Known for
Popular titles
Biography
A closer look
Read full biography
Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film. Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main; His film career began in the early 1920s. His first abstract short films, Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921) and Opus II (1923), were experiments with new forms of film expression. Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new formal techniques. Ruttmann was a prominent exponent of both avant-garde art and music. His early abstractions played at the 1929 Baden-Baden Festival to international acclaim despite their being almost eight years old. Ruttmann licensed a Wax Slicing machine from Oskar Fischinger to create special effects for Lotte Reiniger. Together with Erwin Piscator, he worked on the film Melody of the World (1929), though he is best remembered for Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927). During the Nazi period he worked as an assistant to director Leni Riefenstahl on Triumph of the Will (1935). He died in Berlin of wounds sustained when he was working on the front line as a war photographer.
Filmography
Movies and shows, newest first
-
1940
German Tanks
Movie Director
-
1940
German Armaments
Movie Director
-
1939
Behind the Numbers
Movie Writer
-
1938
Mannesmann
Movie Director
-
1937
Mannesmann. Ein Film der Mannesmannröhren-Werke
Movie Director
-
1935
Stuttgart, die Großstadt zwischen Wald und Reben
Movie Director
-
1935
Triumph of the Will
Movie Screenplay
-
1935
Metall des Himmels
Movie Director
-
1934
Altgermanische Bauernkultur
Movie Director
-
1933
Blood and Soil
Movie Director
-
1933
Steel
Movie Director
-
1932
Ceux du viking
Movie Editor
-
1931
In the Night
Movie Director
-
1931
Feind im Blut
Movie Director
-
1931
The End of the World
Movie Art Direction
-
1930
Weekend
Movie Director
More credits
-
1929
Melody of the World
Movie Director
-
1928
The White Stadium
Movie Editor
-
1927
Where the Rhine...
Movie Director
-
1927
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Movie Director
-
1927
Metropolis
Movie Director of Photography
-
1927
Hoppla, wir leben
Movie Director
-
1926
The Climb
Movie Director
-
1926
Game of Waves
Movie Director
-
1925
The Rediscovered Paradise
Movie Director
-
1925
Opus IV
Movie Director
-
1924
Opus III
Movie Director
-
1924
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
Movie Director of Photography
-
1921
Lightplay Opus II
Movie Director
-
1921
Light-Play Opus I
Movie Director