Frühling/ Sommer 1998 - Filmblatt

Some EntertainingAnschütz Picture-series
An Interim Report onWork in Progress
by Deac Rosseil
Deac Rossell is aVisiting Fellow of Goldsmiths College, University of London,
who has published widely on early and pre-cinema topics.The former Head of
Programme Planningforthe National FilmTheatre in London,and National Spe¬
cial Projects Officer of the DirectorsGuild ofAmerica in Los Angeles, his book
„Living Pictures.The Origins of the Cinema" has just been published by the
State University of New York Press. He is currently working on a book on German
cinema before 1900 and continuing his research on the life and work of
Ottomar Anschütz.
Ottomar Anschütz made hundieds of chonophotographic series between 1885
and 1891, but the image of a galloping horse, or a horse and riderjumping a
hurdle, have remained until today his mostwidely known images, along with
a few of his „Akt-Serien"of athletes. Perhaps because these images were in
the tradition of Etienne-JulesMarey and Eadweard Muybridge, it is only
images from a limited ränge of his work that were reproduced in the contemporary
photographic Journals. So today we never see any of the hundreds of
series that Anschütz made of dance movements, of Post Office workers, of
hospital patients. And we never see the entertainment subjects that An¬
schütz made for the widespread public use of his Schnellseher.
Unlike Maiey, whose interest in photography was purely for the purpose of
scientificallyanalysing movement,Anschütz from the beginning was principally
drivenby a desire to synthesizemovement, and thereby reproduce the
illusion of motion in the most natural way. When he began to develop a
mass-produced Schnellseherautomat with Siemens & Halske during 1890, he
also began to make series photographs of purely entertaining subjects,
images that were comic vignettesthat had no scientific or educationalpur¬
pose. There were only a few Anschütz entertainment series, and clues about
their contents are scarce, since most of the contemporary reports concentra-
ted on technical and photographic details of the Schnellseher. Yet it is clear
that the Anschütz entertainment series put actors -
or
at least players -
settings where they were coached to be comic or to make a dramatic impression.
They also used props for comic or unusual effects, and, in at least one
case, used a fully elaborated fictional setting.
Perhaps the most intriguiging of these unknown entertainment series is the
1891 series „Skatspieler", which anticipates the early Louis Lumiere film Par¬
tie d'ecarte of January or February 1896, as well as one of the first films of
Georges Melies, Une Partie de Cartes. It would be interesting to know if „Skat-
in
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