Jack and the Beanstalk
Silhouette animation, UK, 1955
Director: Lotte Reiniger
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 10 minutes
Short synopsis
Jack and the Beanstalk brought to life by Lotte Reiniger in this beautiful silhouette animation.
Long synopsis
In this distinctive and beautiful silhouette animation, set against a vividly coloured backdrop, Lotte Reiniger retells the classic children's fable 'Jack and the Beanstalk'.
Jack is sent to market by his widowed mother to sell their pig. On his way there he meets a man who offers him all the riches in the world in exchange for the pig. Jack excitedly accepts the offer and runs home to tell his mother. When he empties the bag, however, it is not gold but magic beans that he finds.
Jack plants the beans and a giant beanstalk grows. Despite his mother's objections, Jack climbs the beanstalk and finds the giant's castle. He meets the giant's daughter and a magic hen that lays golden eggs.
When the giant comes home, Jack hides, prompting the giant to boom 'fe fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman'. Jack fights off the giant and escapes down the beanstalk, taking the magic hen with him. Jack and his mother live happily.
Background
Celebrated animator Lotte Reiniger pioneered the multi-plane animation technique and a distinctive method of animating with cut-out paper puppets against painted backgrounds. The delicate but complex method of animation uses multiple layers of silhouettes sandwiched in layers of glass to create realistic movement. Reiniger's work is astonishingly fluid and atmospheric, providing a beautiful aesthetic that visually references the magic of the stories. Reiniger animated features and dozens of shorts for children, many of them challenging interpretations of classic fairy tales. Reiniger said 'I love working for children, because they are a very critical and very thankful public.'
Lotte Reininger made her first silhouette animation in 1919 at the Berlin Institute of Cultural Innovation where she met her future husband Carl Koch who filmed many of her films. In 1923 a wealthy banker financed the construction of a workspace in her garage. The first film to come out of this dedicated studio was the celebrated The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the first ever feature-length animation, an achievement generally attributed to Walt Disney's Snow White released over ten years later in 1937.
Reininger had an incredible eye for details and would create her characters by cutting with the scissors still in her right hand, manipulating the paper with her left hand so that the cut always went in the right direction. To allow a character to carry out a complex movement, Reiniger would construct them from 25 to 50 separate pieces, all connected using fine wire. Like Jack and the Beanstalk all of Reininger's films were made entirely of back-lit paper cut-outs, most commonly filmed by Carl Koch.
The couple were closely identified with leftist politics and deplored the rise of Nazism in their native Germany. They attempted to leave Germany in 1933, but were unable to get visas. In 1936, Koch and Reininger decided to leave Germany for good and spent the next three years traveling around. Despite this transient existence they managed to make twelve films between 1933 and 1939, including the celebrated adaptation of the opera Carmen. Having survived WWII in Berlin, Koch and Reiniger finally left for London in 1949 where they set up their own production company, Primrose Productions, making a number of animations for the BBC, among others. Reiniger continued to work well into her seventies, also teaching young animators.
To find out more about Lotte Reiniger and watch extracts from her films go to Screenonline.
Teaching materials and additional materials
The teaching materials have been developed by practising teachers to provide a springboard for your own work with your pupils. Feel free to use and adapt them appropriate to your pupils' needs.
There are also some stills and additional materials, provided by the film-makers, that can be used to develop your work with the film and deepen pupils' understanding of the process of film-making.
