Toronto Silent Film Festival

More than eighty years after it’s triumphant premiere, this enchanting film still stands as one of the great classics of animation — beautiful, mesmerizing and utterly seductive. The story is told entirely through finely detailed silhouettes, images that move in a sinuous dance of erotic energy and fluidity.

Based on The Arabian Nights, the film tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse, sending him off on a flight to his death. But the prince foils the evil plan, and instead soars headlong into a series of wondrous adventures with Aladdin and the Witch of the Fiery Mountains. Doing battle with evil demons or falling madly in love with a beautiful princess, Prince Achmed captures the souls of all who witness this extraordinary film.

This film also reminds us of the potential animation has, to transcend the limits of live-action (especially in this early period). The figures move with a startling and sinuous volatility, as if dancing on gossamer - a fluidity which makes even the most agile human being seem laborious by comparison.

The Director & The Making of Prince Achmed

Lotte Reiniger was born June 2nd 1899 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, and is today regarded as the creator of the silhouette film. With more than forty silhouette films to her name - she died in Germany on June 19, 1981 - leaving behind quite a significant body of work. Lotte Reiniger began her career at an early age. Even as a young child she was intent upon a career in entertainment, but her first desire was to be an actress. It was this ambition, which led her to meet Paul Wegener, the film director and star, at the tender age of sixteen. Soon after that she was studying under the famous theater director, Max Reinhardt. It was there that she had her first epiphany in regards to working with silhouettes. She would stand in the wings watching the performance, becoming enthralled by the actors' silhouettes against the limelight. This led her to begin making silhouette portraits of the performers. And before long she developed a keen interest in the art. At the same time, Lotte acquired a skill few animators learned as well even today, the subtle art of body movement to express emotion. The characters in her films - for example, in the scene where Prince Achmed first meets and woos Peri Banu - have a wondrous quality of expressive movement. This could be traced not only to her incredible animation skills, but also perhaps to her lessons learned at Reinhardt's school and later, her work in silent film.

Lotte's introduction to film and filmmaking was by Paul Wegener, who hired her to assist in the animation of puppet rats for his film Der Rattenfanger Von Hamelin (The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1918). Prior to this he hired her do the title animation on a few of his works. Wegener's enthusiasm for Reiniger's skill at cutting silhouettes led him to bring her to the Institut fur Kulturforschung, where she began to produce a series of short animated shadow play films. Shadow theatre was originally introduced to Europe from the Orient. The increasing interest of German film makers in Oriental subjects, seen in

