Hans Richter Movies

Avant-garde German filmmaker Hans Richter started out as a painter in the Dadaist movement around 1916 following a crippling injury during WWI. Before going to war, the Berlin-born Richter was a carpenter's apprentice and had studied art. During the early '20s, he, Walter Ruttmann, and Viking Eggeling pioneered experimental animation films by painting images directly onto the film stock. On his own, Richter was known for further developing the technique to create scenes in which abstract images moved hypnotically in rhythm to music. Such surreal ventures made him Germany's best-known surrealist. During the late '20s, he was actively involved with the International Congress of Independent Film and worked closely with such major filmmakers as Eisenstein. When the Nazis came to power in the early '30s, Richter fled the country. After spending a few rootless years in Europe, he moved to the United States. Arriving in 1941, he soon became the director of the Institute of Film Techniques at City College in New York. Richter also began directing American films such as Dreams That Money Can Buy, which won an award at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. Richter moved to Switzerland in 1952 and went on to become an important film theorist. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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8 x 8: 1957

Hans Richter and Jean Cocteau collaborated for three years to make this "Chess Sonata in 8 Movements," and the structure is everything. The title of the confusing avant garde exercise refers to the 8 x 8 arrangement of squares on a chessboard. Accordingly, the narrative is divided into eight portions, each one more baffling than the last. Arguably the best segment is the sixth, "Queening the Pawn," written by Jean Cocteau, who also makes a brief appearance (the rest of the cast is comprised of nonprofessionals).The idea is to present chess conundrums cinematically the way Lewis Carroll did in literature, particularly in Through the Looking Glass. Filmmaker Hans Richter, who'd previously collaborated on Cocteau's Blood of a Poet, designed his films like paintings; as a result 8 X 8 is visually dazzling, especially segment #2 ("A New Twist") -- even when the viewer is at a loss to understand what is going on. Like all of Richter's works, 8 x 8 had an unusually long gestation period, in this case three years! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Dreams That Money Can Buy: 1947

Surrealist painter and Dada film-theorist Hans Richter wrote, produced, and directed the experimental exercise Dreams That Money Can Buy, one of the most significant contributions to the 20th-century "avant garde" movement. The project began in 1944, while Richter was director of the Institute of Film Techniques at City College in New York. Combining short scenarios written by such world-renowned artists as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamps, Man Ray, Alexander Calder and Fernand Leger, Richter came up with a full-color, feature-length study in dreamlike "wish fulfillment." The film's only nod to continuity is the presence of a self-styled heavenly psychiatrist, whose patients purportedly visualize the images which play across the screen. Described by one observer as "surreal yet somewhat Jungian," Dreams That Money Can Buy cost $25,000 and was three years in the making (Richter liked to take his time: his later Dadascope took five years!) Its New York premiere was greeted with a mixture of bravos and bewilderment, especially when the projectionist elected to show the film on the wall and ceiling rather than the screen. One assumes that the projectionist was less capricious when Dreams That Money Can Buy won a special prize at the 1947 Venice Film Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Starring:: Max Ernst

Der Springer von Pontresina: 1934

Thematically related to the popular German "mountain film" genre is the 1934 skiing drama Der Springer von Pontresina. The film catalogs the intensive training program undergone by a Teutonic skiing team in preparation for a championship race. Though Sepp Rist is nominally the star, the script emphasizes teamwork uber alles, thus Rist and his cohorts are what was described by one critic as the "composite hero." The principal dramatic complication concerns the romance between one of the team members and a pretty American girl, which leads to a near-disaster on the slopes. Der Springer von Pontresina was gorgeously photographer in St. Moritz. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Starring:: Sepp Rist, Walter Rilia, (more)

Ghosts Before Breakfast: 1928

One of several short films made by German Dadaist filmmaker Hans Richter in the 1920s, Ghosts Before Breakfast uses stop-motion animation to create an odd dream world featuring flying bowler hats. Clocking in at six minutes, the film's original German title was Vormittagsspuk. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide