Walther Ruttmann

Highest Rated: 86% Berlin (1927)

Lowest Rated: 86% Berlin (1927)

Birthday: Dec 28, 1887

Birthplace: Frankfurt-am-Main, Hessen, Germany

Ruttman trained as an architect and painter and worked as a poster designer before beginning to experiment with avant-garde film in the early 1920s. He directed the dream sequence for Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen" (1924) and worked with Lotte Reiniger on "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" (1926), the world's first full-length animated film. Ruttman exerted a tremendous influence on the documentary movement with "Berlin--Symphony of a City" (1927), a rhythmically edited celebration of the German capital which inspired a spate of similar "city symphonies," including his own "World Melody" (1929). He later assisted Leni Riefenstahl with the editing of "Olympia" (1938), made an unsuccessful foray into fiction films with the Pirandello-scripted "Steel" (1938) and engineered Nazi propaganda documentaries such as "German Tanks" (1940).