Lotte Reiniger

May's Das Indische Grabmal (1921) or Lang's Der Mude Tod (Destiny, 1921) paralleled that of other artists, such as Kandinsky and Marc, who reproduced pictures of Egyptian shadow play figurines in Der Blaue Reiter magazine. Director Paul Robison hired Engert, a noted silhouettist, to create a shadow play for the film Schatten (1923). The time seemed propitious for a shadow play feature film. Lotte Reiniger soon met and became intimate with Carl Koch, a noted art historian, who would help Lotte throughout her career with the more technical ends of her filmmaking. Koch also introduced her to many important figures in the Berlin arts community most notably Berthold Brecht and Hans Richter. Koch was working on a film on the psychology of school children, and Reiniger spurred by him and the young group of German experimentalists, who were to give the silent cinema such a magnificent expression, decided she would elaborate on her experiments with silhouette animation. When a Berlin banker by the name of Louis Hagen visited the Institute where they were working, he asked them whether or not it would be possible to make a feature length animated film. This of course was unheard of at the time, animated films were short films that made people laugh that's all, and nobody dared try to stretch its format longer than ten minutes.
Everyone they discussed the idea with was horrified by the proposition. But, because Reiniger and her artist friends did not belong to the industry, they were not afraid of the challenge. Making a collage film was not very expensive, it didn't require large personnel, and money was becoming less and less valuable in Germany's quickly crumbling economy, so working on this epic project generally unburdened them. Hagen did not want the films made in the shadow of the Institut fur Kulturforschung and so offered to install a small studio above his garage, in Potsdam. Reiniger went there to work on the project, accompanied by her now husband Carl Koch on camera, Walter Turck on backgrounds, Alex Kardan as detail checker and artists Bertold Bartosch and Walter Ruttmann on special effects. The studio that the banker had built was very low, so the shooting field with its glass plate had to be very near the floor in order to get the camera up high enough in a suitable distance, with just enough space to place the lamps underneath. Reiniger had to kneel on the seat of an old dismantled motorcar to execute her animation. Reiniger claims that she preferred this type of seat to the swivel variety she later used, describing the motorcar seat as being "very comfortable". They finally decided that the theme they would use for their epic animation piece would be The Arabian Nights. Their decision was based on the idea that the action should show events that could not be performed by any other means. So from all the 1001 stories they sorted out all the events which fell into that category; the flying horse, magic islands, fantastic birds, djinns, sorcerers and witches, transformations and all there is to be found in abundance in these tales. It was out of these items that they formed the script, which would eventually take the form of The Adventures of Prince Achmed.
They began executing the animation for Prince Achmed in 1923, finally finishing in 1926. They began using black and white only, and then gradually developed more scenery as movable backgrounds, using soap and sand and paint on different layers, sometimes two negatives, each done on different animation benches and composed by different artists entirely after their own conception. This process caused anxiety to Reiniger that was almost unbearable. While working on the animation the artist can only see the subject in which they are working on at that moment, and in only one position. They had no knowledge what it would look like once it was developed, or if it would even work at all. They only had the answer to their queries when the film was developed.
Most of the effects - and Prince Achmed is a virtual encyclopedia of different echniques of animation - that Reiniger and her crew achieved are common place now, but at the time they were brand new, and sometimes it would take weeks for them to get one particular shot perfected. Bertold Bartosch created the scenes involving the twinkling stars and the ocean waves. At the time nobody was experimenting with creating ocean waves, and Bartosch was able to achieve amazing results from extensive trial and error. In fact Bartosch was so excited by creating these stupendous wave scenes that he experimented afterwards with great success. It was only due to the producer Carl Koch, that Bartosch didn't continue his experimentation during production. As Reiniger says, "we had to finish the film at some point", and she goes on to praise Koch for being a "real gardener" when it came to stopping the crew from going too far with endless experiments. Walter Ruttmann commissioned Oskar Fischinger (they had met the year before in Frankfurt) to make a wax-slicing machine for many scenes including the sorcerer's creation of the magic horse and the climactic duel between the priestess and the evil sorcerer. Reiniger's cutouts and shadow puppets are unbelievably detailed and intricate, often involving several versions of the same character for closeups and long shots. Each moving part had to be cut separately and joined to the others with fine wire.
Although the film was made during the period of silent filmmaking, Reiniger and crew still wanted to provide the picture with as much support as possible to ensure its coming over well to its audience. To do this they enlisted the help of musician Wolfgang Zeller, who composed a score especially for the film. When they had a procession for example, Zeller would compose a march, and they would measure the beats with a stopwatch, and then try to move the figures accordingly. At this period the theater would employ an orchestra and for the more ambitious films special music would be composed. In the Achmed score, for instance, when they wanted a certain sound, they would splice in a small picture that would cue the conductor when to add a particular effect. For the film's premiere performances in London and Paris, they invited Zeller to come and conduct the orchestra himself. The most troublesome time for Reiniger and her crew came when German inflation stopped. Money was suddenly worth something and they were only half way through production. Eventually, however their financier allowed them to carry on, and the production was finished in the spring of 1926. When they looked for a theater to play their film they were unsuccessful, being turned down by every major theater. Convinced to play the film by any means necessary, Reiniger arranged for it to have its premiere at the Volksbuehne, a theater in Northern Berlin, where Wolfgang Zeller himself, was in charge of the orchestra. Zeller's musicians consented to play for his sake, and they invited everyone they could think of. Since Reiniger and her crew were isolated for a number of years, they knew of practically nobody in the press. At this point Bertold Bretch (a friend of Reiniger's and Koch's) helped them out by inviting some very prominent people in the community. Because it was a Sunday in the middle of spring, they felt most people would not attend an event, taking place inside a darkened movie theater. As it turned out the theater was over crowded, apparently people were greatly enthused. This did however, lead to numerous problems during the Prince Achmed premiere. Various audience members were claiming their coatroom tickets for seat tickets and demanding seats, inspiring numerous rows among patrons. Then the projector lens broke, and since it was Sunday morning, no photo shops were open. In despair Carl Koch took a taxi over to the UFA house, he knew it would be closed but he went anyway. He stood their just looking at all the glorious equipment displayed in the windows, and was at the point of throwing something through the glass, when a man came by and opened the door to the equipment house. Koch confronted him and pleaded with the man, telling him sympathetically of his situation. As it turned out the man with the key could and would most definitely help him, and so Koch was able to get the right lens at the eleventh hour. This however, was only the beginning of problems for the premiere. Halfway through the film, policemen arrived and informed them that the theater was overcrowded and that the film must be stopped. They prolonged their arguments with the authorities until the second to last reel had ended. Then Koch introduced Reiniger to the police as the budding young filmmaker on the brink of success, going on to explain that there was just one reel left, and asked them how they thought the audience would react if the police closed the screening down. As Reiniger went on stage to bow before the projectionist played the final reel, the police said to her "You will hear from me…" and promptly left. It was during the final reel that something even more serious occurred. Reiniger noticed that during the projection of the final battle sequence, smoke was beginning to cloud in front of the screen. Knowing that she had not created smoke during that scene and that nitrate film was highly flammable she rushed over to the front of the screen to see what she could do. As it turned out the smoke was completely benign, being caused by some wet sacks that the stagehands had placed over the heating vents, so that they could sit down and watch the film too. However if the audience had ever gotten the idea that there was a fire, in the densely packed, crowded auditorium, the police warning would have seemed most proper, and Reiniger most definitely vilified. In the end however, the premiere was a success and was followed by its official premiere in Paris and later in the Gloria Palast in Berlin. Today, Lotte can still be seen as she has left her own mark on her famed work of art. At least twice in the film, on single frames at 45 and 53 minutes into the film, lay the shadow of the creator's slender hand itself in the act of creation.

Credits: Thanks to Milestone Films, NY