Berthold Bartosch

Berthold Bartosch
Born	(1893-12-29)29 December 1893 Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic)
Died	13 November 1968(1968-11-13) (aged 74) Paris
Occupation	Film-maker
Notable work	L'Idée (The Idea)

Berthold Bartosch (December 29, 1893 – November 13, 1968) was a film-maker, born in Polaun, in the Bohemia region of Austria-Hungary (now part of the Czech Republic).

Work with Lotte Reiniger

He moved to Berlin in 1920 and collaborated with Lotte Reiniger on her paper silhouette animations:

• The Ornament of the Loving Heart
• The Battle of Skagerrak
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed
• Doctor Dolittle

Bartosch created what some consider the first multiplane camera in order to achieve some of the effects for these films.

Work in Paris

In 1930 Bartosch moved to Paris and created the 30 minute film entitled 'L'Idée' (The Idea) to which he is most remembered for. The film is described as the first serious, poetic, tragic work in animation. The film's characters and backdrops were composed of several layers of different types of paper from semi-transparent to thick cardboard. Special effects like halos, smoke and fog were made with lather spread on glass plates and lit from behind. Bartosch based the film on a wordless novel of woodcuts by Frans Masereel, The Idea (1920).

L'idee, when released in 1933, featured a score by composer Arthur Honegger, including an ondes Martenot, which is believed to be the very first use of an electronic musical instrument in film history. The following year, Franz Waxman's score for Liliom (1934) used a theremin.

From 1933 to 1938, Bartosch worked on an anti-war film, St. Francis or Nightmare and Dreams, a 25-minute piece being financed by Thorold Dickinson. When the Nazis invaded Paris, he deposited the film at the Cinémathèque Française. The film was destroyed during the Nazi occupation, and only a few still images exist.

In 1948, he spent a year working for UNESCO in Paris mentoring George Dunning, a Canadian-born animator known for his involvement with the Beatles's animated feature, Yellow Submarine (1968).

External links

• Berthold Bartosch at IMDB
• The Idea animation master piece free at Internet Archive
• Re:voir DVD edition of The Idea