Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928)
Bowler hats fly off in formation, neckties strangle their wearers, and everyday objects rebel against the men trying to control them, in a plotless dadaist barrage of stop-motion tricks, split screens, and negative-exposure images.
Paul Hindemith composed an original score for player piano to accompany Ghosts Before Breakfast at its 1928 premiere; that score is now lost, and the film itself survives only in a print reconstructed well after Richter’s Nazi-era exile from Germany scattered and endangered his negatives.
Background
Ghosts Before Breakfast is a 1928 avant-garde short by Hans Richter, a German filmmaker associated with the Dada and constructivist movements. The film is a plotless series of stop-motion tricks, split screens, and negative images, in which everyday objects appear to rebel against the men who use them. Richter made the film in Germany in the late 1920s. He left Germany after the Nazis rose to power, and the film is widely cited as a key work of early experimental cinema.
What to watch for
The short is best watched for its visual surprises. Bowler hats fly off in formation, and neckties turn on their wearers, creating a comedy of objects revolting against men. Watch how Richter combines stop-motion with split screens and negative-exposure images, which give the film its dreamlike disorientation. It runs only about nine minutes and has no narrative, so attention goes to the rhythm of the images. Its dadaist humor and its use of everyday objects as performers make it a useful example of how avant-garde filmmakers rethought the medium in the late 1920s.
