Richter’s films from the late twenties abandon this completely non-representational agenda, but they still open up an illusionary realm not unlike the films of the trickster Georges Méliès. However, Richter does not intend to produce magic tricks but to unveil complex social practices through visual illusions. He displays the phantasmagoric structures that underlie economic processes, i.e. points to the fact that complex processes cannot simply be assigned to single actors, but emerge out of complex constellations.
Accordingly, Inflation represents the inflation as an actor-less growth. We hardly see any economical aspects of the society (such as places of production etc.) that are not directly connected to the speculation with or the organization of money. We see a man reading the news from the stock market, we see hands counting money, and we see speculations at the stock market itself, but we do not ever see, for example, printing presses generating the money or the process of production that backs up the currency on an actual level. Inflation appears in this film as process without cause. What the film displays is simply that money becomes more and more and the question «why?» is never answered — Richter only displays the phenomenon of inflation, and not the economical structure that lies behind it.
This actor-less multiplication reflects on how Richter uses the cinematic medium. Richter employs in his work the medium of film strategically in order to represent events that do not have a conceivable cause. In his abstract work, we do not have a discussion of cause and effect and his famous movie Vormittagsspuk uses the medium film most explicitly in order to exhibit events that have no perceivable agent. This film displays a phantasmagoric rebellion of objects against man. Objects are no longer controlled by human beings or other agents but gain an independent will. Revolvers cut loose, hats fly around, etc.
Similar to a restless bow tie in Vormittagsspuk that can no longer be controlled by its owner, in Inflation we can see the multiplication of money, but we do not see a concrete cause for it. Money simply becomes more and more and Richter does not provide a substantial explanation for why and from where. It appears as an incomprehensible event. The immense growth out of nothing that was the promise in the Dada manifesto is here displayed through the cinematic medium that shows a growing stack of money, a growth that seemingly has no cause.
Nonetheless, this short film provides a rather elegant analysis of the economical situation of inflation. There is, for example, a parallel montage, in which, at first, a rather small stack of money is followed by the rather expensive commodity of a car. Obviously, the stack of money represented the value of the car. (Fig. 2 & 3)
