Friday, March 11, 2016

The Adventures of Prince Achmed

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 film by German director Lotte Reiniger. This is the oldest surviving feature-length animated film. Her last film was released in 1979, and she died in 1981 at the age of 82. This film is one of her best known and is a treasure not to be missed. At just 65 minutes, how can you resist clicking on that little arrow below and watching it right now?



Open Culture says:
At that time, The Adventures of Prince Achmed did not, of course, even faintly resemble any feature yet made. “No theatre dared show it,” Reiniger writes, “for ‘it was not done.'” And so they did it themselves, screening the film just outside Berlin, which led to a show in Paris, then one in Berlin proper, by which point Prince Achmed and his magic horse were well on their way to a place in the animation history books.

Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 100%.

4 comments:

  1. HMMM! I couldn't get it to run, but that's not surprising, since I have trouble with any videos running for more than a few seconds. It sounds magical, though. I always love it when Rotten Tomatoes give something a 100%.

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    1. There's a 3 minute clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25SP4ftxklg . Videos can be frustrating. I used to have trouble with buffering, where the videos would just pause for a while several times in every movie. Irritating.

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  2. This is so charming! The animations are really fantastic. Great film, thanks for relaying it!

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    1. I'm glad you liked it. It reminds me of the shadow puppets we made ages ago, only wow!

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