The Adventures of Prince Achmed (German: Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed) is a 1926 German animatedfairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film.[2] (Two earlier ones had been made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani, but they are considered to be lost.[3]) The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented that involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera.[4] The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayangshadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting. Reiniger also used the first form of a multiplane camera in making the film,[5] one of the most important devices in pre digital animation.[6]
An African sorcerer conjures up a flying horse, which he shows to the Caliph. When the sorcerer refuses to sell it for any amount of gold, the Caliph offers any treasure he has. The sorcerer chooses Dinarsade, the Caliph's daughter, to her great distress. Prince Achmed, Dinarsade's brother, objects, but the sorcerer persuades him to try out the horse. The prince does not know how to control the horse, so it carries the prince away, higher and higher into the sky. The Caliph has the sorcerer imprisoned.
When Achmed discovers how to make the horse descend, he finds himself in a strange foreign land, a magical island called Wak Wak. He is greeted by a bevy of attractive maidens. When they begin fighting for his attention, he flies away to a lake. There, he watches as Pari Banu, the beautiful ruler of the land of Wak Wak, arrives with her attendants to bathe. When they spot him, they all fly away, except for Pari Banu, for Achmed has her magical flying feather costume. She flees on foot, but he captures her. He gains her trust when he returns her feathers. They fall in love. She warns him, however, that the demons of Wak Wak will try to kill him.
The sorcerer frees himself from his chains. Transforming himself into a bat, he seeks out Achmed. The prince chases the sorcerer (who has turned into a kangaroo) and falls into a pit. While Achmed fights a giant snake, the sorcerer takes Pari Banu to China and sells her to the Emperor. The sorcerer returns and pins Achmed under a boulder on top of a mountain. However, the Witch of the Flaming Mountain notices him and rescues Achmed. The sorcerer is her arch-enemy, so she helps Achmed rescue Pari Banu from the Emperor. Then, the demons of Wak Wak find the couple and, despite Achmed's fierce resistance, carry Pari Banu off. Achmed forces a captive demon to fly him to Wak Wak. However, the gates of Wak Wak are locked.
He then slays a monster who is attacking a boy named Aladdin. Aladdin tells of how he, a poor tailor, was recruited by the sorcerer to retrieve a magic lamp from a cave. When Aladdin returned to the cave entrance, the sorcerer demanded the lamp before letting him out. Aladdin refused, so the sorcerer sealed him in. Aladdin accidentally released one of the genies of the lamp and ordered it to take him home. He then courted and married Dinarsade. One night, Dinarsade, Aladdin's magnificent palace, and the lamp disappeared. Blamed by the Caliph, Aladdin fled to avoid being executed. A storm at sea cast him ashore at Wak Wak. When he tried to pluck fruit from a "tree", it turned into a monster and grabbed him, but Achmed killed it.
Achmed realizes the sorcerer had been responsible for Aladdin's fate, and is further enraged. He also reveals to Aladdin that his palace and the lamp were stolen by the sorcerer because of his obsession for Dinarsade. Then, the witch arrives. Since only the lamp can open the gates, she agrees to attack the sorcerer to get it. They engage in a magical duel, each transforming into various creatures (Sorcerer transforms into a lion, a scorpion, a vulture and a sea serpent and Witch transforms into a snake, a rooster and a whale). After a while, they resume their human forms and fling fireballs at each other. Finally, the witch slays the sorcerer.
With the lamp, they are able to enter Wak Wak, just in time to save Pari Banu from being thrown to her death. A fierce battle erupts. A demon steals the lamp, but the witch gets it back. She summons creatures from the lamp who defeat the demons. One hydra-like creature seizes Pari Banu. When Achmed cuts off one of its heads, two more grow back immediately, but the witch stops this regeneration, allowing Achmed to kill it and rescue Pari Banu. A flying palace then settles to the ground. Inside, Achmed, Pari Banu, Aladdin, and the Caliph find Dinarsade. The two couples bid goodbye to the witch and fly home to the palace.
Production
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (August 2015)
Reiniger required three years, from 1923 to 1926, to make this film.[8] Each frame had to be painstakingly filmed, and 24 frames were needed per second.[8] The reason why an adaptation of Arabian Nights was chosen was based on the idea that the action should show events that would only be possible with animation. In addition to herself, her small team consisted of her husband Carl Koch, Walter Ruttmann, Berthold Bartosch, Alexander Kardan and Walter Turck. A Berlin banker named Louis Hagen financed the movie, and offered the team to use the attic of the garage in his vegetable garden as their studio. Oskar Fischinger made a wax-slicing machine for them which was used to visualize magic in several scenes. Another tool was an early version of the multiplane camera. Stars were made by holding a cardboard with small holes in front of a strong light, superimposed pieces of semitransparent tissue paper was used to make waves, and silver paper for moonlit water. For other movable backgrounds, which sometimes included the use of two negatives, they made different layers covered with substances like sand, paint and soap. For the latter, Bartosch would later say about the production of Prince Achmed: “During my years of work I have learned many things. Soap, it is quite extraordinary, with soap one can do everything.”[9][10]
Censorship
Reiniger was one of the first filmmakers in the 20th century to attempt a portrayal of the queer experience with a pair of openly gay lovers in this film: the Emperor of China and a male character named Ping Pong. Although this was censored in the version of the film that was distributed to theaters, Ping Pong is presented as the Emperor's favourite or darling (Des Kaisers Liebling) even in the censored version. Reiniger herself was outspoken on her motivation to destigmatize homosexual realities in the world of film. "I knew lots of homosexual men and women from the film and theater world in Berlin, and saw how they suffered from stigmatization. [...] I suspect that when the Emperor kisses Ping Pong, that must have been the first happy kiss between two men in the cinema and I wanted it to happen quite calmly in the middle of Prince A[c]hmed so children — some who would be homosexual and some who would not — could see it as a natural occurrence, and not be shocked [n]or ashamed."[11]
Restoration
While the original film featured color tinting, prints available just before the restoration had all been in black and white. Working from surviving nitrate prints, German and British archivists restored[12] the film during 1998 and 1999, including reinstating the original tinted image by using the Desmet method.
Home media
English-market DVDs were released, distributed by Milestone Films and available in NTSCR1 (from Image) and PALR2 (from the BFI).[13] Both versions of the DVD are identical. They feature both an English-subtitled version (the intertitles are in German) and an English voice-over.
Legacy
An homage to this film can be spotted in Disney's Aladdin (1992); a character named Prince Achmed has a minor role in the film. The art style also served as inspiration for the Steven Universe episode "The Answer".[14]
Score
The original score was composed by German composer Wolfgang Zeller in direct collaboration with the animation of the film. Reiniger created photograms for the orchestras, which were common in better theatres of the time, to follow along the action.[15]
Contemporary scorings
The Silk Road Ensemble accompanied the film with a live improvised performance on Western strings and instruments such as the oud, ney and sheng in October 2006 at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, NY.[16] The Silk Road Ensemble repeated the performance at the Avon Cinema in Providence, Rhode Island, in February 2007.[17]
London based band Little Sparta composed an original score to the film in 2007 with notable performances at Latitude Festival (2007), The Edinburgh Art Festival (2009) and Mekonville (2017). They have also had runs at theatres and venues in the UK and are continuing to perform it while releasing an EP of selected cues in June 2008.
New York City band Morricone Youth composed a new score for the film in 2012 and first performed it live at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn on 28 September 2012.[18] Country Club Records released a vinyl 6-song EP of the score in 2016.[19]
Spanish band Caspervek Trio composed a new soundtrack for the movie in 2014 premiered in Vigo, with further performances in Ourense, Liptovský Míkulás and Madrid.[20]
The Scottish jazz quartet, S!nk, composed and performed a new score for the film in 2017 as part of the Hidden Door arts festival in Edinburgh as part of a series of events celebrating the re-opening of the Leith Theatre after being closed for 25 years.[21][22]
Students from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire composed a score for the film, which premiered at the Flatpack Film Festival at Dig Brew Co. on 22 April 2018 [23]
Chris Davies composed a new score for the opening night of the 2014 Bradford animation festival. Using a mixture of recorded and live instrumentation, he has continued touring extensively, playing live with the film throughout the UK and Europe.
Ben Bentele, David Alderdice, Daniel Be, and Cait Pope composed and improvised a score for the film, which premiered at the Paradise Theater in Paonia, Colorado, USA on 22 April 2023. The performance included a wide array of world instruments and electronic elements.
Reception
The film made $100,156 during a 2007 re-issue.[1] It has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 reviews. The site's critics consensus reads, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed's exquisitely crafted visuals are more than matched by its utterly enchanting story."[24]
Related Research Articles
Aladdin is a 1992 American animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution under Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the Arabic folktale "Aladdin" from One Thousand and One Nights. The film was produced and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements from a screenplay they co-wrote with the writing team of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Featuring the voices of Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Frank Welker, Gilbert Gottfried and Douglas Seale, the film follows the titular Aladdin, an Arabian street urchin who finds a magic lamp containing a genie. With the genie's help, Aladdin disguises as a wealthy prince and tries to impress the Sultan of Agrabah to win the heart of his free-spirited daughter, Princess Jasmine, as the Sultan's evil vizier, Jafar, plots to steal the magic lamp.
Carl Koch or Karl Koch was a German art historian, film director and writer with many secondary credits including collaborations with his wife Lotte Reiniger, the animator of The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). In these collaborations, Koch often managed the camera work, which was mounted above Reiniger's animation table.
Aladdin is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with One Thousand and One Nights, despite not being part of the original text; it was added by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, based on a folk tale that he heard from the Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab.
Berthold Bartosch was a film-maker, born in Polaun, in the Bohemia region of Austria-Hungary.
Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Her best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed, from 1926, the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, and Papageno (1935). Reiniger is also noted for having devised, from 1923 to 1926, the first form of a multiplane camera, one of the most important devices in pre digital animation. Reiniger worked on more than 40 films throughout her career.
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations, as is the world's earliest surviving animated feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926) by Lotte Reiniger.
Aladdin: The Series is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation that aired from February 6, 1994, to November 25, 1995, concluding exactly three years to the day from the release of the original Disney's 1992 animated feature film of the same name on which it was based. Despite the animated television series premiering four months before the first sequel, the direct-to-video film The Return of Jafar, it takes place afterward. The second and final animated sequel was the 1996 direct-to-video film, Aladdin and the King of Thieves.
The multiplane camera is a motion-picture camera that was used in the traditional animation process that moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. This creates a sense of parallax or depth.
Sand animation is the manipulation of sand to create animation. In performance art an artist creates a series of images using sand, a process which is achieved by applying sand to a surface and then rendering images by drawing lines and figures in the sand with one's hands. A sand animation performer will often use the aid of an overhead projector or lightbox. To make an animated film, sand is moved on a backlit or frontlit piece of glass to create each frame.
Walter Ruttmann was a German cinematographer and film director, an important German abstract experimental film maker, along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger. He is best known for directing the semi-documentary 'city symphony' silent film, with orchestral score by Edmund Meisel, in 1927, Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis. His audio montage Wochenende (Weekend) (1930) is considered a major contribution in the development of sound collages and audio plays.
Geoff Smith is a musical performer and composer from Brighton, England. He was previously a member of the group Attacco Decente. He was a pupil at Varndean College from 1974.
Silhouette animation is animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. This is usually accomplished by backlighting articulated cardboard cut-outs, though other methods exist. It is partially inspired by, but for a number of reasons technically distinct from, shadow play.
Freddie Phillips was a British musician and composer, best known for his work on television theme music, particularly the children's programmes, Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley.
Wolfgang Zeller was a German composer noted for his complex film music.
The Idea is a 1932 French animated film by Austro-Hungarian filmmaker Berthold Bartosch (1893–1968), based on the 1920 wordless novel of the same name by Flemish artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). The protagonist is a naked woman who represents a thinker's idea; as she goes out into the world, the frightened authorities unsuccessfully try to cover up her nudity. A man who stands up for her is executed, and violent suppression by big business greets a workers' revolution she inspires.
Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier is a musical with music by A. J. Holmes, lyrics by Kaley McMahon, and a book by Matt Lang, Nick Lang, and Eric Kahn Gale. It was produced by StarKid Productions.
Ahmed and Paribanou, or The Story of Prince Ahmed and the fairy Pari Banou, is one of the tales of the Arabian Nights compilation.
↑ Reiniger, Lotte (1970). "The Adventures of Prince Achmed, or What May Happen to Somebody Making a Full Length Cartoon in 1926". The Silent Picture. 8: 2–4.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
