Taken from The Arabian Nights, the film tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse and sends the rider off on a flight to his death. But the prince foils the magician’s plan, and soars headlong into a series of wondrous adventures.
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You might think that the world's oldest existing animated feature would be primitive and crude, but Reiniger's Prince Achmed is stunning and ageless.The stills do not do it justice, you have to watch it in motion to see how much work and love Reiniger & co. put into it. The film is immaculately detailed, touching, and wonderfully brought to life with delicate movements that say so much using so little. If you see this with a good score, it is a very pleasurable experience indeed.This is not just for scholars of animation, it stands on its own two feet as a work of real beauty, even in the modern world. Its mature and stylised visuals make it still feel fresh today, in the same way that good classical music does. It stands outside time, moments of wonder captured forever.Highly recommended.
"Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed" or "Wak-Wak, ein Märchenzauber" is a German animated movie from the 1920s. Next year, it will have its 90th anniversary actually. The director is Lotte Reiniger and she made this one together with Walter Ruttmann and her husband Carl Koch. This film is, to me, an example of how first does not necessarily have to mean one of the best as this film here is one of the very first full feature animated movies. Current restored versions run for roughly 66 minutes. Sadly, I must say that this silhouette style is not exactly my preferred choice when it comes to the wonderful genre of animation. And as Reiniger basically only made films like these, I have never been that big on her. This film here is still fairly early from her extremely long career, she wasn't even 30 and made films basically until her death at the age of 82. The story is pretty fantastic in terms of princes, princesses, demons, witches, mythology etc. and I am sure that, if you like the style more than I did, you will have a fairly good time watching this. Maybe go check out one of Reiniger's many short films first and then decide if you like it and if you want to check out "The Adventures of Prince Achmed".
and ahead of its time. A Cherrr-man creation, seemingly made of paper cutout characters against a lit backdrop, with slight, stop-motion movements. Excellent subtitles into English. From the info on IMDb, it seems there are at least two versions, due to the difference in film speed, a 66 minute version, and an 81 minute version. The version shown on Turner Classic shows movement, then pauses at the end of each scene. It looks like this is a restored version. The prince does indeed go on several short adventures, such as flying away on a flying horse, and escaping a volcano. Some of the detail in the scenes are just incredible. I was pleasantly surprised; much better than expected. The simple characters show so much emotion, and there is so much going on in the background, its impossible to catch all the details. And this was all in 1925. FUN stuff.
Adventures of Prince Achmed, The (1926) *** (out of 4) Considered to be the first animated film, we see the adventures of Prince Achmed who jumps on a magical horse who flies him around to various times including Aladdin and his magic lamp. The actual story isn't too interested but the "silhouette" animation is something truly beautiful. This type of animation was done using paper cutouts placed on glass, which was then lit by lights behind the glass. The images created are something incredible to look out especially the stuff with Aladdin. It took three years to do this film yet the hard work was certainly worth it.
