The Future of Mickey Mouse (The Animated Film as a New Cinema Art)

Abstract

This is the script of a 1932 radio lecture on the future of animation. Diebold’s central interest is its abstract forms, also known as “absolute film” and “visual music.” Dividing much of his time between a comparative assessment of Disney’s Mickey Mouse and the work of Oskar Fischinger, Diebold recapitulates and extends his own established viewpoint on the matter (as in the previous article in this issue).

KEYWORDS:

• Bernhard Diebold
• Oskar Fischinger
• Studie Nr. 12 (1932)
• Mickey Mouse
• abstract animation
• absolute film
• visual music

Notes

1. Jeanpaul Goergen notes that The Barn Dance (1929) was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to be screened in Germany, premiering on 17 January 1930. See Jeanpaul Goergen, “Oskar Fischinger in Germany, 1900 to 1936,” in Cindy Keefer and Jaap Guldemond (eds.), Oskar Fischinger (1900–1967): Experiments in Cinematic Abstraction (Amsterdam and Los Angeles: EYE Filmmuseum and Center for Visual Music, 2013), 44.

2. I say “partially pre-emptive” given that the Ginanni Corradini brothers (known as Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra) had already published an account of their private experiments in abstract film in 1912 and Léopold Survage’s unproduced Rhythme Coloré had also been reported on by both the artist and Apollinaire in 1914; to say nothing of Charles Francis Jenkins, who was screening abstract hand-painted films in a “vernacular” setting before 1898. See: Joshua Yumibe, Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), 123-147. Similarly, Diebold’s attempts to link film and art certainly follow in the wake of critics such as Riccioto Canudo. These early efforts, including Diebold’s partially pre-emptive remarks, form the prologue to what is now widely recognized as abstract animation, as initiated, almost simultaneously, by Ruttmann, Eggeling, Richter and Fischinger.

3. Bernhard Diebold, “Expressionismus und Kino,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung und schweizerisches Handelsblatt Part I: 14/9, no. 1453 (1916), Part II: 15/9, no. 1459 (1916) and Part III: 16/9, no. 1466 (1916).

4. See Oskar Fischinger, “Klingende Ornamente,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Kraft Und Stoff (Supplement) 30 (28 July 1932); Oskar Fischinger, “Der absolute Tonfilm,” Dortmunder Zeitung (l January 1933); Fritz Böhme, “Tönende Ornamente: Aus Oskar Fischingers neuer Arbeit,” Film-Kurier (30 July 1932); Albert Neuburger, “Schlangenlinien singen. Noten im Zick-Zack,” Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung (12 August 1932); and Erich Lasswitz, “Gezeichnete Musik,” Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt (15 September 1932).

1. Diebold is referring to Studie Nr. 12 (1932). This film and Studie Nr. 9 (1931) credit Fischinger’s brother, Hans, with the drawing of the animation, albeit under the close directorial supervision of Fischinger.