Rhythm 21
About Rhythm 21
Hans Richter's short has no story and no actors. Black, white, and a few grey rectangles grow, shrink, and slide. Some cross the frame. Some seem to move from the front of the picture to the back. The motion is the whole film.
Cast & crew
More about Rhythm 21
Richter finished a first version in 1921 and kept changing it. Svend Noldan and Otto Schmalhausen, of Ufa's trick department, ran the camera. The first public screening was the Dada Soirée du cœur à barbe at the Théâtre Michel in Paris on 6 or 7 July 1923. A revised cut was shown in Berlin on 10 May 1925 at the Ufa-Palast am Kurfürstendamm, in the program Der absolute Film. The short runs about 3 minutes. It was also called Film ist Rhythmus.
Themes
Background
The Paris premiere sat on a Dada bill. The 1925 Berlin matinee grouped several films that refused a story.
Making
The rectangles come out of Richter's scroll paintings. He treated the screen as a single rhythm rather than a sequence of scenes.
Look
Svend Noldan and Otto Schmalhausen photographed the animated rectangles.
Technique
Fades and shifts of paper rectangles stand in for a musical counterpoint.
Preservation
Prints survive. The Murnau Foundation holds the rights.
Notes
- Theo van Doesburg visited Richter and Viking Eggeling in December 1920 and wrote about their film tests in De Stijl in May and July 1921.
- Richter and Eggeling had been making scroll drawings together after meeting through Tristan Tzara. Both had ties to the Novembergruppe.
- Silent Era lists a later German showing on 10 May 1925 and names the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung as rights holder.
Scenes
- A white square swells until it fills the black frame.
- Rectangles slide from one edge to the other.
Influenced by
- Viking Eggeling's scroll drawings
- De Stijl
Also available
- Internet Archive (Rhythmus21)
