The adventures of Prince Achmed

I just watched this the other night, and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in animation as a medium.

“Prince Achmed” was the first feature-length animated film, pre-dating “Snow White.” It was done by animating paper-cut silhouettes. Many of them are really beautiful, with all sorts of finely cut details. If nothing else, there aren’t many other films that look like this one.

The plot is a mish-mosh–basically, it’s just there to let Lotte Rineger throw in lots of interesting scenery and characters.

On a related note, I just noticed (while I was looking up “Achmed” in Netflix) that Svenkmayr’s “Alice”–it’s an interested take on “Alice in Wonderland”.

Gav

I love The Adventures of Prince Achmed. I hope Milestone will or can release Reiniger’s silhouette film of Dr. Doolittle someday, and/or a complete disc of her short films.

The incredible patience Reiniger must have had to move her cutouts through the scenes where the princess and her handmaidens land in their swan robes, or when Achmed is stealing kisses in the harem, or when the demons come flickering up inside the volcano…God damn.