The earliest surviving animated film, Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a purely visual experience that underlines the ways in which characterisation and tone can be conveyed without sound or close-ups.
Animated in silhouette animation, the film resembles a shadow play with the key characters and environments resembling black outlines against tinted backdrops. Since the process made it impossible to realise facial expressions, Reiniger crafts characters with remarkably nuanced body language that immediately delineates them from each other.
While Reiniger's designs for the creatures (and the people who conjure/transform into them) are great, it is her ability to convey character that is the most remarkable aspect of the film.
The film's story is fairly familiar if you have seen any Arabian nights fantasy - I caught a couple of echoes of Alexander Korda's production of The Thief of Bagdad (1940) - but the real draw is Reiniger's animation.
Her portrayal of her magical realms is an Orientalist fantasy reduced - by the nature of the medium - to its most basic and identifiable elements. The story is basically a series of set pieces, which become showcases for Reiniger's imagination, and some of the clever simple methods she used to realise her vision. There was one set piece where Reiniger realises a character's abilities by literally pouring water over the animation cell.
Whenever the story threatens to flag, Reiniger pulls the rug out from under her hero and drops him - literally - into a new environment with an entirely new cast of supporting characters. The one section that feels a little odd in its placement is the introduction of Aladdin, which comes just before the climax. He is established as a deus ex machina to help resolve the story, but in the end it is up to another character - the Witch of the Flaming Mountain - to defeat the sorcerer.
It is a flaw if you are a fan of clear story-telling, but because of how elastic and varied the diegesis is, it also feels of a piece with the film as a whole. It's also an excuse to take in more of Reiniger's world-building and economic characterisation: Aladdin's story, and own betrayal by the sorcerer, is surprisingly tragic, considering his late appearance and lack of screen time (and facial expressions).
As stated previously, the film is does feature some problematic stereotypes (the most overt is the portrayal of the Chinese Emperor and his court, but the African sorcerer and hula-skirted sprites that Achmed has a dalliance with are no better). Because of Reiniger's technique, the movie does feel a snapshot of attitudes about the world outside of Europe at a specific point in time.
In a world where the dominant ideas of animation has been defined by traditional cell animation (ala Disney), The Adventures of Prince Achmed feels positively avant garde. Reiniger's animation is comparatively crude, but part of the joy of watching the film is seeing the ways in which she navigated the limitations of the medium. In that way, the movie is kind of magical.
Check it out.
Previous AFS reviews
Purple Noon (2015)
The Servant
Eyes Without A Face
Night of the Demon (2016)
Grand Central
Tales of Hoffman
Fatima
The Last Command & Ministry of Fear
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