The Idea (L’Idée)
By Berthold Bartosch, France, 1932

Based on Frans Mesareel’s famed woodcuts, this animated film classic was the first trick film with a radical film: a revolutionary idea (in the shape of a nude woman) is conceived by the artist, condemned by the world, the rich, and the church, but lives on, forever stirring men to revolt. —Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art

Download (.torrent)
Format: avi (xvid) | Size: 285mb
Source: vhsrip by Malachi of Cinemagrotesque, via fitz
Included in the torrent is scans of Frans Mesareel’s (woodcut) book The Idea

Notes by fitz ©:

Bartosch was born in Bohemia in the actual Czech republic in 1893, in 1920 he moved to Berlin, where he later met silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, Bartosch worked with her, on the film ‘The Adventures of Prince Achmed’. In 1930 started working on the adaptation of The Idea a book of woodcuts published by Frans Masereel in 1920, Masereel’s ‘novels without words’ were very famous in the 1920’s in Germany, it seems that Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City was completely inspired on a woodcut book by Masereel called ‘The City’.

Masereel first worked with Bartosch, but after a few weeks he dropped out of the project after seeing how tedious work animation was, so Bartosch continued working alone during 2 years to complete the animation, 45.000 images were animated on sheets of glass with washtinted blacks and soap, with 100 Watts light bulbs illuminating the work, his work study was 10 x 12 feet and half the space was filled with the sheets of glass which were disposed in some kind of workbench.

Bartosch was one of the first persons to demonstrate animation could be poetic, when the film came out in 1932, the newspapers refered to it as ‘Masereel’s L’idée’ not recognizing all the painfull work Bartosch went through. This is the solely surviving film of Bartosch, he later made Cosmos, a 109 minutes film, which the Gestapo destroyed. One of the greatest and most forgotten genius of animation together with Alexander Alexeïeff, whom so much liked his work.

I hope like this, some light will be shed on Bartosch and people can see how great he was, and by so resurrect a phantom from beyond time, and bring him once again to our heads and hearts.

Regarding the film itself:

Don’t see the role of a female nude in this film and what happens to her has mere exploitation of the female condition. She represents The Idea, the naked truth, we that are used to watch all kinds of violence on television and tremble in horror on the vision of the ‘Naked Truth’.

This tells the story of the idea since it’s created, how it is rejected and forced to dress in the world, how she protects the ones that want to make a change, how she is printed and finally showed to the world, trough radio, newspaper etc.. and in the end how she returns to her maker. It’s social allegory, you have to see to believe the density and poetic vision of this film. The final words by Bartosch should have been ‘You can do everything with soap.’

Nowadays we have the internet to expand such ideas and concepts, we have something that the world never saw before, a massive way of communication which can reach the four corners of the world.

Sources: The writings of Claire Parker and Alexander Alexeïeff on this film and on the author, and the writings of the same nature by William Moritz.

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