L’Idée, a tragic, symbolist allegory of man’s struggle for the Ideal, based on illustrations by Franz Masereel and with music by Arthur Honegger. Bartosch combined cut-out silhouettes on the lines of the Reiniger technique with subtle effects achieved by control of photographic exposure and diffusion of the light source.
It is Bartosch’s only surviving film and was made single-handely in Paris in 1932. Almost 45000 frames were animated on four different levels simultaneously, often with as many as 18 superimpositions made in the camera.