Les aventures du prince Ahmad

The idea for "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" is unusual and interesting, and Lotte Reiniger uses it to create an enjoyable and distinctive feature. To make such a different approach work so well must have taken large amounts of both skill and patience, as well as the creativity to adapt the stories to the format.

The cutout-style animation that the feature uses ruled out a lot of options for the film-makers, and it put a premium on the careful design of the figures and on well-planned story-telling. At first, the plainness of the silhouette figures is somewhat apparent, but it's not long at all before the story is involving enough, and the animation creative enough, to give the characters and events plenty of life and energy.

The plot itself is taken from some of the old "Arabian Nights" tales, much of it from some of the less-familiar episodes. It is a good adaptation of the material, and the careful details in the outlines of the silhouette figures soon create an atmosphere that works even without colors or special visual tricks.

The style allows your own imagination to flesh out the characters, rather than providing an artist's depiction for every detail in the story. In this respect it makes an interesting contrast with the more usual kind of fantasy film that does try to make everything expressly visual. As soon as you get used to the style and concentrate on the story, it becomes quite interesting and at times even engrossing. Overall, it's an imaginative feature that works quite well.

A really superb animated film, quite amazing for its time, I think. Delightful!

An African sorcerer tries to sell a flying horse he has created or conjured up to a Caliph. He hopes perhaps to have the Caliph's daughter. That being unlikely, he lets the Prince try the horse out, without explaining how it works. Thus, the Prince goes up to soaring heights, and by the time he figures it out, he's found the magical island of Wak-Wak where he half-kidnaps, half-saves a Princess there. They go to China, he meets Aladdin, there's lots of charming adventures, some of them perhaps scary for kids (giant snakes, demons, the Sorcerer, etc.).

It's done with silhouettes, black cut-outs against white (or tinted) backgrounds, though the backgrounds are also filled with silhouettes too. Some of them are very intricate, and there is also a fair amount of attention to detail, like creating rippled reflections in water.

Highly recommended!

Lotte Reiniger's "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" is one of the most amazing achievements in the history of cinema. The first animated movie ever, Achmed was based on the ancient stories "Arabian Nights." It took her three whole years to make, shooting over 250,000 cardboard cutouts with the assistance of her husband Carl Koch.

The German silent film begins with the creation of a flying horse. The African Magician tricks Prince Achmed into flying the horse, hoping to rid the kingdom of Achmed's presence. But Achmed is able to control the horse, and flies off to an island, where he finds the beautiful princess Peri Banu. In order to win her heart he must defeat the Magician, the Chinese Emperor, and an army of demons, with the help of Aladdin and a mysterious witch.

The irony of this movie is that the German subtitles are subtitled in English. But don't let that throw you, this silent masterpiece is magnificent film-making at its best, and certainly a landmark in cinema.

Visiting earlier today the exhibition," The Société Anonyme: Modernism for America" at Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, I was very lucky to watch as a part of the exhibit Charlotte (Lotte) Reiniger's "Die Geschichte des Prinzen Achmed" (The Adventures of Prince Achmed"), completed in 1926, which makes it THE oldest surviving animated feature film. Lotte Reiniger (June 2, 1899 - June 19, 1981) was a German (and later a British) silhouette animator and film director. Through elaborating articulated paper silhouettes set to an original score by Wolfgang Zeller, Reiniger combines in "Prince Achmed..." several fairy tales from the Thousand and One Nights aka Arabian Nights. Reiniger was ahead of Walt Disney by a decade using her innovative camera which separates foreground from background to produce 3-D illusion. She also experimented with wax and sand to create magical special effects. The result is simply stunning considering that the film is 80 years old. It did not age at all, it is paced extremely well, and its backgrounds literally hypnotize the viewers of any age. By the power of her creativity and imagination, Reiniger takes the viewers to the dream world of mesmerizing and magic characters and their incredible adventures.

Although "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is most commonly considered to be the first full-length, color-animated film of its kind, in 1926 this adaptation of the "Arabian Nights" stories was created using silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger, and it's just as wonderful to look at.

She spent three years cutting out the figures to be used in the film, and the result is a visual marvel - I notice my television guide only gave it two and a half stars (from four), less than they gave "Batman Forever," but I fail to see what is unimpressive about this.

The story sees Prince Ahmed going on magical adventures with his flying horse, saving a beautiful princess and so on and so forth. It's the typical fantasy story told extremely well with visual craftsmanship that really makes this worth seeing alone. It's a silent film, only about an hour long, so it's an acquired taste. Film buffs will probably get more out of this than the average viewer, but I really enjoyed it.