The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926)

Silhouette romance

A few weeks ago with little advance publicity, the Goethe Institute arranged the screening of Lotte Reiniger's films for two weeks-- free-- at the Metropolitan Museum, in Roxas Boulevard. Think of the best of Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies and his feature masterpiece (Fantasia, says many, Pinocchio says I*) being shown regularly for ten succeeding days without charge, and you won't even come close to suggesting the cinematic riches made available to us, almost without our knowing (I barely managed to catch the last screening myself). Hopefully they will allow one more screening, at the Goethe Institute in Aurora Boulevard.

*(Nowadays I'd say Sleeping Beauty)

Reiniger specializes in a practically lost art-- the animation of cut-out silhouettes, a variation of the shadow plays staged in China thousands of years ago, and of the Indonesian puppet shows still shown today. Her major tools are paper, scissors, and (the one 20th-century addition) a camera on a fixed stand-- she cuts out a figure, takes a picture; moves said figure, takes a picture. It's either a maddeningly crude method of animation or a sublimely simple one; in Reiniger's hands it's an amazingly supple means of creation. With mere silhouettes she can raise dense jungles, delicate latticework, intricate Islamic architecture; she can animate hideous demons with wavering seaweed fur, evil sorcerers with rolling Oriental eyes, beautiful princesses with gorgeous tropical plumage; she can do long shots, close-ups, tracking shots, special effects; she can suggest mute eroticism, eloquent tenderness, the fury of two old foes. Lotte Reiniger, as Professor Walter Schobert in his excellent introduction to the film program suggests to us, is a maker of magic, and the enchantment she weaves with her films is not easily shaken off.

The shorts in the program give us some idea of the breadth of Reiniger's career, if not depth. Her works for Primrose Productions of Great Britain in the 1950s-- Sleeping Beauty, The Caliph Stork, The Grasshopper and the Ant-- are, if still beautiful, strangely diminished: the silhouettes are merely illustrations of the stories, and the voiceover narration does much of the work. Her early films in the '20s and '30s for Berlin studios and for her own production company-- Carmen, Papageno, Dr. Dolittle and His Animals-- have an inventiveness and energy that you miss in the later pictures. Carmen and Papageno show a particular irreverence that, if anything, increases your affection for the source material--  Carmen instead of dying jumps into the bullring and charms the bulls with her exuberant dancing; when Papageno and Papagena meet the forest birds roll eggs onscreen in tribute, to hatch tiny pairs of Papagenos and Papagenas, everyone dancing to the tune of Papageno's panpipe.

Most of Reiniger's works last around ten minutes; The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) stretches for a full sixty-five minutes-- arguably the first feature-length animated film ever made, beating Disney's better-known Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by eleven years.

The film is a mishmash of stories from A Thousand and One Nights: Prince Achmed stops the forced marriage of his sister Dinarsade to a powerful sorcerer; the sorcerer revenges himself by tricking Achmed onto a magical horse, which takes him far away. When Achmed manages to land the horse, he finds himself in the magical island of Wak Wak, where he falls in love with the beautiful Pari Banu, ruler of the genies and afreets of the island. Achmed carries off Banu on his magic horse and succeeds in making her fall in love with him; they flee together with the evil sorcerer and the genies and afreets of Banu-- angered that she has abandoned them for a mere mortal-- in hot pursuit. The rest of the film is a series of escapes, rescues, magical transformations and sorcery, and includes a guest appearance by Aladdin and his magic lamp.

What to say? At first you admire the charm of the cutouts, the incredible detail with which Reiniger renders the city of Bagdad, the comic caperings of the sorcerer, the gracefulness of lovely Dinarsade and slender Achmed. When Achmed climbs unwarily onto the magic horse you gasp at the dizzying speed and altitude the horse attains; along with Achmed, you feel you are lost to all that is homely and familiar-- a striking achievement, considering Achmed's home is faraway Bagdad.

But the Island of Wak Wak succeeds in being an even more exotic place, with its shimmering lake and fantastical fronds of every shape and size (you can practically smell the perfumed enchanted air). Achmed hides while Pari Banu appears in her cloak of bird feathers, fluttering down from the sky to bathe nude in the lake. When Achmed chases her through the rain forest the twisted branches and outspread leaves resemble the twisted limbs and outspread fingers of lovers coupling-- the sense of humidity and heat, of urgent eerie sensuality is so palpable it's stifling.

Prince Achmed isn't just about atmosphere and magic; it has room for human emotions, as when Achmed tries to convince the abducted Banu of his love. Achmed's pleading is simple and ultimately moving; Reiniger sustains the tension between Achmed's insistence and Banu's reluctance for so long that when Banu finally responds you react with wonder, as if you've never read a fairy tale where the heroine fell in love with the hero before.

The climax, with Achmed and friends battling against Banu's vengeful army of afreets and genies, is as vast and complex a vision of war as anything you might imagine. Horrifyingly shaped monsters with extravagant weapons fly through the air like a swarm of locusts; the very screen sizzles with strong zig-zag shapes, startling light effects, and vaguely apprehended forces (all the more terrifying for their vagueness), the contribution of animation abstractionist Walther Ruttmann. Ruttman was reportedly unhappy to work on what he felt was an ahistorical and irrelevant film; the results however are so exhilarating you wonder if perhaps it's Ruttmann's sentiments that are irrelevant.

When Prince Achmed ends you sit and shake your head. This was a black-and-white film? Made from cut-outs? But there was color-- you could have sworn you saw scintillating gold, gleaming rubies, brilliant emeralds; you could have sworn the forest Achmed and Banu ran through wavered with luxuriant greens; you could have sworn you saw Achmed's eyes gleam, Banu's lips murmur assent. Reiniger's art is so evocative and with such limited means it can provoke the imagination into transcending what's visible to the eye-- a more recent fantasy like Star Wars feels flat and wan in comparison. The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a miraculous piece of moviemaking, one of the greatest animated features ever made-- not bad work for a woman with paper and a pair of scissors.

First published in Businessworld 6.26.01