The Adventures Of Prince Achmed

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED
Director:Lotte Reiniger
Availability: DVD available at just about any online retailer
Rating:




   I am a true animation junkie.  There's just something about the limitless possibilities of the medium that draws me to it.  My favorite animators, though, are the ones who truly challenge the medium, and treat it like a canvas that allows their imagination to run free.  I love a lot of Pixar films and Disney films, but the fact remains that they are done by a team of animators.  They are a beauty to behold, but they lack that intimate touch.  I love people like Jan Svankmajer, the Quay brothers, all the great stop motion legends, Jiri Trnka, modern animators like M Dot Strange and Jimmy Screamerclauz, and so on and so forth.  These are brilliant minds who create images that were guaranteed to blow your mind, and show you just how far you can go without limitations.

    This brings us to the genius I'm going to discuss tonight.  I'm talking, of course, about the beautiful Lotte Reiniger.  She was a true pioneer in the field of animation.  She invented a technique called silhouette animation.  This style of animation is very similar to a shadow play, as all the characters on screen are only visible as black silhouettes.  Now, on paper, this may sound like it could be quite dull.  Let me tell you, though, that you are sadly mistaken if you feel that way.  There's something deeply beautiful and haunting about the lyrical imagery that pioneers like Reiniger were able to put on the screen.

    The Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the most important films in the history of the animation medium.  For one thing, it came out in 1926, over a decade before Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, therefore making this the first animated feature ever released.  Reiniger was heavily inspired by the work of Georges Melies, and it shows.  Now, getting there first doesn't mean jack shit if what you produce is a piece of shit.  Luckily, Reiniger was a true artist, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the most visually dazzling animated films you're ever likely to feast your eyes on.

    The plot is ripe fairy tale material.  It's about a prince who takes off on a flying horse, and has fantastic adventures where he makes friends with witches, flirts with princesses, meets Aladdin, confronts demons, and naturally, everyone lives happily ever after.  It's not earth shattering stuff, but it doesn't need to be.  The star of the film is the visuals, and the fantastic designs of all the different characters.

    The process in making a film like this was completely painstaking.  Reiniger cut her figures out of black cardboard, and then joined movable parts with thread in order to animated them.  She ended up with 250,000 frame-by-frame stills.  The results are nothing short of awe-inspiring.  I highly, highly recommend this film, if for no other reason than the historical value alone.  I can assure you, you've never seen anything else like it.

    Until next time, my fellow freaks and weirdos.