Tanz der Farben is the only film by a director whose brother is widely known. Hans Fischinger learned his craft by working for his brother, Oskar, in the early 1930s, being largely responsible for the artistic and technical execution of his brother’s ideas. When Oskar Fischinger immigrated to the USA in 1936, Hans remained in Germany and his life followed the path of many other German men: he left for the battlefield in 1940 and never returned. But before that, Hans Fischinger, without any employees, designed all the tools he needed for his experiments, even building some of them himself. Tanz der Farben took two years to make and involved some 10,000 individual drawings. The Gasparcolor film, with its firework display of forms, lights and colours and a soundtrack combining several operatic arias, among them Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, premiered on 26 February 1939 and ran successfully for two weeks. However, on 14 March, Tobis bought the rights to Tanz der Farben, but never screened it in Germany, thus quietly suppressing it.

Lou Burkart