Frühling/ Sommer 1998 - Filmblatt

ist das Einseifen beim Barbier von gradezu überwältigender Komik: Ein Herr
sitzt zurückgelehnt auf dem Stuhle: vor ihm steht der mit Seife und Pinsel
bewaffnete Barbier und waltet seines Amtes. Seitwärts zieht der Gehilfe das
Messer auf dem Streichriemenab. Das langsame Hin- und Herfahren des Mes¬
sers auf dem Riemen, die Körperbewegung des einseifendenBarbiers und das
Fingerspiel des Eingeseiften sind von unübertrefflicher Naturtreue."(Photo¬
graphische Rundschau, 1895, 1. Heft, p. 27) This picture series is unique
amongstall of the Anschütz lebende Bilder. It used the most elaborate set
and collection of properties. It requiredsignificant rehearsal and dose direction
of its players, as always with the requirement that the movements be
precisely cyclical, so that the rotating disks of the Anschütz apparatus (the
machineused two disks, two lamps,two lenses and one blending shutter designed
after dissolving magic lantern shutters) would present and re-present
the movement without any jump in the action.
It is also unique amongstthe Anschütz entertainment series in that its subject
does not fall into a well-known or widely recognized Strand of short comic
scenes or transformations and does not belong to a generic entertain¬
ment activity like the series of boxers.
What motivated Anschütz to make this subject? In my opinion, Anschütz
heTe is producing a consciousre-make of the Edison kinetoscope film The
Barber Shop, which was made in the Black Maria sometime before the end of
1893. For all of his technical innovations in both photography and chronophotography,
Ottomar Anschütz was a photographer primarily devoted to the
excellence of his images. He was obsessed with picture quality, and continuously
exhibitedbefore the photographic associations in Berlin, Frankfurt,
Vienna, London and elsewhere chronophotographs of horses and athletes so
that they could be directly comparedwith similar work from Eadweard Muybridge
and Etienne-Jules Marey. In this comparison, any judgementabout
picture quality always went in favor of Anschütz.
The receivedlegend about why Anschütz never worked with celluloid film
bands like Marey and Georges Demeny, or, in the end, Thomas Edison with
his Kinetoscope,is that „on principle" Anschütz preferred to use German materials
and there were no German manufacturers of celluloid films at that
time. (Oskar Messter, Ottomar Anschütz zu seinem 90. Geburtstag, In: Die Ki¬
notechnik, 20 April 1936, p. 126)
But it is much more likely that Anschütz remained committed to his larger
individual photographic plates, instead narrow celluloid film because he
knew that the quality of his images were vastly superior to anything that he
could obtain on celluloid, and because he knew that celluloid film in the early
1890s was photographicallyinferior to his plates. So it is more than likely
that Anschütz kept to his old methods, which were well proven over the pre-
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