richter’s Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23, Ballet mécanique, and René Clair’s Entr’acte.
- Wikipedia records that the 900-seat house sold out and the program was repeated a week later.
- Filmportal also lists a 16mm copy of 25 meters running about two minutes, in black and white.
- William Moritz wrote that Ruttmann finished Opus 3 and Opus 4 in Berlin in 1923–24 while working around Lotte Reiniger’s Prince Achmed.
Scenes
- Colored squares, ovals, and ellipses cross the screen, the movement Lichtbild-Bühne singled out the day after the Berlin matinee.
Influenced by
- Ruttmann’s earlier Lichtspiel Opus films
Also available
- Internet Archive (LichtspielOpusIV)
- Wikimedia Commons (Lichsspiel opus IV (1925).webm)
